4 ms·

Or game developers can just hire non-union employees. The reality is that game development studios can get away with poor work life balance because there's peop

Or game developers can just hire non-union employees. The reality is that game development studios can get away with poor work life balance because there's people who are passionate about making games and are willing to accept poor working conditions to get a chance at their dream job. This Stage Actor's Guild exists, but aspiring actors still have to work second jobs to put a roof over their heads. When a job is a lot of people's dream job, conditions are going to be poor because the supply of potential labor is very large as compared to the demand. Also, I have no idea where you get the idea that unions can somehow force collective ownership. The company belongs to the shareholders, unions don't magically get to take other people's property.

Apocryphon 7y ago
Employees usually receive shares as comp, don't they? I will say that the horror stories and bad press coming out of the video gaming industry will possibly have a chilling effect for new grads who would otherwise jump straight into it. Eventually management will run out of non-union workers to hire. Or the non-union workers themselves will demand better treatment.
- monocasa 7y ago
  > Employees usually receive shares as comp, don't they? Very rarely do employees receive equity as compensation.
- manfredo 7y ago
  > Employees usually receive shares as comp, don't they? Non-voting shares, yes. Voting shares are usually only given to very senior people, if ever, and not nearly enough to form anything close to a controlling ownership of the company. > I will say that the horror stories and bad press coming out of the video gaming industry will possibly have a chilling effect for new grads who would otherwise jump straight into it. Eventually management will run out of non-union workers to hire. Or the non-union workers themselves will demand better treatment. Decades of game development suggests otherwise. Like acting, it's people's dream job. And when the supply of labor exceeds the demand workers do not have leverage.
  - Apocryphon 7y ago
    For decades there was no interest nor action towards unionizing in game development. Greater scrutiny into the industry from modern game journalism, and perhaps worsening experiences as the industry heads towards Hollywood-like AAA titles produced by monolithic studios, is surely causing something to change.
    - manfredo 7y ago
      Game developers' experiencing the misery of crunch time and layoffs is something I've heard about firsthand since the early 2000s at the latest. Reading accounts from earlier games' development cycles suggests that this has been common for even longer than that. Game development has always had cyclical labor demands and tight deadlines. I think you need to qualify the claim that these experiences are worsening. In fact, from most of the veteran developers I've talked to report the opposite: before the proliferation of the internet crunch time was way more serious since patching was not a viable option. Nowadays it's pretty much the norm that games have significant bugs for the first week or two and still need to mature after release. This creates greater room for error and less pressure to fix every bug before release.
      - Apocryphon 7y ago
        That's fair, perhaps conditions haven't been substantially worse than in previous console generations. But it sounds like there's something driving the push towards unionizing/organizing, whatever it is. And it sounds like the general public is more aware it being a brutal industry.
        manfredo 7y ago
        Just because you're seeing more news stories about unionization or organizing, doesn't actually mean that there's more interest in unionizing and organizing. It just means that people producing news are writing more stories covering unionization and organizing. Take this story for example. Linkedin lists Glitch's size as 11-50. The highest employee count I've found claims 120. This is small fish in a very large pond. This press release name drops Google, but these companies are three orders of magnitude apart in terms of size.
BrainInAJar 7y ago
> Or game developers can just hire non-union employees. And then immediately be sued by the union & former employees for retaliation under the labor acts. Businesses already tried that sort of shenanigans
- manfredo 7y ago
  Sued for what? If I form a union with my co-workers and demand $1,000,000 salaries it's illegal for the company to say "nope" and hire someone else? Management is under no obligation to accept union terms, and is free to hire non-union work if the union terms are not competitive.
  - einpoklum 7y ago
    IANAL (not for US law anyway), but firing someone because of their trying to unionize and hiring someone else is illegal in many world states.
    - fiter 7y ago
      In the US, it looks like you can "permanently replace" union workers who are on strike.
    - manfredo 7y ago
      Correct, firing someone for trying to unionize is illegal. It is illegal to retaliate against workers for trying to unionize. It's not prohibited, to the best of my knowledge, to receive a contract from a union and say, "these term's aren't competitive, we'll find other workers". Otherwise that would effectively give unions unlimited power over companies.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    Right, that's illegal. Management is under no obligation to accept any particular set of terms, but they're also not allowed to just say "nope"; they're required to continue negotiating with the union until an agreement is reached.

