That AI-generated character at the beginning made for a really organic opening.

Wait you aren't a 60 year old hard boiled private detective?!

"tipped wages" are the worst thing to happen to the concept of gratuity

You don't get to engaging in an ultra-predatory industry, fire entire departments, stick a million micro-transactions on something, and then demand the customer pay extra to show how appreciative we are. You know who you *do* tip? People who don't charge and still do extra, like so.

"Even when the rich talk about acts of generosity, they always come off as too frugal relative to their own worth and it always sounds like they're trying to sell you something" Wow you said it. That hit real hard.

The best way to tip a dev is to introduce other people to the game.

"Some games are special" And some games are Diablo Immortal

Here you go Frost, I'm giving you this not because you in any way went above and beyond, but because I'm hoping the next time I come here you dont spit in my food.

"It's genuinely difficult to listen to people with too much money. Even when the rich talk about acts of generosity they always come off as so frugal relative to their own worth, and it always sounds like they are trying to sell me something." Truer words have never been spoken.

"We want you to tip $20 on top of this $70 game." Sounds like a roundabout way of saying you want to sell games at $90.

I'm TOTALLY sure that the "tip" would go towards the hard workers, creators, actors, and others who help make the game and not so much as a single red cent would go to boosting a games bottom line!!! Right, gaming companies????

Can't help thinking that this whole tipping thing comes from some suit seeing founders packs on indie games and thinking "we're leaving money on the table. Let's ruin this with excessive greed too." Love the intro. Very organic.

That last point was the best. If a game is really so "special" you wish you could pay the developer more, buy an extra copy and gift it to a friend. Not only are you giving the developer more money now, but your potentially setting them up to get more money on future projects as well, if the friend you gifted ends up becoming another fan.

"it's genuinely difficult to listen to people with too much money" deeply, deeply true

I would "tip" tiny single person devs. but that's why Patron is a thing.

One thing we can be sure is that every time CEOs try to innovate its a guarantee theyre just breaking something that will benefit only themselves in the long run.

When I was a kid, I spent some time working in a sawmill making packing cases. We had a performance related bonus scheme, based on how many units were produced per hour. Periodically, the target numbers were rechecked, and one of the office bods would come out with a clipboard and a stopwatch and time everyone. You have *never* seen people move so slowly as when that watch was running, but as soon as they left, everything went back to "normal" speed and the bonuses kept flowing. The managers knew what we were doing, they weren't stupid - it was their way of doing things "by the book" when the company wouldn't increase wages, because they knew keeping us happy and motivated kept productivity up. It's a shame that way of thinking has gone out of the door and greed is king, because greed is completely counter-productive, literally and figuratively.

Never thought Frost was AI, but I did think he was putting on a voice for the series until I watched him on a podcast and realized he's just that manly.

"I know what my lies are worth." Damn, that goes hard. I'd never thought tipping culture all the way through, but this way of looking at it seems so obvious in retrospect. Great video as always.

My customer service voice got me in loads of trouble. Most people thought I was a computer, and hearing you be accused of using AI brings back memories. Well done video Frost.

Loved your last point. My wife and I have bought Stardew Valley 5 times: once for each of our PC's, again for our phones, and once on her switch. When we acquired a switch lite we didn't hesitate to buy it a 6th time; not because we needed to, but because we've played the game so much we just see it as a way to support the developer who has brought us so much value.

The most organic opening I've ever seen lmao

"I lie the same as everyone else, if not more. I just know what my lies are worth" is a quote for the ages

The thing that bothers me most about tipping culture, particularly over credit/debit card, but even with cash, is how exactly do I know that the tip is going to the right people, and is not getting skimmed off the top by the owners/managers/CEO etc. If I tipped for games, isn't the money just going to line the pockets of CEOs and shareholders?

How about the CEO advocate for fair employee wages and benefits? Oh wait. He's a CEO.

Even my local farmer couldn't produce anything more organic than that.

This might just be my opinion growing up as a Brit, but a tip should never be part of the credit card charge. A tip is the five pound note or couple of quid you put under the saucer, so the waiting staff will find it when they clean your table. Cash-in-hand, untraceable and not part of their standard wage. Extra money for a good service. And it means if you're not doing so well and can't afford it, there's no hard feelings. A tip isn't owed and it isn't really earned. It's just something nice to give as a thank you for a nice meal after a good evening out, if you have the money to spare. There shouldn't be any expectations from either party.

