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I wonder if this will end up being the straw that breaks the camel's back and leads to unionization in the game industry. I've seen a decent uptick in serious d

I wonder if this will end up being the straw that breaks the camel's back and leads to unionization in the game industry. I've seen a decent uptick in serious discussion about it already this year after so many other dumb decisions by AAA publishers. I know a lot of people here don't think there should be unions in software, but I think the game industry is a special case. There's enough starry eyed people that love the idea of working on games enough that they are willing to put up with total abuse and just about no one who cares about raising a family can seriously stay in that industry. I myself spent a few years in it, and even though I love making games, it's just a serious hobby for me because I can't put up with the expected constant crunch, low salaries, and layoffs after every finished project.

Waterluvian 8y ago
Maybe that. But also the industry is oversaturated with game devs. And for AAA titles they're basically fungible. Need to stop graduating so many.
- munk-a 8y ago
  For game client programmers I think this is the case, though experienced devs are hard to find and retain. The gaming industry really hits issues when trying to attract non-engine devs, infrastructure and server specifically. Due to the portability of these skills to... much better industry sub-segments a lot of talent here just jumps ship and leaves. As a former server-side game dev I was always supportive of my co-worker's rights (QA & Art in particular have a _terrible_ time) and I think this is where pressure to unionize is likely to originate.
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    Art has a hard time? That surprises me - if your artist leaves you can’t just hire someone with the same style can you?
    - Waterluvian 8y ago
      For larger titles you absolutely can. They basically write a "how you do this art style" guide, character design guides, etc.
    - munk-a 8y ago
      At my company we had an "Art Director" for each title that dictated the style to use, this employee was indeed highly valued (and only the longest/most loyal folks got picked for it), but the actual artists working day-to-day were quite replaceable.
  - vonmoltke 8y ago
    > The gaming industry really hits issues when trying to attract non-engine devs, infrastructure and server specifically. Due to the portability of these skills to... much better industry sub-segments a lot of talent here just jumps ship and leaves. Back when I was actually interested in entering the industry none of the companies I found would even talk to devs without games industry experience, generally major shipped titles, too. That could be part of their problem.
- WAthrowaway 8y ago
  The more people that could be even potential union members, the stronger the union's negotiating position is.
  - manfredo 8y ago
    This is not always the case. If there are a large supply of workers then many will be willing to work for non-union employers. In many cases, unions increase the value of labor by constricting the supply of labor. Unions can often be difficult to join. If there is a overabundance of labor, then the union has little negotiating power.
    - yyyymmddhhmmss 8y ago
      It’s not that simple at all. Take the film industry. There’s a plethora of young guns who want in on the Cinematographer’s Guild. Millions of them. And a lot of them are skilled as well! The reason unions work in film production is the risk companies would be taking by hiring thos without the proven experience. Tech is prime for unionization because of the way dependability would work. It could minimize hiring processes, minimize management costs, and maximize developer income, and quick! The only thing standing in the way is managers and will power.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  > And for AAA titles they're basically fungible. I would have thought it was the opposite, and to produce a AAA title you'd need the very talented people - the experts - and they have more leverage to negotiate.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    AAA is more like the old Hollywood "cast of thousands" films, like Ben Hur. You need a lot of people, but no individual contribution stands out. The overall look is determined by the art director: so you need only a few experts at the top.
- SeanBoocock 8y ago
  The reality is a lot more complicated than that. Certain entry-level art roles are pretty fungible, for instance, and most of them are already contract positions or outsourced to other studios (in places like Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia). However, beyond a certain level of experience and in some cases, entire disciplines, there is a dearth of quality candidates. Experienced developers, who have a good reputation, do have leverage but usually not to the extent to equalize comp with what one would see outside the industry. I've seen studios have critical roles go unfilled for the better part of a year for lack of qualified candidates at the budget set aside for them.
- BurningCycles 8y ago
  As I understood it, actual developers was the category least impacted by these layoffs at Activision.
Dahoon 8y ago
I don't think unionization will do much good. American-style unions are more like the mafia than a "real union". Unions in places like Scandinavia is the only way to fix this in my opinion but doubtful that will ever happen.
- TearsInTheRain 8y ago
  Can you explain the difference?
  - munk-a 8y ago
    Propaganda. Basically Americans view US unions as something approaching demonic but somehow are able to conceive as unions in different companies* as having value. The US's relationship with unions is pretty crazy. *Excuse me, this was a typo, I had intended to write "countries" sorry for the confusion.
    - isoskeles 8y ago
      The comment you're referring was actually making a claim that there's a difference between how unions operate in the US and Scandinavia, although it is somewhat vague.
  - cc439 8y ago
    Just to be brief, non-adversarial and in-between models such as works councils [1] are allowed that are not legal per the NLRA in the US. The US also has restrictions against common sense methods of representation such as having elected union representatives serve on a company's board of directors or even in upper management. I'm all for the collective voice of workers having a say but the NLRA was basically the equivalent of the PPACA (in terms of being written for the benefit of megacorp insurers, pharma, and other stakeholders) but still being sold and defended as if it was free (at point of service) universal healthcare. It only allows for a purely adversarial relationship between unions and businesses with any sort of mutual ownership/leadership/stakeholding being expressly forbidden. It afforded workers the right to form independent governing bodies and self-finance things like strike relief funds that are important in cases where a company is simply unwilling to bend in any way. However, my experience there is an enormous, unserved middle ground between "no collective representation at all" and "we need a separate warchest and leadership to force any sort of compromise" yet creating something in that space is effectively illegal thanks to existing law. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council
