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United Wizards of the Coast
- glasss 5mo agoGreat to see! I think unions should be the default for most situations.
- culi 5mo agoAnd they are in much of Europe! Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Austria, Belgium, Iceland, Italy, etc. Even France has over 80% coverage
- zetanor 5mo agoI understand that Europe doesn't have many mandatory union arrangements. In Canada, unions are often shop-wide with no mechanism to opt out, which makes them very sticky and allows them to grow predatory if they can maintain enough corruption or apathy. I'm led to believe that many US states have similar problems, but that's only based on how American unions are portrayed in news and fiction.
- xienze 5mo agoAnd what has that really bought them? The wages are laughable compared to the US where you'd THINK us non-unionized tech workers would be paid minimum wage. And the famous European healthcare and long vacations are more a function of the government than anything the unions have explicitly bargained for.
- culi 5mo agoYou mean to tell me unions can make a government actually responsive to its people? Gee wouldn't that be nice to have here
- satvikpendem 5mo agoI wonder why in America it doesn't happen in the tech sector for devs specifically (as there is Alphabet Workers Union), beyond the typical reasons of American anti union sentiment like corporatism, bootstrap mentality etc, despite which there are many unions in the US like UAW, police and teachers unions etc. For tech, it's largely a different set of reasons, like high wages, no real grievances per se, and the ease of transferring to other companies, plus the work is all virtual so there is no reason why companies cannot outsource to another area where the union has no power, if the workers are just on their computers for work anyway. This latter reason is actually exactly why Netflix is investing heavily in South Korean productions.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- dhosek 5mo agoIt’s because the capitalist class has successfully persuaded the proletariat that they shouldn’t join a union. The US has been very successful at concentrating created wealth into a small number of people.
- satvikpendem 5mo ago> beyond the typical reasons of American anti union sentiment like corporatism, bootstrap mentality etc, despite which there are many unions in the US like UAW, police and teachers unions etc. As I said for tech workers it's a different set of reasons.
- ryandrake 5mo agoI think tech largely falls for the same anti-union propaganda as a great number of the rest of the USA. You'll see HN commenters in this article repeating much of this propaganda.
- satvikpendem 5mo agoI'm not sure, this is a good way to dismiss anything one doesn't like as "propaganda," it doesn't really tell us much.
- RobRivera 5mo ago[flagged]
- 1attice 5mo agoYour mom's
- lioeters 5mo agoOur mom
- sabedevops 5mo agoMy Mom’s dead, as is freedom of speech on ycombinator apparently.
- iwhalen 5mo agoFrom the full letter[1]: > Our Free Time is Our Own: Currently, if an employee makes anything creative in their free time, with their own resources, Hasbro may claim ownership. What we do in our free time should not be dictated by the company; neither should what we make in our free time be owned by the company. How common is this in creative fields? From my perspective this seems outlandish. Imagine doing FOSS work or a side project on your personal computer and your company tries to claim it. Odd... [1]: https://unitedwizardsofthecoast.com/letter https://unitedwizardsofthecoast.com/letter
- vidarh 5mo agoCommon enough even in tech that I've both had contracts try to demand this, and had contracts explicitly rule it out being presented as evidence of how great the company was.
- stego-tech 5mo agoSeconded. I had to be very careful to work on side projects completely divorced from my main job for a spell, and had to get legal approval first. The common attitude of companies is that they’re paying for the whole of your life inside and outside of “work”, and these Unions are a response to that encroachment (and associated under-compensation in general). Good on them. Best of luck negotiating a fair contract!
- natbennett 5mo agoA clause like this is pretty standard in software company employment contracts, at least in the California/Silicon Valley zone. There’s sometimes an exception for explicitly named items that pre-date your employment but sometimes they try to claim ownership of stuff you made before joining the company too.
- drob518 5mo agoTypically there’s a way to declare things that you are working on before you start at the company to prevent them trying to sue you for rights to prior work.
- sabedevops 5mo ago[flagged]
- nonethewiser 5mo agoWhat is the Arena team? Looks like the team that makes the Magic The Gathering video game?
- Banditoz 5mo agoArena is WotC's video game version of Magic the Gathering, yeah. Notably it's got microtransactions and such for opening packs of cards.
- bena 5mo agoTBF, that's just kind of built into the product naturally.
- tiagod 5mo agoThere are several MTG video-games. In this case, it's "Magic: The Gathering Arena" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic%3A_The_Gathering_Arena https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic%3A_The_Gathering_Arena
- stirfish 5mo agoI had one that came on a cd. I played that for ages.
- jaggederest 5mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering_(1997_video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering_(1997_vid...
- culi 5mo agoRelated topic: People Make Games has had really great coverage on Rockstar's illegal firing of the developers working on GTA 6 because of their unionization efforts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnuipPQDd_w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnuipPQDd_w
- ddtaylor 5mo agoWOTC has been on a downward trend since the Hasbro acquisition.