Ha! I've never put a face to the voice before! You handsome devil...

Tipping is the worst thing to ever happen in North America, and tipping inflation is making it even worse. I remember when 10% was a standard tip. Now they're asking for up to 25 or even 30%. Cruises and hotels have gratuities factored into the cost of the ticket. It all smacks to me of an excuse not to pay living wages. Made even worse when companies take a cut off the top of tips. That happening to game companies would be loot boxes all over again. "Want to continue with the game? Please pay a minimum of 15% tip to our company!"

I am so, so glad you all are out from under the Escapist, seeing you all unfiltered is the best.

Developer here- please don’t introduce tipping into gaming. Even setting aside every good argument in this video, there will always be companies that will just pocket that tip. You’re not helping the developers. If you want to support developers, please start caring about these mass layoffs that happen so, so regularly in this industry. So many good developers are lost for good simply because they have families to support and can’t risk this kind of volatility in their careers, no matter how passionate or talented they are.

"I don't tip cause society says I have to. Alright I'll tip if somebody really deserves a tip, if they really put the effort I'll give them something extra, but I mean, tipping automatically is for the birds." - Mr. Pink The only real example of "tipping" I've seen in gaming is some titles having these "supporter DLC" which sometimes throws in a basic VIP skin as a way of saying "thank you for the extra support", but realistically, how many people buy those DLCs?

I'm getting a lot of "Tip your boss ✨uwu✨" from these employers.

There have been small indie games with tip jars for the creator for over a decade... But that doesn't mean there should be for giant corporations. McDonalds doesn't have a tip jar.

"I hope this is organic enough for you 🖕" PURE. FUCKING. GOLD. 🤣👏

Lmao that organic opening. 🤣

Nothing is like a monday morning and a new episode of Cold Take

Tipping is a community or individual monetary thank you. When companies, franchises, and CEOs start talking about tips, it’s a scam. Tips should NEVER be included in payment for employment. Pay is what the employer has to give you for the use of your time and effort. Tips are the customer’s way of rewarding good, direct service. Relying on tips for income might as well just be a more active version of holding a “will X for food” sign. The generosity is appreciated, but it’s an admission of the company of a failure to make enough money to pay its workers.

Let’s also point out the fact that outside the USA tipping isn’t mandatory. You shown a tipping option at the end of a game to a European and you won’t be seeing a cent. All adding tipping to games will do is increase the cost *for Americans*. And if you make the tip actually mandatory, then you’re just selling the game for an extra 20 euro and people will factor that in when considering it.

i like hearing about frosts various tales of a previous life and how he uses them to illustrate his point

Indie game ads in a video game channel is how ads should work and not whatever insane thing KZfaq does. It's cool to see that showcase at the end.

Back when it was new DLCs were seen as ways to "Tip" the makers of the game. "Oh you liked this game, what's another $5 for a skin in a game you've played hours in?" but when you make an exception to something and it makes money it becomes the norm.

Nothing like court documents to really drive home a point

AI can't replicate this man's sultry smooth-talking.

"Do you think you're the honest man here" to "No, I just know what my lies are worth" goes so hard

0:19-0:27 You show 'em, Frost! ...Though I have to admit, it's still surreal to see a voice that sultry coming out of an actual human. Love the mustache, by the way!

I really appreciate Frost willing to draw the lines between some of these everyday things and the larger picture. It's important that the people discuss and are aware of all the deception used by "the rich." It may be important to call out individuals (e.g. the C-suite executives that think they can get away with criminal acts - something that is frequently depressingly true), but people need to be educated on the psychological trickery, such as appealing to your morality (when it it is objectively a matter of them trying to siphon as much as possible for their personal gain), and other acts that enable those whom have no qualms in stealing the livelihoods from others to hoard wealth and tell everyone else that they're not working hard enough. To accept things like the type of "tipping" done here in the US really is just all of us lying to ourselves that any of this works. The whole system is chewing us up faster and faster. Scary to think where we're headed.

Frost denouncing tipping culture is somehow exactly what we needed in 2024.

"I keep getting accused of using AI" - wait, how, why, and huh?

Those AI accusations are especially hilarious if you've known of Frost since the Smite days.

You want to tip the developer? Buy another copy of the game and gift it to a friend.

Mike Ybarra has some of the worst Foot In Mouth Disease this side of Ninja.

