When I was at Zynga, Mark Pincus and the executive team had this brilliant idea on how to raise money for charity, selling virtual goods.
The idea was pretty simple, they had a virtual good, that virtual good was relevant to the game, and if you used real money, we gave a portion of the money to some charity.
This technique generated a lot of money for charities. And, to be fair, it was great for Zynga as well. Even if we did not keep the money, getting people to spend on a free game was hard, but once you got them to pay, it was straightforward to get them to pay more.
But we had to stop.
Why?
Facebook Credits.
See Facebook and Zynga signed a deal to have Zynga use Facebook Credits instead of real dollars. Feels a lot like Libra, but I am bitter. And because we used Facebook Credits, we needed to get them to do some back-office paperwork.
So I got the foundation to agree to do anything and everything that Facebook needed.
And they said, no.
I said that I would write a blog raking them over the coals for not prioritizing incremental revenue over doing good.
And they said, “Do it, we do not care.”
So I worked with our MarComm team to put something together. And we had layoffs, and our business was imploding and they asked me to not post it. They had so many other fires to put out, that this felt over the top.
And I agreed.
And I was wrong to agree.
Because, since then, no one has done this. Not one single freemium game has done this. Nada. Not one.
At Zynga, we pioneered a lot of the pay-to-play game mechanics. But Facebook’s payment team of the time pioneered the idea that charity was not a business priority.
It’s my fault for not having a spine six years ago. I wonder if I wrote that blog, things would be different. How many people would be alive if I had just done what was right?
When Facebook started it’s “charitable” giving on their timeline, I puked. I got so angry that I donated 1000$ to Mother Jones because they were the only publication that was willing to call out Facebook. Heck, I offered to give another 500$ as a matching donation. No one from Mother Jones asked, I just did it. I went on twitter and said if people sent me a note with a proof of a donation, I would donate 500$ to Mother Jones; I was that angry. And while we are here, give to Mother Jones, they are an excellent liberal paper that fights the power.
I screwed up.
So why am I writing now? Because a friend of mine saw a freemium game that did something for charity, and it made me happy. It meant that some games were trying to do the right thing again.
Thousands of Dragons have been slain since Elsweyr released – but now you can continue defeating them for a good cause! Raise money for real-world charities that support pets in need with each Dragon kill in #ESO. beth.games/2oVobFW #SlayDragonsSaveCats
And I also wanted to remind everyone that there are consequences to not doing the right thing. I get angry when I see folks ask how do we incentivize tech companies to do the right thing. We should be asking them what kind of moral bankruptcy exists that says the right thing to do isn’t something you do? But I didn’t do the right thing. And the industry is different as a result. And worse, a lot of people are not better off because I didn’t bother to write that blog.
As software architects, we make choices, and we are accountable for those choices.
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