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Activision Blizzard Is Trying to Stop a Union Vote at Its Albany Office
- skyyler 4y ago>existing legal precedent fails to account for the uniquely collaborative nature of game development This argument is very shaky. Aren't Hollywood films the product of union labour?
- xbar 4y agoYes.
- yamtaddle 4y agoPro sports, too. Talk about collaboration. [EDIT] Incidentally, I think there's some interesting cross-over here between Hollywood and video games: it's my understanding that part (though only part) of why modern movies lean so heavily on CGI/VFX is that that's one of the only major parts of movie-making that's not very, very unionized, along with that industry's cousin and the topic of this article, video games. I'd expect that when one of those unionizes, the other won't be far behind.
- SQueeeeeL 4y agoObviously, but these arguments are basically just there to give a semblance of authenticity to the illegal union busting. A lot of rhetoric in these spaces just serve to confuse and enable anti-worker ideologes to feel a sense of legitimacy in denying people maternal leave and decent healthcare
- pyuser583 4y agoAren’t they literally saying the law isn’t on their side?
- teawrecks 4y agoIt's a hail mary that will result in more than just QA being union.
- worik 4y agoIn New Zealand video game workers have no employment rights. Along with workers on film sets We call it the "Warner Brothers' Law"
- dangerboysteve 4y agoI would have thought it would have been called the Peter Jackson Law.
- worik 4y agoHobbit Law sometimes: https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2018/01/29/78965/the-hobbit-law-there-and-back-again https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2018/01/29/78965/the-hobbit-law-t... The actual law: https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2010/0120/latest/whole.html https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2010/0120/latest/whol...
- bovermyer 4y agoI remember back when I was a level designer for a New Zealand video game company, I was paid $150 NZD per day, and that was my entire compensation. No benefits. That was twenty years ago, though.
- worik 4y agoThe dispute that started the process to change the law was (if my memory serves) over a "model maker" making $NZ17 an hour back in 2010. Hardly big money. https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/bills-and-laws/bills-proposed-laws/document/00DBHOH_BILL10433_1/tab/digest https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/bills-and-laws/bills-propose...
- thinkmcfly 4y agoPeter Jackson's thumb
- FredPret 4y agoOr middle finger
- Lev1a 4y agoAt this point, it would be better for all those involved [1] if the corporate entity called Activision-Blizzard was burnt to the ground and a new games company was built in its stead, with actually competent managers [2], a unionized labor force and actually enforced zero-tolerance policies on abuse of all kinds among some other nice-to-haves. [1]: Obviously not Kotick and the rest of the scum, who not only tolerated but even engaged in the "alleged" instances of all manners of abuse for years. I actually wouldn't mind if they provided themselves as kindling on that corporate bonfire after having their golden parachutes cut away to pay damages/"reparations" to their victims. [2]: ie. with at least a background in games development, not how to best financially screw their workers.
- bovermyer 4y agoMicrosoft should buy Activision-Blizzard, fully separate Activision from Blizzard, assign Kotick to work at a one-man game studio in Alaska or something, and completely rebuild senior leadership at Blizzard.
- endemic 4y agoKotick'll get his golden parachute. Don't worry about _him_!
- danaris 4y agoYes, because what we need is more consolidation...
- Sakos 4y agoIt's Activision Blizzard. That acquisition is just totally irrelevant based on every metric except maybe revenue. AB is primarily CoD. I'll take some minor consolidation over Kotick and his cronies keeping their jobs after what they did to the women working there, particularly the one who committed suicide because of them. I want AB to burn to the ground, but I'll take the current management being replaced as a consolation prize.
- hilyen 4y agoIf only our government wasn't beholden to corporate power, they'd enforce the union busting laws. They know that if enough big companies become unionized, the workers would be able to exert democratic corporate power and influence government.
- JTbane 4y agoAgreed, also there were several high-profile reports of retaliation (Starbucks, et al) against union members. While they might have been settled out of court, it is not a good outlook for labor rights.
- pyuser583 4y agoDon’t forget that the interests of unions are often the same interest as the employers. My daughter has special needs, and we want to send her to a nearby public school. But the school isn’t in our district. So we have to pay for private school. Teachers unions fought tooth and nail to prevent cross district enrollment using arguments from the 19th century.
- JamesBarney 4y agoI'm not usually pro-union, but if there is any industry that needs to be unionized it's game development.
- none_to_remain 4y agoFeels like the demand to be a Game Developer means they'll end up with one of those setups where the union is big on putting up a barrier to entry
- AlexandrB 4y agoIs that better or worse than an industry that burns through and discards young talent as standard operating procedure? I would argue that the product would only improve if it's harder to enter, but someone can have a 30 year career instead of a 5 year crunchfest. Who knows though.
