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> The bottom line is that the supply of game developers has historically outpaced the demand. There are simply a lot of people who really want to make games, an

> The bottom line is that the supply of game developers has historically outpaced the demand. There are simply a lot of people who really want to make games, and are willing to put up with those work conditions. If game developers don't feel exploited by their conditions, then they probably won't join/create the union. If they do feel exploited, then the union will be a good thing. > Given that, it's hard to see a way of solving these problems via unions that doesn't effectively increase the barrier to entry for game developers. What barriers to entry do you foresee coming out of a union?

ThrowawayR2 7y ago
> "What barriers to entry do you foresee coming out of a union?" Making game development more expensive, obviously, since ending the current abusive practices is going to cost the publishers and development studios more money plus the overhead imposed by the union itself. Unions may have their benefits but it's undeniable that there's a cost there.
- aabeshou 7y ago
  You have a point, but I think what actually happens isn't so sure, because there are still market forces putting downward pressure on barriers to entry. So either: (1) The profit from abuse/exploitation gave a pure surplus, and the barriers to entry will remain the same but the surplus on the back will go down (2) There is no real surplus, the profit from abuse/exploitation was the only thing keeping barriers to entry as low as they currently are, and they'll increase. So we'll see what happens.
  - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
    The majority of development studios are relatively small and, if you follow industry news, bankruptcy is a routine occurrence; even some well known small and indie names are only one or two flops away from bankruptcy. Unions might be able to make headway against EA, Valve, or Activision but for the smaller studios, well, there is no surplus. You can't get blood from a stone no matter how hard you squeeze.
    - aabeshou 7y ago
      Yes, but why would a union negotiate a deal that bankrupts their small studio? That's against their own self-interest.
      - username90 7y ago
        Why would a big union care about a small company?
        ianmobbs 7y ago
        If it can't afford to provide for its employees, why should a small company exist?
        username90 7y ago
        No game developer is living on starvation wages, it is just a question of how much they get. If a game company can provide for its people and offer enough incentives that its workers aren't fleeing to better jobs it deserves to exist. So why aren't the people leaving then? Maybe they love the game they are working on and prefer bad conditions over working on something else? Maybe they have non-standard backgrounds and would be forced to wash plates if not for this company? It isn't clear to me that a union would make the life of these people better.
        ThrowawayR2 7y ago
        > "If it can't afford to provide for its employees, why should a small company exist?" If I rephrase that as "If a startup can't afford to provide for its employees, why should a startup exist?", it should be clear to HN readers why that is problematic. Without a way for new players to enter the market cheaply, you wind up with a stagnant industry fully of deeply entrenched players who are afraid to take creative risks. (Not unlike Hollywood, come to think of it.)
      - noirbot 7y ago
        I think the question is "Is there a better deal that's possible without bankrupting the studio?" When it comes to it, a lot of game companies are essentially running like startups, but without the massive gluts of VC funding to give them runway. It's questionable how much small-to-mid-sized studios can increase costs without making it all the more risky that a single underperformance kills the studio. Obviously, this is less the case at somewhere like EA/Activision/2K/Epic, and you could make the case that if they can't treat the employees better, then the project doesn't deserve to exist.
quest88 7y ago
IMO this just feels wrong. If you're knowingly going into an industry with a bad rap where developers say they feel exploited then don't go into it. The studio has already given them a job, going into it and then complaining and demanding change seems a bit selfish, no? I could understand if things were at one point great, and then some series of events lead to a worse situation with no options leaving. But I can't understand having options and choosing the bad one and then complaining about it being bad. Does someone have a different viewpoint that could help?
- aabeshou 7y ago
  I see your point. But I think what you're taking for granted (tell me if I'm wrong) is that exploitation is somehow a necessary condition of making the game development industry work, and trying to improve it would destroy it. If game design as a field can survive a decrease in exploitation, then why wouldn't someone want to follow their passion to game design, but not be exploited? Why wouldn't someone want to change the status quo?
- meheleventyone 7y ago
  It's not wrong because all jobs are by mutual agreement. You aren't in it by the grace of the owner. You have come to an agreement with them to trade labour for pay. Therefore if you do know the working conditions in general there is nothing wrong with trying to renegotiate using your leverage to get better conditions. This is most obvious in trying to negotiate promotions and pay rises in peoples day to day lives. The biggest issue for most workers is that the company that employs you has a lot more leverage than you do as an individual. Collective bargaining at its most basic is a means by which employees can band together to increase their leverage and negotiate better deals for themselves. Employees agitating for change is the basic building block for improving conditions. Take the bad option knowing the downsides and work to make it less bad.
usefulcat 7y ago
> If they do feel exploited, then the union will be a good thing. For them, perhaps. But not so much for future would-be game developers, who will likely have a harder time finding a game dev job. > What barriers to entry do you foresee coming out of a union? Even if union membership does not become a requirement for a job, merely reducing the number of hours worked will increase the cost of making games, even if pay doesn't increase under a union. If games become more expensive on average, consumers will buy fewer games, all else being equal. Fewer games made = fewer opportunities for new developers = studios can be more selective in hiring.
- aabeshou 7y ago
  Do unions decrease employment? I wasn't aware of that. As I said in a different comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21982787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21982787), I don't think it's 100% sure that games would become more expensive. But if they do, I think it's a tradeoff we have to make in a humane society.
  - usefulcat 7y ago
    I didn't say that unions decrease employment. I did describe the mechanisms by which employment might be reduced due to increasing costs (regardless of the cause of the cost increases). In the referenced comment, you speak of "profit from abuse/exploitation", which presupposes that abuse or exploitation is occurring. Most game developers (programmers at least) have skills that are valuable in other kinds of SW development. If they wanted to, they could usually find work that didn't require so much overtime and in many cases would pay better as well. So if they choose to continue working on games, it's just that: a choice, not something that is being forced upon them. Given that, the implication that they are somehow being 'abused' sounds at best paternalistic.
    - Apocryphon 7y ago
      If our only consideration for every decision is whether or not if it will increase cost for employers, then we would still have child labor and slavery. I don't believe this is a hyperbolic statement. The specter of increased costs is used to justify opposing everything from higher minimum wages to the 40-hour workweek.
stale2002 7y ago
> What barriers to entry do you foresee coming out of a union? You can just look at what unions have done to other industries to see. As it relates to tech workers, there could be senority rules, qualification requirements (such as degrees, ect), and retaliation against people who are precieved as not having "paid their dues" yet (iE, they might try to stop the bootcampers from entering the industry).
- aabeshou 7y ago
  Fair enough. I wasn't aware of those possibilities.
friendlybus 7y ago
The employees at large companies like EA and Acti-Blizz and other big corps will join a union that will gain them more benefits at their day job. The feeder schools and universities will start getting all their students into union positions. The independent 20% will be muscled out of relevance as the union can simply ex-communicate members that break the rules and the employees will follow union rules. Independents will have to toe union rules to get anything done and not really be independent anymore, just a cache of jobs that the union is too big or risk averse to do. An artist run game industry will die (like United Artists used to be in film) and you will see the game industry become a studio model and institutionalized like Disney.
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  As we've never seen any examples of tech sub-industry unionize before, this whole scenario is of dubious provenance. Especially since 21st history labor relations will unlikely to mirror what happened a century ago.