jdoliner 8y ago
Would a union make life better for the starry-eyed people entering the industry. The only parallel I can really draw is the movie industry, which also has lots of starry-eyed people entering it and has a union. I'm not sure it's better, I've talked to a number of people who had to work for years at very low rates just to get their SAG card, after they got it they had a lot more earning power. But you still get the same effect of low wages for entry level people. That seems tough to avoid when you always have a bunch of young talent flooding the market.
- learc83 8y ago
  The problem with game dev isn't the entry level jobs. Also a game dev union would probably work more like the film and TV trade/technical unions than SAG. I know people who work in film doing things from lighting to sound to driving. Their working conditions and pay are much better than they would be without the unions.
  - jdoliner 8y ago
    I don't think lighting, sound and stunt people have the same influx of young starry eyed people coming into the profession though. That's what makes unions really difficult. Same thing applies to academia, which is arguably worse than both game-devs and actors.
    - vichu 8y ago
      From a friend, I've heard great things about the treatment they got as part of The Animation Guild, and I imagine that that demographic of artists and creators is quite similar to the "young starry eyed people" going into the game industry. In fact, there's likely a good amount of overlap of artists that have worked in both (supported slightly by anecdata of friends who are 3d artists).
    - trentlott 8y ago
      I'm not sure that's true Plenty of starry-eyed people enter academia. There isn't quite the same unionization gateway into academic jobs, but mostly just markers of effective work - papers, grants, etc
mc32 8y ago
I too would like to see a union take over just to see the effects it would have on a fast paced industry (in terms of technology change and game release cycle) It would be a nice laboratory to peek into, to see how a union either becomes symbiotic or parasitic in behavior.
- ken 8y ago
  Do you not consider live entertainment a fast paced industry? And the easy (but unsatisfying) answer is: every local is different.
  - spc476 8y ago
    I don't think acting, directing, scoring, or cinematography have changed all that much with the advent of computers. But the computer industry? There are several languages very popular today that didn't exist when I was in college---heck, try even 10 years ago. So, what must one know to join a "programmers' union"? Or what can a company expect from a "unionized programmer"?
    - saghm 8y ago
      > There are several languages very popular today that didn't exist when I was in college---heck, try even 10 years ago. Honest question: how many of them are used in game development? My limited understanding is that the majority of games still use more traditional languages like C++ and Java.
      - mc32 8y ago
        Even better. We’ll get to see how a union gets to affect an industry, whether symbiotically or parasitically. Remains to be seen, but if they affect a slower industry measurably and negatively, then we can have some confidence that in even faster technology sectors the effect would be greater. If they have a positive influence, they could possibly add to a faster paced industry, perhaps. I would love to see a unionized AWS -the whole org., from top to bottom. Then see if MS or Goog would approve,
hippich 8y ago
How do unions work? Can an employer hire someone if they are not part of the union?
- philipov 8y ago
  Unions work by collectively bargaining with the employer to secure terms for the benefit of the group. The terms that get negotiated aren't set in stone: the point is to present a common front in the negotiations so that the employer can't use a divide and conquer strategy against the workers.
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    The problem is you switch having almost no negotiating power against the employer as an individual... to having almost no negotiating power against the union as an individual. You're just trading masters and you don't get any more say. If you are young for example, and the union wants pay to be by seniority, then the union may be working against your interests and you could be better off negotiating with the company.
    - philipov 8y ago
      That is a more fundamental issue than whether or not you have Unions, and that's the out-of-control scaling of the economy. Companies have become so big that individuals are insignificant, period, outside of a few elites. If corporations were kept within healthy limits, unions wouldn't have to be equally huge to keep pace. The law of large numbers demands that individuals get reduced to statistics. Statistics get measured, they don't get to negotiate! Individual misery can be averaged entirely out of the picture. Unions are a response to a shitty situation, and they have flaws. Not having unions, in the face of dwindling individual share in a growing economy, that's even worse.
      - StillBored 8y ago
        Well that is the fault of the #1 union in the center of the north American continent... The US federal government, which is there to represent "We the People" not the corporations, or political parties, k-street lobbies, or any of that other nonsense.
trimbo 8y ago
The article says the layoffs are "mostly" not dev teams, but rather on the publishing side.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  What's the difference between development and publishing?
  - jmchuster 8y ago
    In this case, since Blizzard is both publisher and developer, it basically means marketing. When a publisher is separate from the developer, the publisher is also mostly responsible for funding the game development.
  - the_duke 8y ago
    Developer: artists, developers, writers, ... Publisher: marketing, distribution, payment processing, support, ...
    - baud147258 8y ago
      You can add QA for publishers too.
  - rjf72 8y ago