Here is the only valid take, pay your employees like the nepo-CEOs that do nothing and make those assholes ask for tips

I'm not American, but I tough tipping in America was just a way of people to avoid income taxes.

Cold Take has quickly become my favorite video series. It's insightful and doesn't insult my intelligence. Keep up the good work.

Tipping should only be in cases when you feel the service was beyond expected, to show you really appreciated it. If your product or service is good enough, people will gladly pay more, and you can pay your workers what they deserve.

Worst part for me wold be if publishers implemented tipping for their devs, they'd skim a hefty "convenience fee" off the top for the (self-imposed) imposition of running such a system. It's like if KZfaq were to buy out Patreon, then the cut that used to go to Patreon goes right to them.

here is some food for thought. the ceo argument goes, "after you play the game, you feel the experience is so special that the game deserves a tip.". but... what if my experience is the opposite? what if the game is that bad? do i get a tip from the company?

The very special games devs that do deserve tipping would never blatantly ask for tips.

best starting 10 seconds of a monogolue i've seen in ages. Thank you for that, Frost

Frost is Frosty AF 🔥

Pretty much. Who doesn't hear "You should start tipping employee X..." without immediately appending "So that WE get to pay them less."

A thing about the psychology of tipping is that if you work in a front-end service industry your appearance can impact how much you get tipped, and it affects all tipped workers, not just women. A guy I dated figured this out and started wearing foundation, pressed powder, and a little bit of brown eyeliner to work. He tracked his tips and found that doing that upped his take-home pay by 15%.

Oh great so not only does he SOUND cool but he also LOOKS cool!!

One thing that makes the concept of gratuity in games even more complex is that many games, even ones that aren't "live service", often get support after launch, and this can produce a bit of an issue, players buy the game once, but there may be ongoing costs for the developers; while some money will come from new players still interested due to continued support, if it isn't enough someone may pull the plug. Though arguably, for many games there already is a sort of tipping option: OSTs and Digital Art Books. Depending on the content they can be relatively easy to make, and give a way for people who enjoyed the game to somewhat give a little extra to the devs while still getting something themselves. With some developers going further, and tasking parts of their team who's skills aren't needed at the moment (often art folks) to make DLC/assets for DLC to continue to fund development.

If you want to tip a developer for doing a good job, just buy the game twice (on sale, if you think full price is too much for a tip). I did that with Fallout: New Vegas, Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines, Baldur's Gate 1, Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and others.

That last thing is really the best way to “tip” a studio if you want to. Love the game? Buy it, and gift it to a friend who doesn’t have it but might enjoy it

The clip of Gordon Ramsay was so recognisable to me that I knew it was from Amy’s Bakery where the servers tips were being taken by the boss

That ending quip speaks to pretty much the problem once you make a certain ammount of money. You act and hoard more frugal than the people that actually have to do so.

That last line about the ultra-rich sounding frugal when claiming generosity brings to light a whole new level of scummy. Saying, "Ill pay an extra 40% for the game because its the right thing to do" while hoarding wealth gained by screwing the same people he is trying to convince to pay more is just elite levels of scum.

Honestly, gotta love the clip from the kitchen nightmares episode of Amys Baking Company. They paid their waiters tipping wage, and didnt let them keep the tips lmao

This video series is delightful. Lots of well thought-out and interesting perspectives, paired with a voice so soothing to listen to that some people refuse to believe it isn't synthetic. Keep it up!

If you think those tips are going to the small people in the industry….😂😂😂

31 seconds due to random chance. New record for me.

Tipping should be a bonus, like it is in Europe, given when you feel service has been especially good. It shouldn't be the only real way that someone is getting paid, like in America.

it's kind of amazing how rich people can simultaneously say "here, funny dancing monkey, have some spare change that means absolutely nothing to me" and "I would like my customers to pay more for the same product"

As a French man, it's always so strange to see the US tipping culture, like if you can't afford to pay your employees then you shouldn't have a business, and especially shouldn't have the customers paying them.

CEO: look, I want to rise my yearly bonus so why don't you pay the devs, the people that actually work for you to play a game that you already paid 70 dollars plus macrotransactions, through tipping so I can buy myself a new yate

I was going to write something deeply profound but then you played the Super Mario Dire Dire Docks theme in the outro and my brain melted back to 1996 like the flashback in Ratatouille.

I love Cold Take. Frost is the Frank DeFord of games journalism.

Let me put it this way. If the game devs want tip from me i want more than what the service offers me. I mean put stuff in the game that i would consider worthy of giving them tips. If i consider the game worthy of tip i would consider it.

