: My point is that in practice, tipping doesn't actually have any intended
: impact. If you stiff someone for bad service, for instance, you're
: probably just shafting their coworkers—oftentimes tips are pooled. There's
: also such disparity in tipping rates that one person's "good"
: tip might be lower than the tip someone gives for bad service. As such,
: it's in general a very ineffective way to motivate better service.

: Likewise the idea that "I will not preorder Halo 5 because MCC has
: issues" doesn't really work because it's not like you send a picture
: of the money you won't spend to 343 with a note explaining why.
: If they aren't getting the money it's for any number of reasons, and at best
: there's only anecdotal evidence to link it to another game for the reason.
: So I'm not really sending any "message" to them. I'm just
: missing out on some digital trinkets or a gift card.

There are two things here. Firstly, 343i's bad record is not the only reason not to pre-order, it's just a good additional reason. Secondly, no one is saying "don't pre-order but don't tell 343i why", that would be totally dumb to say or imply, and you're right, it would be an ineffective thing to do. You could say something here, on Waypoint, on NeoGAF, on Facebook, on Twitter, you could even do that mail-a-picture thing, I like that idea. So I'll rephrase, why are you not taking the course of not pre-ordering and then telling them why you didn't pre-order?