    Developers are the people who's job is to make a game. Publishers are the people who's job is to sell a game. Developer = programmers, designers, artists, sound guys, ... Publisher = marketing, finance, accounting, advertising, guy-who-says-you-must-have-microtransactions, ...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
smsm42 8y ago
> There's enough starry eyed people that love the idea of working on games enough that they are willing to put up with total abuse and just about no one who cares about raising a family can seriously stay in that industry. Union privileges (usually) are based on seniority. Which means the said starry-eyed people would occupy the lowest rung of the union ladder. And if you think union leadership would go out of the way and sacrifice the interests of tenured members to protect starry-eyed snotnoses, you may be also interested in investing into buying a couple of bridges in Brooklyn... But more interesting - where that leadership would come from? Situation A: the same starry-eyed snotnoses elect them. Of course, their immense wisdom and life experience would allow them to elect the right persons and not become a victim of a bunch of demagogues that would promise them heaven and then take advantage and abuse them... oh wait. Situation B: existing large union comes in and takes over. The said union would, of course, have the interests of the same starry-eyed, easily deceived people in heart, despite meeting them for the first time 2 hours ago, and would never try to make a deal that would afford all the power to the union reps and put the starry-eyed, easily deceived workers in disadvantaged position, even though they now don't even have where to complain against it, because all complaints are now handled by the union. Somehow the picture that I am seeing does not look like a happy ending. Wait, I just had a horrible thought. Maybe this is the happy ending you meant - keep those starry-eyed people under control, or lock them out if the industry altogether, so that people with more established status could bargain themselves up and get the conditions they want without other people intervening and agreeing to do the same job for less? I hope it's just my imagination tricking me, and not anybody's actual intent.
rch 8y ago
Why not employee owned co-op game development? That doesn't need to be mutually exclusive with unionization.
- Mirioron 8y ago
  This sounds like how things should be done. Many game dev companies basically started out this way. The problem with this is that most (many?) people aren't willing to risk starting a business like this. There's a high chance of failure.
  - pmart123 8y ago
    Do you think the costs and complexity to develop a game this way are too high now? I know there is the occasional Angry Birds, but I would imagine that it would be fairly hard to coordinate the number of people needed to build a serious or complex game? Has any game been developed via Kickstarter?
    - wbc 8y ago
      Well I think this counts as a AAA game, but how "developed" is a bit controversial: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen
    - leakybit 8y ago
      I would say it easier than ever to make a game. You have game engines, like Unity and Unreal, asset stores where you can buy graphics, and a distribution system; steam.
    - Tossrock 8y ago
      Pillars of Eternity was successfully funded through Kickstarter, and they just put out the sequel, which also had a Kickstarter campaign.
      - baud147258 8y ago
robdachshund 8y ago
Or those starry eyed folks could just make their own games instead of doubling down on bloated AAAs. Activision fired these people because they are bleeding money like every other big crappy publisher. The solution here is to move on from these failed corporations. The barrier to entry has never been lower.
christophilus 8y ago
Yup. Earlier in my career, I was offered a gig doing engine optimizations for the first Gears of War. I took a look at the work/life balance of the team, and said, "Nope!" It's one of the best career decisions I've made.
le_clochard 8y ago
Assuming that Unions can't be corrupted by Big Money.
marcrosoft 8y ago
Unions are leaches of value. Everyone loses.
- ionised 8y ago
  Yeah, I definitely consider my right to industrial tribunal, paid time off, sick days, safety regulations and guaranteed maternity/paternity leave as defeats. Without all those things the unions fought for I might actually have a shot at being miserable!
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
microcolonel 8y ago
The thing is, nobody who isn't brilliant at it should think of it as a career. If you are not stunningly productive, then it does not make sense to invest in you when they could turn to the swaths of people who come to work because they love making games (regardless of how good the financials are). I don't see what the union would accomplish aside from employing union leaders and sinking companies which allow it to form. The market is competitive enough that if a major studio has any considerable union power, the firm will most likely just lose to more efficient companies, due to cost. I was fired once (according to people who heard from him about it, so grain of salt I guess) because the CEO thought I was attempting to organize the workforce at his (horribly dysfunctional) company, but I can't really see how organizing those people under that particular company would have done any good.
- jachee 8y ago
  > The market is competitive enough that if a major studio has any considerable union power, the firm will most likely just lose to more efficient companies, due to cost. It's not a zero-sum game. A company with happier, more productive employees under a union may have higher costs, but their odds of putting out a more-successful product are also higher than a company that burns out and/or screws over its devs.
  - microcolonel 8y ago
    > A company with happier, more productive... Union workers, including professionals, across the U.S. report considerably lower trust and comfort in the workplace, and feel more distant/guarded from their bosses than non-union workers in every sector [0]; and I'm not exactly sure how you measure productivity, but I can't exactly assume that that's higher in a union shop either (anecdotally, it is the exact opposite of the case). Now, some of this might just be a matter of unions being more common in crappier industries, which is plausible, but it certainly doesn't indicate a positive impact of union membership. [0]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/146687/Union-Workers-Score-Lower-Work-Environment-Index.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/146687/Union-Workers-Score-Lowe...
EdwardDiego 8y ago
