Sustainability Idea: Reverse Bug Bounty
2.35.2 contains a bug fix that makes me really happy - so happy that I'd like to reward Niantic in some way for dealing with it quickly. At them moment there's no way for me to do that, unless I buy items that I don't really need from the shop. This, and recent posts about subscriptions and Niantic's bug fix priorities got me thinking;
Some large software houses offer bug bounties - they pay hackers to reveal bugs to them rather than exploiting them. Imagine that in reverse: Players pledge money for specific bug to be fixed or feature to be added, and Niantic gets that money when players are happy that it's been done.
Upsides:
Players can help set priorities.
Unlike subscriptions or donations, this is performance related.
Funding is guaranteed for large projects that would otherwise be speculative - for example Niantic won't do an Redacted skin at the moment because it's a lot of work for no quantifiable return, but if doing it guaranteed a large lump sum, larger that the cost of hiring a temporary team to do it, then they would be mad not to.
Niantic can see how players value things.
Players will fee the developers are more accountable
Downsides:
Financial Incentive for Niantic to break stuff (not as bad as it sounds, players can refuse to fund fixing things that shouldn't have broken).
Potential conflicts: I'd pay good money to have chromatic aberration removed, but what if people would then pay to have it put back in?
This would cost a lot to develop. A cheaper alternative would be a subscription model, but each payment gives 1 plus/minus vote on a subscriber's forum.
Comments
@Rostwold
So we pay them when they fix the bugs in their app? I don't see the point. Are you planning on paying for each fix?
In a world where the app was working correctly, and this was for adding new features, a maybe on it. But as of current, I don't see paying them to fix the app.
The point is that we could give them a financial incentive to fix things, we could set their priorities.
I agree that this isn't ideal, but it would be entirely optional for players, and it seems to me to be better than the current system where all we can do is keep moaning, and cross our fingers for bug fixes that are often glacially slow.
We'd all like a world where everything in the app is working correctly, but I think we have to accept that we don't live in that world and make the best of where we are.
@Rostwold
When devs usually fix software, it's not always the path that is wanted, depending on the fix. Many times you have to fix multiple things to get certain things fixed. So priorities aren't always what gets fixed. Which is part of why we still aren't at parity.
Well, we were told that new features wouldn't be focused on, until parity issues were fixed, and since we are still waiting on parity issues to be fixed at a year from public release date....
I'm not totally sold on the idea, but I would prefer to give Niantic a bit of money here and there for actually fixing issues and improving the game directly instead of overpriced store packs and surprise ticket fees that don't see any correlation between major issues being addressed.