I would be totally ok with even the bigger developers just having tip jars on their websites. It took me so long to get money to the relevant peoples after a few years as a teen of pirating stuff and then eventually reforming and feeling bad after. But I also wouldn’t mind if games were cheaper as a whole, but you could tip the ones you enjoyed. Gives incentive for games to be worth it when you have finished them, rather than before you start them.
I think the concept of “Pay what you want.” is a very friendly approach to this. It already exists on platforms like itch.io and some free to play games financed through donations, like Dwarf Fortress, also became extremely popular. Humble Bundles are also pretty famous for this. And of course kickstarters do something a bit similar to this.
Personally I’d love to see donation buttons/infos especially for all the free music and games that exist out there. But I want to make sure my donations reach the people who actually worked on it, so I dislike products like paypal or patreon where a portion of the money goes to men in the middle and their managers/owners, etc. A bank account number or something along those lines where I can transfer money a bit more directly would be nice, but some creators only provide paypal buttons, so I won’t donate.
He’s not talking about donations though, he’s talking about paying full price THEN tipping. It’s a blatant excuse to pay developers less while placing financial guilt on the people paying for the product. It’s the same way tipping at a restaurant works.
He’s not talking about donations though, he’s talking about paying full price THEN tipping.
I’m aware of that. The “Pay what you want.” concept mentioned in my first paragraph was its own idea/suggestion/thought, since it kinda fits the topic. It’s a different thing.
It’s a blatant excuse to pay developers less while placing financial guilt on the people paying for the product. It’s the same way tipping at a restaurant works.
Not really, really good video games take months or even years to complete, so your developers will want to be paid for that time before they become profitable. At restaurants the initial investment isn’t quite as high, as far as wages are concerned. I’d argue that you get tipped before even getting your first monthly paycheck. That can not be the case for video game tips.
I assume software developers and other people in the IT sector are also in higher demand than waiters, so they don’t have it quite as bad as waiters. That’s why I think they’re not comparable.
That said, I do believe that a company that is open about the tips it receives could be interesting for developers. If I saw that tips were actually split evenly among all the employees and their work hours then I think it’d be worth considering applying there. Though I guess for fairness those tips should even be paid out if employees quit or get kicked out so you’d have to track how much each person contributed to each product and that could be a bit of a bureaucratic hassle.
The dorf fort devs made like $3k-6k per month throughout the 2010s. They did end up going commercial to get more. But it was hardly “not even a little profitable.” I mean, I’d take that deal to do what I love too.
I’m aware of that and also see the problem, but argue that that’s partially because most people just aren’t used to this. People’s actions depend a lot on what they consider the norm. Take waiters or other service people as an example - in some cultures it’s usual to tip them, in others it’s unusual or even frowned upon.
You would have to at least have a base minimum purchase price and then accept tips on top.
That’s also fine. If the initial price were lower than other comparable games then I assume that more people could be convinced to tip. Or even just if a company is very open about their work / income and dedicated to communicating to their players. I think there’s already some companies like that, though perhaps not necessarily the big ones.
Even on consoles is this even news anymore? It may not be every game that requires it but there’s no way this is now so unusual as to be worth pointing out in an article of it’s own. The time to get pissy about that was, what, 10 years ago?
I got shafted moving house and playing Hitman, my progress saved but I without a connection my scores didnt save. So I got to level 2 but I got no credit for level 1.
Absolutely screw all kinds of drm, I will pirste Squares 007 game if they put thebalways online shit in it.
Who cares? As long as you’re able to play offline I don’t see why this matters at all. Out of all the shitty DRM’s these days this seems like it’s at least mildly effective without being too much of a hassle or a violation of privacy and security. Kotaku just whines about anything.
I reached out to Ubisoft and was told that an internet connection is required to install the game no matter which version you are playing. However, Ubisoft did confirm that you’ll be able to play Outlaws offline once you’ve installed it.
Am I missing something here. How big is the game because online install has been a thing some 2008 because games are larger than DVD and Blu-ray disk’s.
A Blu-ray can hold up to 128GB. Most games aren’t bigger than that, though some are. And including multiple discs to fit the entire game used to be standard practice, and could still easily be done.
This is for DRM, online install for a physical game has always been solely for DRM.
I truly don’t know because I’m not the demographic, but do most people have a Blu-ray drive in their PC? I got one years ago but haven’t put a disc drive in a build since.
Edit: me forgetting about consoles. I’ve been all digital on all platforms for too long. Also, has anyone printed on discs that large?
Bit late to respond, but as someone else pointed out, physical PC games are virtually nonexistent. Even the collector’s edition of Baldur’s Gate 3 I recently bought came as a steam key and a disk with the steam client installer and a few files for the game to make Steam think the game is installed and force an update. I was pretty disappointed by that.
And no, most people don’t have a blu-ray drive or any kind of optical media reader in their PCs these days.
As for whether or not disks that large are printed on by publishers, most physical PS5 games are printed in disks of that capacity as are 4K blu-ray releases of movies.
The PlayStation 5 does not support CDs and will not play 3D Blu-ray content. The choice of Ultra-HD Blu-ray as the disc medium means PlayStation 5 game discs can hold up to 100 GB of data, in contrast to PlayStation 4 games which usually came on dual-layer standard Blu-ray discs capable of holding up to 50 GB.>
You’re new to Ubisoft, right? Ubisoft needs online on installation cm because their shit is so buggy that not even the installer could make it all the way without a crash if not for day 1 patches. No need for DRM if the game doesn’t work!
I wouldn’t say I’m new to Ubisoft, more that they haven’t released a game I’ve been interested in playing since Assassin’s Creed: Revelations.
As for day one patches being a necessity for games, I would argue that if a game has major game breaking bugs on final release (AKA launch day) then the game isn’t worth playing, much less spending money on.
If a game can’t even install on a system that meets its minimum requirements without needing a patch, then I’d say that’s a feature not a bug. Since it tells me that I should strongly reconsider purchasing anything from that publisher in the future.
note: this is just a patent
patents usually don’t mean shit, sony (?iirc) has a patent for an ad system that requires users to say the name of the brand to continue, but we’re not seeing it around yet eh?
kotaku.com
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