Not sure why people are opposed to unions in software dev - the basic function of a union is to equalise the power imbalance between employer and employee. Now, people who question the need for unions in dev, I understand where they're coming from. Software development is rather unusual in its lack of unionization, and IMO, that's because no-one has properly figured out how to commoditise our labour yet. We're the modern equivalent of medieval guilds of craftsmen - we get paid far above the median precisely because we can't yet be commoditized or automated. Yet. IOW The lack of a need for unionization in developers shows how lucky we are.
- wiz21c 8y ago
  spot on
- fucking_tragedy 8y ago
  Labor is increasingly commoditized in software development. Compensation has not kept up with increases in CoL expenses, productivity and profits over the last decade.
- carlmr 8y ago
  Most people that work in trades can't be automated yet either (at least at a reasonable price). Commoditization is kind of difficult to imagine for what is essentially general problem solving (which is what software development essentially is). Some are just better at it than others.
- simonh 8y ago
  There is an alternative to unionisation, in the form of professionalisation and certification much like doctors, accountants, legal professionals, surveyors, etc. Its not the same thing, but ends up having similar effects through professional associations. Basically posh unions. The British Computer Society could become something like that over here, I suppose. One route towards that might be people int he games industry here joining say the BCS en-masse and pushing it in that direction. I'm not even sure the BCS, on the whole anyway, would resist such a move.
  - 8y ago
cerebrum 8y ago
If you think unions will improve the situation, consider: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2006/01/union_disillusi.html https://www.econlib.org/archives/2006/01/union_disillusi.htm...
- pfranz 8y ago
  "Pushing up wages creates unemployment by making employers less eager to hire." There's a lot of assumptions in that statement. First off, I haven't read the Activision-Blizzard article, I work in an industry adjacent to games, but I can see a scenario where it makes sense to lay off people the same year you make record profits. It just looks really bad. Just because you're making money, doesn't mean you have more work you're willing to pay people to do. Businesses aren't charities, ideally they profit by filling demand. The fill that demand with workers. Along the way they try and fill that demand with fewer workers and leveraging previous investments. Back to the quote; unions also prevent companies from squeezing existing workers too much, forcing them to hire more people. That quote assumes the only thing unions do is force wages unreasonably high. Whether a company hires more people has more to do with demand (or investment in future potential demand) than income. "The way to improve conditions for workers in general...is to raise worker productivity." The reason people would want some sort of collective bargaining is that they feel increases in worker productivity go disproportionately to the business owner instead of the worker because of the power differential. I'm not saying unions are the perfect answer, but every anti-union thing I read hand-waves this away as not existing or not needing to be addressed. "In the best-case scenario, unions engineer a transfer from consumers and relatively immobile employers to themselves, with considerable deadweight cost in the process." To me this sounds like rent-seeking. I think it's disingenuous to say this is "in the best-case scenario," it's not a great outcome anywhere it happens, but unions aren't the worst offenders, by far.
- okydoki 8y ago
  blatant propaganda.. can't you see?
- ionised 8y ago
  Also consider the source. They are a libertarian think-tank.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
Yes. There is currently a post about Buzzfeed union, which I don't think is going to help anything because of the existential problem regarding the fact they are a losing business. But gaming is definitely unique and there should be a union. I'm generally against such kinds of intervention, and many unions can be a problem, but there are definitely situations wherein they make sense - here for one. Also - fast food and retail workers (looking at you Wallmart).
zozbot123 8y ago
> There's enough starry eyed people that love the idea of working on games enough that they are willing to put up with total abuse Have we tried simpler solutions, like raising awareness about the widespread abuse? Unionisation is opposed for a reason - it's a very blunt tool which introduces all sorts of dysfunctional dynamics and this ends up screwing the ordinary folks even harder.
2019ideas 8y ago
>I know a lot of people here don't think there should be unions in software There is a huge concern. As a senior engineer, my pay is really nice. Its deserved as I am 'a jack of all trades', I have accomplishments recognized by other engineers, and I stay late whenever the job needs to get done. I genuinely enjoy my job, and the pay is great. What would be the purpose of unions? They take a fat fee, they standardize pay, standardize hours, and sound like they would overall disrupt what works.
kochthesecond 8y ago
I completely agree and hope they unionize. I've worked with two people that used to work at mid size game studios and it sounds like hell. They both quit a couple of years (!) after having kids.
mancerayder 8y ago
Where things get complicated is, the drive to reach the higher tier over a length of time drives us to be better ourselves - learn more, improve soft skills, build networks of people who we otherwise would lose touch with, and much more. Sure, fight for better conditions. But you need to keep that drive, too, somehow. Not talking about the gaming industry specifically here, but IT more broadly. Only datacenter employees and government workers have unions, where I live. It's not pretty to work with them. Edit: this is a response primarily to the below comments about top and low salary tier distribution and equalization of pay for the bottom half (or whatever large distribution) via union negotiations for everyone.
ashelmire 8y ago
I think that since this largely wasn't engineers laid off (according to the article), it probably won't have much effect. Today's software engineers have been heavily influenced by libertarianism, and for some reason that includes the idea that collective bargaining is a freedom that we should not enjoy (somehow they belief is that corporations have a right to speak on behalf of people... but not employment unions). Additionally, unions are often villainized in media - and there are some unions with some horrid, strongarm tactics, but they are the exception, not the rule.
paulddraper 8y ago
> but I think the game industry is a special case. There's enough starry eyed people that love the idea of working on games Doesn't sound like the group of people to form a union.