ThrowawayR2 7y ago

> "What barriers to entry do you foresee coming out of a union?" Making game development more expensive, obviously, since ending the current abusive practices is going to cost the publishers and development studios more money plus the overhead imposed by the union itself. Unions may have their benefits but it's undeniable that there's a cost there.

aabeshou 7y ago
You have a point, but I think what actually happens isn't so sure, because there are still market forces putting downward pressure on barriers to entry. So either: (1) The profit from abuse/exploitation gave a pure surplus, and the barriers to entry will remain the same but the surplus on the back will go down (2) There is no real surplus, the profit from abuse/exploitation was the only thing keeping barriers to entry as low as they currently are, and they'll increase. So we'll see what happens.
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  The majority of development studios are relatively small and, if you follow industry news, bankruptcy is a routine occurrence; even some well known small and indie names are only one or two flops away from bankruptcy. Unions might be able to make headway against EA, Valve, or Activision but for the smaller studios, well, there is no surplus. You can't get blood from a stone no matter how hard you squeeze.
  - aabeshou 7y ago
    Yes, but why would a union negotiate a deal that bankrupts their small studio? That's against their own self-interest.
    - username90 7y ago
      Why would a big union care about a small company?
      - ianmobbs 7y ago
        If it can't afford to provide for its employees, why should a small company exist?
        username90 7y ago
        No game developer is living on starvation wages, it is just a question of how much they get. If a game company can provide for its people and offer enough incentives that its workers aren't fleeing to better jobs it deserves to exist. So why aren't the people leaving then? Maybe they love the game they are working on and prefer bad conditions over working on something else? Maybe they have non-standard backgrounds and would be forced to wash plates if not for this company? It isn't clear to me that a union would make the life of these people better.
        ThrowawayR2 7y ago
        > "If it can't afford to provide for its employees, why should a small company exist?" If I rephrase that as "If a startup can't afford to provide for its employees, why should a startup exist?", it should be clear to HN readers why that is problematic. Without a way for new players to enter the market cheaply, you wind up with a stagnant industry fully of deeply entrenched players who are afraid to take creative risks. (Not unlike Hollywood, come to think of it.)
    - noirbot 7y ago
      I think the question is "Is there a better deal that's possible without bankrupting the studio?" When it comes to it, a lot of game companies are essentially running like startups, but without the massive gluts of VC funding to give them runway. It's questionable how much small-to-mid-sized studios can increase costs without making it all the more risky that a single underperformance kills the studio. Obviously, this is less the case at somewhere like EA/Activision/2K/Epic, and you could make the case that if they can't treat the employees better, then the project doesn't deserve to exist.

