https://twitter.com/Qwik/status/1778269707575119977
I’ve thought about this idea for a while, as a player, since I’ve been diving into single player games lately.
When I beat a game, there are some that just leave me in awe of how amazing the experience was. At the end of the game, I’ve often thought “I wish I could give these folks another $10 or $20 because it was worth more than my initial $70 and they didn’t try to nickel and dime me every second”.
Games like HZD, GoW, RDR2, BG3, Elden Ring, etc. I know $70 is already a lot, but it’s an option at the end of the game I wish I had at times. Some games are that special.
I know most will dislike this idea.
BTW, I realize we are tired of “tipping” in everything else - but I view this different from a pressure to tip type scenario many face and give feedback on.
…Yes, you’ve read that correctly. 
Ya know, because, we don’t have enough publishers and devs praying on us to spend money though Cosmetics, pay to win, pay to skip, advantage paying, battle pass, DLC, online pass, locked DLC, paid mods, season pass… Nah, let’s have tipping too. 
I could take every opportunity to spit in the hand that asks for me money on top of asking me more money, but… let’s approach this rationally. Even though civility is not necessary here.
I don’t care to tip any game i play, even if the game gives me 100’s if not thousands of hours of quality. And my attitude here clearly reflects this is something that shouldn’t be in video games. Even more so then MTX. Hell were often led to believe that the high prices are there so there would be less MTX, but instead there’s more of it.
This isn’t to mention the culture and implication surrounding tipping in general. And this is where food comparisons will end, because… Unlike restaurant industry which has been fairly decent to say the least with a few outliers but slowly getting ruined thanks to our (american) tipping culture (more on that down below), video game services has been mostly garbage. Which makes the workers, or devs in this case, not getting the money unless their tipped situation, even worse. Esp considering how lay off happy the video game industry has been as of late.
And before anybody tells me it’s optional to tip… we (well, America) live in a culture where it’s frowned upon to not tip or tip low. And somehow the blame is always put on the customer to make them look bad, but never on the person paying the worker’s bills. And how it’s being pushed continuously where it’s almost expected as if it’s a hard requirement on top of paying prices (which are also going up). Optional it is not.
So Mike Ybarra, if you’re somehow here and reading in, i would like to personally ask you one question ….Why?
This suggestion, as well any argument that employs the fallacious “the more money they get, the better the games are” in any capacity, doesn’t do anything to help support the games you love. If anything, time and time again, it shows it hurts the games we love in some capacity, and warp the companies we use to think their cool and all.
I know to this will sound contradictory, but we all remember a time where WoW was built upon passion before being Activison-ized with a bunch of tauren poop like MTX and so on. The games you’ve listed Mike, they seem more interested in giving a good consumer experience, rather then try to nickel and dime us. And adding tipping to games will change that. It would ruin pretty much. Just like how it’s culture is ruining the restaurant industry slowly but surely.