Waterluvian 8y ago

Maybe that. But also the industry is oversaturated with game devs. And for AAA titles they're basically fungible. Need to stop graduating so many.

munk-a 8y ago
For game client programmers I think this is the case, though experienced devs are hard to find and retain. The gaming industry really hits issues when trying to attract non-engine devs, infrastructure and server specifically. Due to the portability of these skills to... much better industry sub-segments a lot of talent here just jumps ship and leaves. As a former server-side game dev I was always supportive of my co-worker's rights (QA & Art in particular have a _terrible_ time) and I think this is where pressure to unionize is likely to originate.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  Art has a hard time? That surprises me - if your artist leaves you can’t just hire someone with the same style can you?
  - Waterluvian 8y ago
    For larger titles you absolutely can. They basically write a "how you do this art style" guide, character design guides, etc.
  - munk-a 8y ago
    At my company we had an "Art Director" for each title that dictated the style to use, this employee was indeed highly valued (and only the longest/most loyal folks got picked for it), but the actual artists working day-to-day were quite replaceable.
- vonmoltke 8y ago
  > The gaming industry really hits issues when trying to attract non-engine devs, infrastructure and server specifically. Due to the portability of these skills to... much better industry sub-segments a lot of talent here just jumps ship and leaves. Back when I was actually interested in entering the industry none of the companies I found would even talk to devs without games industry experience, generally major shipped titles, too. That could be part of their problem.
WAthrowaway 8y ago
The more people that could be even potential union members, the stronger the union's negotiating position is.
- manfredo 8y ago
  This is not always the case. If there are a large supply of workers then many will be willing to work for non-union employers. In many cases, unions increase the value of labor by constricting the supply of labor. Unions can often be difficult to join. If there is a overabundance of labor, then the union has little negotiating power.
  - yyyymmddhhmmss 8y ago
    It’s not that simple at all. Take the film industry. There’s a plethora of young guns who want in on the Cinematographer’s Guild. Millions of them. And a lot of them are skilled as well! The reason unions work in film production is the risk companies would be taking by hiring thos without the proven experience. Tech is prime for unionization because of the way dependability would work. It could minimize hiring processes, minimize management costs, and maximize developer income, and quick! The only thing standing in the way is managers and will power.
chrisseaton 8y ago
> And for AAA titles they're basically fungible. I would have thought it was the opposite, and to produce a AAA title you'd need the very talented people - the experts - and they have more leverage to negotiate.
- pjc50 8y ago
  AAA is more like the old Hollywood "cast of thousands" films, like Ben Hur. You need a lot of people, but no individual contribution stands out. The overall look is determined by the art director: so you need only a few experts at the top.
SeanBoocock 8y ago
The reality is a lot more complicated than that. Certain entry-level art roles are pretty fungible, for instance, and most of them are already contract positions or outsourced to other studios (in places like Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia). However, beyond a certain level of experience and in some cases, entire disciplines, there is a dearth of quality candidates. Experienced developers, who have a good reputation, do have leverage but usually not to the extent to equalize comp with what one would see outside the industry. I've seen studios have critical roles go unfilled for the better part of a year for lack of qualified candidates at the budget set aside for them.
BurningCycles 8y ago
As I understood it, actual developers was the category least impacted by these layoffs at Activision.

Dahoon 8y ago

I don't think unionization will do much good. American-style unions are more like the mafia than a "real union". Unions in places like Scandinavia is the only way to fix this in my opinion but doubtful that will ever happen.

TearsInTheRain 8y ago
Can you explain the difference?
- munk-a 8y ago
  Propaganda. Basically Americans view US unions as something approaching demonic but somehow are able to conceive as unions in different companies* as having value. The US's relationship with unions is pretty crazy. *Excuse me, this was a typo, I had intended to write "countries" sorry for the confusion.
  - isoskeles 8y ago
    The comment you're referring was actually making a claim that there's a difference between how unions operate in the US and Scandinavia, although it is somewhat vague.
- cc439 8y ago
  Just to be brief, non-adversarial and in-between models such as works councils [1] are allowed that are not legal per the NLRA in the US. The US also has restrictions against common sense methods of representation such as having elected union representatives serve on a company's board of directors or even in upper management. I'm all for the collective voice of workers having a say but the NLRA was basically the equivalent of the PPACA (in terms of being written for the benefit of megacorp insurers, pharma, and other stakeholders) but still being sold and defended as if it was free (at point of service) universal healthcare. It only allows for a purely adversarial relationship between unions and businesses with any sort of mutual ownership/leadership/stakeholding being expressly forbidden. It afforded workers the right to form independent governing bodies and self-finance things like strike relief funds that are important in cases where a company is simply unwilling to bend in any way. However, my experience there is an enormous, unserved middle ground between "no collective representation at all" and "we need a separate warchest and leadership to force any sort of compromise" yet creating something in that space is effectively illegal thanks to existing law. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council

jdoliner 8y ago

Would a union make life better for the starry-eyed people entering the industry. The only parallel I can really draw is the movie industry, which also has lots of starry-eyed people entering it and has a union. I'm not sure it's better, I've talked to a number of people who had to work for years at very low rates just to get their SAG card, after they got it they had a lot more earning power. But you still get the same effect of low wages for entry level people. That seems tough to avoid when you always have a bunch of young talent flooding the market.