- none_to_remain 4y agoI don't know! Don't intend to go into the field either way so luckily I don't have to figure it out
- PuppyTailWags 4y agoCould you explain what you mean by this? How does demand to be a game developer require the union to put up barriers to entry? And also, how does this compare with the demand to be in hollywood vs the actor's union?
- none_to_remain 4y agoProtection of incumbent union members from masses of competitors. Acting, stage acting, not Hollywood, is actually where I'm most familiar with this through friends. If you want to be an actor, move to NYC, and try to find a role, you get sent to the back of the line at every audition and probably they don't even get to you. There was another way in (this may be outdated now) where you got points towards joining by working for certain employers. That's why some of my friends played characters for an abusive boss at a now defunct space travel theme restaurant - just for points to join the union
- AlexandrB 4y agoI adored Blizzard's output for ~20 years - I have every collectors edition they released from Warcraft III to Overwatch - but I'm basically done. The scandals, the shitty monetization, and the half-baked products all point to a radically different culture and company than the one that released Starcraft in 1998. No king reigns forever.
- w0m 4y agoI'm not sure i 100% grok the OW2 backlash we're seeing at the moment. It's a f2p game and has a middling reward model for the battle pass. That's pitch fork worthy now?
- ajkjk 4y agoThe OW2 backlash was "you re-released a game with almost no changes for a bunch of money and you want us to just.. buy it?" Although to be fair I guess that's what CoD does every year. Hmm. But Blizzard has been spending its goodwill for years. Ever since, I think, ever WoW expansion was worse and more pay-to-win than the last.
- danaris 4y agoDo they brick all previous iterations of CoD whenever they put out a new one? My understanding is that they shut down the OW1 servers after OW2 came out...
- pests 4y agoA day before OW2 came out!
- goosedragons 4y agoNo they don't. They aren't even shutting down the free to play CoD: Warzone 1 when 2.0 releases. I can still play CoD games I bought on PS3, online. But somehow OW1 had to go.
- streblo 4y ago
- kneebonian 4y agoBlizzard brought me some of the greatest joys of my childhood. I remember playing warcraft 1 in all it's 8-bit glory, I loved W3, I am playing my way through Diablo 2 again right now. But it just feels like right around the time of WoW they started to change and it became a priority on revenue over producing good games. It seems like that is the inevitable result of any successful creator(s) they labor out of love and a joy for what they make and then once they get big enough MBA, managerial types, that are focused on metrics and numbers come in and like a parasite feed on the success of those who labored for love before eventually leaving it an unrecognizable bloated rotting carcass of it's former self. Is there anyway to build something successfully that contributes to the world without it being subsumed by management culture?
- andruc 4y agoLook to companies that never go public
- hayst4ck 4y agoUnionization is the 2nd amendment of labor law. The 2nd amendment exists because every human has a right to sacrifice themselves meaningfully to fight tyranny. Guns are a proxy for power, and the 2nd amendment says that citizens have a right to some power. Since citizens have a right to some power, our government cannot get too tyrannical because there would be consequences. The right to unionize is the right to use the threat of force (collective bargaining) against tyrants (CEOs), exactly like the 2nd amendment is the right to use threat of force (use of guns) against tyrants (people who rule as kings). Unions are the representation of the idea that employees should be able to exercise meaningful power over their CEOs, in particular to demand better wages and conditions. Without collective bargaining, why would a CEO ever have to compromise or negotiate except with other CEOs? If multiple companies acted like a cartel, how would employees be able to fight that without collective bargaining? Why are wages generally proportional to the job, and not proportional to a companies profits? Just like in software, the structure can be sound, while the implementation is poor. I think a lot of the problems people have with unions are implementation detail problems rather than structural flaws.
- throwaway742 4y ago"Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempts to disarm the people must be stopped, by force if necessary"
- dudus 4y agoNot sure why you are doing mental gymnastics to justify unionizing is a constitution right by conflating it with the 2nd amendment when the 1st amendment already guarantees the freedom of assembly which is widely understood to support unions.
- kevingadd 4y agoI interpreted it more as them explaining the societal value of unions via equating it with the 2nd amendment, i.e. 'they do these valuable things for us'. Not 'this is why we have that right'
- VoodooJuJu 4y agoGoodbye Blizzard. No king rules forever.
- olliej 4y agoAre they trying to stop the vote by addressing the issues making people want to unionize, or just trying to illegally stop legally protected unionization?