quest88 7y ago

IMO this just feels wrong. If you're knowingly going into an industry with a bad rap where developers say they feel exploited then don't go into it. The studio has already given them a job, going into it and then complaining and demanding change seems a bit selfish, no? I could understand if things were at one point great, and then some series of events lead to a worse situation with no options leaving. But I can't understand having options and choosing the bad one and then complaining about it being bad. Does someone have a different viewpoint that could help?

aabeshou 7y ago
I see your point. But I think what you're taking for granted (tell me if I'm wrong) is that exploitation is somehow a necessary condition of making the game development industry work, and trying to improve it would destroy it. If game design as a field can survive a decrease in exploitation, then why wouldn't someone want to follow their passion to game design, but not be exploited? Why wouldn't someone want to change the status quo?
meheleventyone 7y ago
It's not wrong because all jobs are by mutual agreement. You aren't in it by the grace of the owner. You have come to an agreement with them to trade labour for pay. Therefore if you do know the working conditions in general there is nothing wrong with trying to renegotiate using your leverage to get better conditions. This is most obvious in trying to negotiate promotions and pay rises in peoples day to day lives. The biggest issue for most workers is that the company that employs you has a lot more leverage than you do as an individual. Collective bargaining at its most basic is a means by which employees can band together to increase their leverage and negotiate better deals for themselves. Employees agitating for change is the basic building block for improving conditions. Take the bad option knowing the downsides and work to make it less bad.

usefulcat 7y ago

> If they do feel exploited, then the union will be a good thing. For them, perhaps. But not so much for future would-be game developers, who will likely have a harder time finding a game dev job. > What barriers to entry do you foresee coming out of a union? Even if union membership does not become a requirement for a job, merely reducing the number of hours worked will increase the cost of making games, even if pay doesn't increase under a union. If games become more expensive on average, consumers will buy fewer games, all else being equal. Fewer games made = fewer opportunities for new developers = studios can be more selective in hiring.

aabeshou 7y ago
Do unions decrease employment? I wasn't aware of that. As I said in a different comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21982787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21982787), I don't think it's 100% sure that games would become more expensive. But if they do, I think it's a tradeoff we have to make in a humane society.
- usefulcat 7y ago
  I didn't say that unions decrease employment. I did describe the mechanisms by which employment might be reduced due to increasing costs (regardless of the cause of the cost increases). In the referenced comment, you speak of "profit from abuse/exploitation", which presupposes that abuse or exploitation is occurring. Most game developers (programmers at least) have skills that are valuable in other kinds of SW development. If they wanted to, they could usually find work that didn't require so much overtime and in many cases would pay better as well. So if they choose to continue working on games, it's just that: a choice, not something that is being forced upon them. Given that, the implication that they are somehow being 'abused' sounds at best paternalistic.
  - Apocryphon 7y ago
    If our only consideration for every decision is whether or not if it will increase cost for employers, then we would still have child labor and slavery. I don't believe this is a hyperbolic statement. The specter of increased costs is used to justify opposing everything from higher minimum wages to the 40-hour workweek.

stale2002 7y ago

> What barriers to entry do you foresee coming out of a union? You can just look at what unions have done to other industries to see. As it relates to tech workers, there could be senority rules, qualification requirements (such as degrees, ect), and retaliation against people who are precieved as not having "paid their dues" yet (iE, they might try to stop the bootcampers from entering the industry).

aabeshou 7y ago
Fair enough. I wasn't aware of those possibilities.

friendlybus 7y ago

The employees at large companies like EA and Acti-Blizz and other big corps will join a union that will gain them more benefits at their day job. The feeder schools and universities will start getting all their students into union positions. The independent 20% will be muscled out of relevance as the union can simply ex-communicate members that break the rules and the employees will follow union rules. Independents will have to toe union rules to get anything done and not really be independent anymore, just a cache of jobs that the union is too big or risk averse to do. An artist run game industry will die (like United Artists used to be in film) and you will see the game industry become a studio model and institutionalized like Disney.

Apocryphon 7y ago
As we've never seen any examples of tech sub-industry unionize before, this whole scenario is of dubious provenance. Especially since 21st history labor relations will unlikely to mirror what happened a century ago.