learc83 8y ago
The problem with game dev isn't the entry level jobs. Also a game dev union would probably work more like the film and TV trade/technical unions than SAG. I know people who work in film doing things from lighting to sound to driving. Their working conditions and pay are much better than they would be without the unions.
- jdoliner 8y ago
  I don't think lighting, sound and stunt people have the same influx of young starry eyed people coming into the profession though. That's what makes unions really difficult. Same thing applies to academia, which is arguably worse than both game-devs and actors.
  - vichu 8y ago
    From a friend, I've heard great things about the treatment they got as part of The Animation Guild, and I imagine that that demographic of artists and creators is quite similar to the "young starry eyed people" going into the game industry. In fact, there's likely a good amount of overlap of artists that have worked in both (supported slightly by anecdata of friends who are 3d artists).
  - trentlott 8y ago
    I'm not sure that's true Plenty of starry-eyed people enter academia. There isn't quite the same unionization gateway into academic jobs, but mostly just markers of effective work - papers, grants, etc

mc32 8y ago

I too would like to see a union take over just to see the effects it would have on a fast paced industry (in terms of technology change and game release cycle) It would be a nice laboratory to peek into, to see how a union either becomes symbiotic or parasitic in behavior.

ken 8y ago
Do you not consider live entertainment a fast paced industry? And the easy (but unsatisfying) answer is: every local is different.
- spc476 8y ago
  I don't think acting, directing, scoring, or cinematography have changed all that much with the advent of computers. But the computer industry? There are several languages very popular today that didn't exist when I was in college---heck, try even 10 years ago. So, what must one know to join a "programmers' union"? Or what can a company expect from a "unionized programmer"?
  - saghm 8y ago
    > There are several languages very popular today that didn't exist when I was in college---heck, try even 10 years ago. Honest question: how many of them are used in game development? My limited understanding is that the majority of games still use more traditional languages like C++ and Java.
    - mc32 8y ago
      Even better. We’ll get to see how a union gets to affect an industry, whether symbiotically or parasitically. Remains to be seen, but if they affect a slower industry measurably and negatively, then we can have some confidence that in even faster technology sectors the effect would be greater. If they have a positive influence, they could possibly add to a faster paced industry, perhaps. I would love to see a unionized AWS -the whole org., from top to bottom. Then see if MS or Goog would approve,

hippich 8y ago

How do unions work? Can an employer hire someone if they are not part of the union?

philipov 8y ago
Unions work by collectively bargaining with the employer to secure terms for the benefit of the group. The terms that get negotiated aren't set in stone: the point is to present a common front in the negotiations so that the employer can't use a divide and conquer strategy against the workers.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  The problem is you switch having almost no negotiating power against the employer as an individual... to having almost no negotiating power against the union as an individual. You're just trading masters and you don't get any more say. If you are young for example, and the union wants pay to be by seniority, then the union may be working against your interests and you could be better off negotiating with the company.
  - philipov 8y ago
    That is a more fundamental issue than whether or not you have Unions, and that's the out-of-control scaling of the economy. Companies have become so big that individuals are insignificant, period, outside of a few elites. If corporations were kept within healthy limits, unions wouldn't have to be equally huge to keep pace. The law of large numbers demands that individuals get reduced to statistics. Statistics get measured, they don't get to negotiate! Individual misery can be averaged entirely out of the picture. Unions are a response to a shitty situation, and they have flaws. Not having unions, in the face of dwindling individual share in a growing economy, that's even worse.
    - StillBored 8y ago
      Well that is the fault of the #1 union in the center of the north American continent... The US federal government, which is there to represent "We the People" not the corporations, or political parties, k-street lobbies, or any of that other nonsense.

trimbo 8y ago

The article says the layoffs are "mostly" not dev teams, but rather on the publishing side.

chrisseaton 8y ago
What's the difference between development and publishing?
- jmchuster 8y ago
  In this case, since Blizzard is both publisher and developer, it basically means marketing. When a publisher is separate from the developer, the publisher is also mostly responsible for funding the game development.
- the_duke 8y ago
  Developer: artists, developers, writers, ... Publisher: marketing, distribution, payment processing, support, ...
  - baud147258 8y ago
    You can add QA for publishers too.
- rjf72 8y ago
  Developers are the people who's job is to make a game. Publishers are the people who's job is to sell a game. Developer = programmers, designers, artists, sound guys, ... Publisher = marketing, finance, accounting, advertising, guy-who-says-you-must-have-microtransactions, ...
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smsm42 8y ago