I can only imagine that guy expects tips to go to the company, and not the employee whose work the player appreciated, as if you could ever pinpoint that person. What a jerk. When it comes to the small developers I tend to patronize, I consider a good review as the tip, one that doesn't just say 'good' but gives the kind of information that might motivate the right players to give it a try.

I love this gentleman's voice. It's the finest voice befitting the finest style of noir.

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

The fact that I can tip on this video makes me confused.

As an European I won't ever tip, never ever. If i ever go to the US i will look them in the eyes and manually select 0 % screw you, ask your boss a decent wage

Your work has always been good thus far. It's a pleasure to be able to listen to you talk thanks to Second Wind and the other one.

There's an indie game that I got as part of a charity bundle and since put over 200 delightful hours into it. I'll probably put 200 more hours into it before too long, and I won't regret a single one. I ended up loving it enough that I wanted to give the devs money. No tip jar, but they did have a merch store, and there was DLC on the horizon. That worked well enough for me. Didn't even need a tip jar.

My job is dependent on tips. A customer’s generosity can determine if I make rent, and only because the suit that runs my company can afford another yacht. If game companies introduce tipping in any form, be it with good intentions or not, they will inevitably use it to exploit their workers. Tipping is fine, only so long as a livable wage and fair working conditions are already guaranteed, and they simply aren’t in the U.S.

The whiplash of listening to the Noir voice going into the sponsor read is something else

I love the direction these videos have been taking.

Cold Take needs to be more well known than it is. The perspective here is fantastic.

When I was coming up, microtransactions WERE the tip. If you liked a game, and sank a lot of hours into it, you could drop a few dollars for a gun camo or a cosmetic upgrade or whatever. You knew you were overpaying for a smaller item relative to what you get for the initial buy-in on a full price game, so it felt like you were being ‘generous.’ This is the same mechanism that initially powered free to play games as well, before the shift from gratuity to gambling began. Then publishers started installing more and more garbage, turning their respective Disneylands into casinos and arcade token shops. It makes consumers desperate to justify their habit, instead of happy to be gaming, so they double down on their ‘team’ and spend to show devotion. You are then expected and pressured to be ‘generous’ and ‘grateful.’ It’s sad, and gross, and inevitable.

The factory job fiasco makes me think of my brief stint as a postal worker. Very similar story. You spent a month of training learning how to do everything by the books and then the first time you're out on route with an actual worker they explain all the ways to get around all the rules in that book so you can actually finish routes in your designated time allotment. Every manager spoke about how important the rules were while knowing full well that the expectations put on drivers were literally impossible if you actually followed them. I had my doubts about 'how things were done' and figured I was just training under a handful of grumpy old timers. That doubt disappeared one day when one of the managers warned me that he was 'totally not' doing my 'random' inspection that day and would absolutely 'not' be dropping by for his inspection 'the hour after lunch' when I'd probably be on the last leg of the tree streets. I'm not the sharpest tack in the box but it wasn't hard for me to piece together the message. "we know what you're really doing out there, just don't do it between 1 and 2pm or on any of these three streets. then we can all nod smile and go on with our jobs." All this to simply stop from hiring 31 drivers instead of 30 and put enough slack in the system that we could actually do it safely. No the obvious solution was everyone to nod and wink and tip toe around the system to keep the numbers looking artificially good. And for what? So the city could have plausible deniability if something bad does happen and save 30k a year on payroll? "Well we never TOLD the drivers to cut these corners. In fact we explicitly told them NOT to do that thing they did that caused a mail truck to roll into a busy intersection"

You make a very good point at the end. Want to tip a game? Convince somebody else to buy their own copy (or better yet, buy another copy for somebody else).

Love that point at the end. Mike Ybarra saying that sometimes a game is so "special" that it deserves an extra $20 is like me saying that sometimes a game is so great it deserves my excess pocket lint.

your recent videos rock. thanks for making these.

The last quote sums it up perfectly.

"They always sound so frugal relative to thier own worth." Way to perfectly sum up my feelings about a former president of Blizzard saying he would tip an extra 10 or 20$ to a game he extra liked. Like bruh, that dosent make you sound how you think it does.

The fact that the only way he can think to appreciate a work of art is to artificially inflate it's monetary value really says all you need to know about this CEO. Hell, it also comes with the fun bonus of people without money being less able to appreciate art.