Apocryphon 7y ago

Employees usually receive shares as comp, don't they? I will say that the horror stories and bad press coming out of the video gaming industry will possibly have a chilling effect for new grads who would otherwise jump straight into it. Eventually management will run out of non-union workers to hire. Or the non-union workers themselves will demand better treatment.

monocasa 7y ago
> Employees usually receive shares as comp, don't they? Very rarely do employees receive equity as compensation.
manfredo 7y ago
> Employees usually receive shares as comp, don't they? Non-voting shares, yes. Voting shares are usually only given to very senior people, if ever, and not nearly enough to form anything close to a controlling ownership of the company. > I will say that the horror stories and bad press coming out of the video gaming industry will possibly have a chilling effect for new grads who would otherwise jump straight into it. Eventually management will run out of non-union workers to hire. Or the non-union workers themselves will demand better treatment. Decades of game development suggests otherwise. Like acting, it's people's dream job. And when the supply of labor exceeds the demand workers do not have leverage.
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  For decades there was no interest nor action towards unionizing in game development. Greater scrutiny into the industry from modern game journalism, and perhaps worsening experiences as the industry heads towards Hollywood-like AAA titles produced by monolithic studios, is surely causing something to change.
  - manfredo 7y ago
    Game developers' experiencing the misery of crunch time and layoffs is something I've heard about firsthand since the early 2000s at the latest. Reading accounts from earlier games' development cycles suggests that this has been common for even longer than that. Game development has always had cyclical labor demands and tight deadlines. I think you need to qualify the claim that these experiences are worsening. In fact, from most of the veteran developers I've talked to report the opposite: before the proliferation of the internet crunch time was way more serious since patching was not a viable option. Nowadays it's pretty much the norm that games have significant bugs for the first week or two and still need to mature after release. This creates greater room for error and less pressure to fix every bug before release.
    - Apocryphon 7y ago
      That's fair, perhaps conditions haven't been substantially worse than in previous console generations. But it sounds like there's something driving the push towards unionizing/organizing, whatever it is. And it sounds like the general public is more aware it being a brutal industry.
      - manfredo 7y ago
        Just because you're seeing more news stories about unionization or organizing, doesn't actually mean that there's more interest in unionizing and organizing. It just means that people producing news are writing more stories covering unionization and organizing. Take this story for example. Linkedin lists Glitch's size as 11-50. The highest employee count I've found claims 120. This is small fish in a very large pond. This press release name drops Google, but these companies are three orders of magnitude apart in terms of size.

BrainInAJar 7y ago

> Or game developers can just hire non-union employees. And then immediately be sued by the union & former employees for retaliation under the labor acts. Businesses already tried that sort of shenanigans

manfredo 7y ago
Sued for what? If I form a union with my co-workers and demand $1,000,000 salaries it's illegal for the company to say "nope" and hire someone else? Management is under no obligation to accept union terms, and is free to hire non-union work if the union terms are not competitive.
- einpoklum 7y ago
  IANAL (not for US law anyway), but firing someone because of their trying to unionize and hiring someone else is illegal in many world states.
  - fiter 7y ago
    In the US, it looks like you can "permanently replace" union workers who are on strike.
  - manfredo 7y ago
    Correct, firing someone for trying to unionize is illegal. It is illegal to retaliate against workers for trying to unionize. It's not prohibited, to the best of my knowledge, to receive a contract from a union and say, "these term's aren't competitive, we'll find other workers". Otherwise that would effectively give unions unlimited power over companies.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  Right, that's illegal. Management is under no obligation to accept any particular set of terms, but they're also not allowed to just say "nope"; they're required to continue negotiating with the union until an agreement is reached.