> There's enough starry eyed people that love the idea of working on games enough that they are willing to put up with total abuse and just about no one who cares about raising a family can seriously stay in that industry. Union privileges (usually) are based on seniority. Which means the said starry-eyed people would occupy the lowest rung of the union ladder. And if you think union leadership would go out of the way and sacrifice the interests of tenured members to protect starry-eyed snotnoses, you may be also interested in investing into buying a couple of bridges in Brooklyn... But more interesting - where that leadership would come from? Situation A: the same starry-eyed snotnoses elect them. Of course, their immense wisdom and life experience would allow them to elect the right persons and not become a victim of a bunch of demagogues that would promise them heaven and then take advantage and abuse them... oh wait. Situation B: existing large union comes in and takes over. The said union would, of course, have the interests of the same starry-eyed, easily deceived people in heart, despite meeting them for the first time 2 hours ago, and would never try to make a deal that would afford all the power to the union reps and put the starry-eyed, easily deceived workers in disadvantaged position, even though they now don't even have where to complain against it, because all complaints are now handled by the union. Somehow the picture that I am seeing does not look like a happy ending. Wait, I just had a horrible thought. Maybe this is the happy ending you meant - keep those starry-eyed people under control, or lock them out if the industry altogether, so that people with more established status could bargain themselves up and get the conditions they want without other people intervening and agreeing to do the same job for less? I hope it's just my imagination tricking me, and not anybody's actual intent.

rch 8y ago

Why not employee owned co-op game development? That doesn't need to be mutually exclusive with unionization.

Mirioron 8y ago
This sounds like how things should be done. Many game dev companies basically started out this way. The problem with this is that most (many?) people aren't willing to risk starting a business like this. There's a high chance of failure.
- pmart123 8y ago
  Do you think the costs and complexity to develop a game this way are too high now? I know there is the occasional Angry Birds, but I would imagine that it would be fairly hard to coordinate the number of people needed to build a serious or complex game? Has any game been developed via Kickstarter?
  - wbc 8y ago
    Well I think this counts as a AAA game, but how "developed" is a bit controversial: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen
  - leakybit 8y ago
    I would say it easier than ever to make a game. You have game engines, like Unity and Unreal, asset stores where you can buy graphics, and a distribution system; steam.
  - Tossrock 8y ago
    Pillars of Eternity was successfully funded through Kickstarter, and they just put out the sequel, which also had a Kickstarter campaign.
    - baud147258 8y ago

robdachshund 8y ago

Or those starry eyed folks could just make their own games instead of doubling down on bloated AAAs. Activision fired these people because they are bleeding money like every other big crappy publisher. The solution here is to move on from these failed corporations. The barrier to entry has never been lower.

christophilus 8y ago

Yup. Earlier in my career, I was offered a gig doing engine optimizations for the first Gears of War. I took a look at the work/life balance of the team, and said, "Nope!" It's one of the best career decisions I've made.

le_clochard 8y ago

Assuming that Unions can't be corrupted by Big Money.

marcrosoft 8y ago

Unions are leaches of value. Everyone loses.

ionised 8y ago
Yeah, I definitely consider my right to industrial tribunal, paid time off, sick days, safety regulations and guaranteed maternity/paternity leave as defeats. Without all those things the unions fought for I might actually have a shot at being miserable!

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microcolonel 8y ago

The thing is, nobody who isn't brilliant at it should think of it as a career. If you are not stunningly productive, then it does not make sense to invest in you when they could turn to the swaths of people who come to work because they love making games (regardless of how good the financials are). I don't see what the union would accomplish aside from employing union leaders and sinking companies which allow it to form. The market is competitive enough that if a major studio has any considerable union power, the firm will most likely just lose to more efficient companies, due to cost. I was fired once (according to people who heard from him about it, so grain of salt I guess) because the CEO thought I was attempting to organize the workforce at his (horribly dysfunctional) company, but I can't really see how organizing those people under that particular company would have done any good.

jachee 8y ago
> The market is competitive enough that if a major studio has any considerable union power, the firm will most likely just lose to more efficient companies, due to cost. It's not a zero-sum game. A company with happier, more productive employees under a union may have higher costs, but their odds of putting out a more-successful product are also higher than a company that burns out and/or screws over its devs.
- microcolonel 8y ago
  > A company with happier, more productive... Union workers, including professionals, across the U.S. report considerably lower trust and comfort in the workplace, and feel more distant/guarded from their bosses than non-union workers in every sector [0]; and I'm not exactly sure how you measure productivity, but I can't exactly assume that that's higher in a union shop either (anecdotally, it is the exact opposite of the case). Now, some of this might just be a matter of unions being more common in crappier industries, which is plausible, but it certainly doesn't indicate a positive impact of union membership. [0]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/146687/Union-Workers-Score-Lower-Work-Environment-Index.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/146687/Union-Workers-Score-Lowe...

EdwardDiego 8y ago

Not sure why people are opposed to unions in software dev - the basic function of a union is to equalise the power imbalance between employer and employee. Now, people who question the need for unions in dev, I understand where they're coming from. Software development is rather unusual in its lack of unionization, and IMO, that's because no-one has properly figured out how to commoditise our labour yet. We're the modern equivalent of medieval guilds of craftsmen - we get paid far above the median precisely because we can't yet be commoditized or automated. Yet. IOW The lack of a need for unionization in developers shows how lucky we are.

wiz21c 8y ago
spot on
fucking_tragedy 8y ago
Labor is increasingly commoditized in software development. Compensation has not kept up with increases in CoL expenses, productivity and profits over the last decade.
carlmr 8y ago
Most people that work in trades can't be automated yet either (at least at a reasonable price). Commoditization is kind of difficult to imagine for what is essentially general problem solving (which is what software development essentially is). Some are just better at it than others.
simonh 8y ago
There is an alternative to unionisation, in the form of professionalisation and certification much like doctors, accountants, legal professionals, surveyors, etc. Its not the same thing, but ends up having similar effects through professional associations. Basically posh unions. The British Computer Society could become something like that over here, I suppose. One route towards that might be people int he games industry here joining say the BCS en-masse and pushing it in that direction. I'm not even sure the BCS, on the whole anyway, would resist such a move.
- 8y ago

cerebrum 8y ago

If you think unions will improve the situation, consider: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2006/01/union_disillusi.html https://www.econlib.org/archives/2006/01/union_disillusi.htm...

pfranz 8y ago
"Pushing up wages creates unemployment by making employers less eager to hire." There's a lot of assumptions in that statement. First off, I haven't read the Activision-Blizzard article, I work in an industry adjacent to games, but I can see a scenario where it makes sense to lay off people the same year you make record profits. It just looks really bad. Just because you're making money, doesn't mean you have more work you're willing to pay people to do. Businesses aren't charities, ideally they profit by filling demand. The fill that demand with workers. Along the way they try and fill that demand with fewer workers and leveraging previous investments. Back to the quote; unions also prevent companies from squeezing existing workers too much, forcing them to hire more people. That quote assumes the only thing unions do is force wages unreasonably high. Whether a company hires more people has more to do with demand (or investment in future potential demand) than income. "The way to improve conditions for workers in general...is to raise worker productivity." The reason people would want some sort of collective bargaining is that they feel increases in worker productivity go disproportionately to the business owner instead of the worker because of the power differential. I'm not saying unions are the perfect answer, but every anti-union thing I read hand-waves this away as not existing or not needing to be addressed. "In the best-case scenario, unions engineer a transfer from consumers and relatively immobile employers to themselves, with considerable deadweight cost in the process." To me this sounds like rent-seeking. I think it's disingenuous to say this is "in the best-case scenario," it's not a great outcome anywhere it happens, but unions aren't the worst offenders, by far.
okydoki 8y ago
blatant propaganda.. can't you see?
ionised 8y ago
Also consider the source. They are a libertarian think-tank.

sonnyblarney 8y ago

Yes. There is currently a post about Buzzfeed union, which I don't think is going to help anything because of the existential problem regarding the fact they are a losing business. But gaming is definitely unique and there should be a union. I'm generally against such kinds of intervention, and many unions can be a problem, but there are definitely situations wherein they make sense - here for one. Also - fast food and retail workers (looking at you Wallmart).

zozbot123 8y ago

> There's enough starry eyed people that love the idea of working on games enough that they are willing to put up with total abuse Have we tried simpler solutions, like raising awareness about the widespread abuse? Unionisation is opposed for a reason - it's a very blunt tool which introduces all sorts of dysfunctional dynamics and this ends up screwing the ordinary folks even harder.

2019ideas 8y ago

>I know a lot of people here don't think there should be unions in software There is a huge concern. As a senior engineer, my pay is really nice. Its deserved as I am 'a jack of all trades', I have accomplishments recognized by other engineers, and I stay late whenever the job needs to get done. I genuinely enjoy my job, and the pay is great. What would be the purpose of unions? They take a fat fee, they standardize pay, standardize hours, and sound like they would overall disrupt what works.

kochthesecond 8y ago

I completely agree and hope they unionize. I've worked with two people that used to work at mid size game studios and it sounds like hell. They both quit a couple of years (!) after having kids.

mancerayder 8y ago

Where things get complicated is, the drive to reach the higher tier over a length of time drives us to be better ourselves - learn more, improve soft skills, build networks of people who we otherwise would lose touch with, and much more. Sure, fight for better conditions. But you need to keep that drive, too, somehow. Not talking about the gaming industry specifically here, but IT more broadly. Only datacenter employees and government workers have unions, where I live. It's not pretty to work with them. Edit: this is a response primarily to the below comments about top and low salary tier distribution and equalization of pay for the bottom half (or whatever large distribution) via union negotiations for everyone.

ashelmire 8y ago

I think that since this largely wasn't engineers laid off (according to the article), it probably won't have much effect. Today's software engineers have been heavily influenced by libertarianism, and for some reason that includes the idea that collective bargaining is a freedom that we should not enjoy (somehow they belief is that corporations have a right to speak on behalf of people... but not employment unions). Additionally, unions are often villainized in media - and there are some unions with some horrid, strongarm tactics, but they are the exception, not the rule.

paulddraper 8y ago

> but I think the game industry is a special case. There's enough starry eyed people that love the idea of working on games Doesn't sound like the group of people to form a union.