- haunter 5mo agoThat was 27 years ago. They were only founded 9 years before that. The game(s) are more popular than ever, especially D&D
- nonethewiser 5mo agoD&D is famously not more popular than ever and is one of the reasons why so many OSR's have exploded in popularity over the past 5-10 years.
- 1attice 5mo agoIt is both true that there has been an OSR revival, and that D&D is more popular than ever -- just with a much broader and culturally normative audience. Also: Yes, Hasbro did some shit, but they also had to relent and CC their SRD. This all happened years ago. I say this as a committed Pathfinder player who hasn't seen a good reason to return to D&D (PF2e is good enough). D&D is doing numbers and no one cares that us nerds moved on because of weak tea from the previous decade. It's their house now, and it's fine.
- hellcow 5mo agoD&D had a massive player revolt a while back in response to WOTC (at the requirement of Hasbro) trying to take ownership over everything players create in the D&D universe, breaking their long-standing promise to all of those creators and players. Several of the top D&D people who were advocating for players resigned around this time. WOTC/Hasbro since relented under this pressure, but the bridge was already burned. My group hasn't played a D&D campaign since. We switched to Pathfinder 2e and found that it was a better system altogether.
- ddtaylor 5mo agoShort form brain rot and fentanyl are more popular than ever. Popularity is not a reliable metric.
- TacticalCoder 5mo ago[flagged]
- spullara 5mo agoI am skeptical there is any customer benefit from unionization and it makes me concerned that MTG Arena might not be around for long term. As a big customer, I am worried about my investment in the platform with this announcement. MTGO still exists, I wish it had a better client.
- sabedevops 5mo agoStability of development, features etc is to the customer's benefit.
- tjwebbnorfolk 5mo agoHave Magic customers been clamoring for Magic's employees to unionize for the past 30 years? This benefit you purport strikes me as purely hypothetical and possibly wrong: if they can't downsize when they need to, they could go out of business completely.
- Timon3 5mo agoUnions don't prevent downsizing when it is actually necessary. What they do prevent is downsizing to goose the stock price, and that is good for the customer.
- tjwebbnorfolk 5mo agoGM circa 2008 would like to have a word
- Timon3 5mo agoI'm afraid I'm not familiar with the specifics. Can you link clear proof that unions were preventing necessary downsizing, and that this downsizing would have saved the company?
- glance9835 5mo ago[flagged]
- perrohunter 5mo agoI think there are some professions where Unions make sense, like for Pilots and Teachers, as a 30 years of experience teacher can be replaced with a 2 years of experience teacher, so we need unions to protect the experienced Teacher or Pilot, but when it comes to what MTG Arena does, I dont see much value on the union existing, perhaps someone can provide some valuable insight
- hellcow 5mo agoPresumably employees were unhappy. It's rare that unions spring up when everyone is treated well and paid fairly. I can't speak to this particular group, but Hasbro (parent company of WOTC) has been a horribly short-sighted steward of Magic and DND, so perhaps this will encourage other WOTC divisions to unionize as well.
- kaoD 5mo agoWell, unions do not exist to keep people entrenched on their jobs. That perspective is propaganda (by you-know-who). There's not a lot I can say that isn't covered in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_union
- matthewkayin 5mo agoWell generally the workers who make these games actually care about the game and want to make a good experience for the players. The execs however, only care about how much money they can make off of the product. Having a union (assuming that the union is run well), - ensures a better product for customers - ensures better working conditions for workers - ensures better pay and benefits from workers (at least in programming roles, the games industry is generally underpaid compared to developers in other industries) - provides protections against undue firings and layoffs I would be curious to know why you don't think a union would be good for these people.
- looneysquash 5mo agoThe company you work for almost always has more power in negotiations than you do. (For some hypothetical "you".) The bigger the company is, the more power they have typically. If you want to make more money or get better benefits or otherwise negotiate a better contract, you need more leverage. Unionizing is one way to gain more negotiation power by negotiating together with your co-workers instead of individually. It also makes it easier to address cross cutting concerns like safety and fairness.
- lazzlazzlazz 5mo agoAwful news and a sign that WOTC has lost control of the company. The writing has been on the wall for WOTC for a while now, and this will exacerbate their decline. Amazing how unionists seize the body of their host when it is weakest. EDIT: it is incredible how hostile HN is now to ant-union sentiment. None of the would-be founders here would support unionization at their companies. :)
- DonaldPShimoda 5mo ago> None of the would-be founders here would support unionization at their companies. :) That's because none of these would-be founders know how to turn a profit without exploiting their workers. :)
- Imnimo 5mo agoBack when Arena was first announced, there was an interesting line in their write-up: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/everything-you-need-know-about-magic-gathering-arena-2017-09-07 https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/everything-you-nee... >We've created an all-new Games Rules Engine (GRE) that uses sophisticated machine learning that can read any card we can dream up for Magic. That means the shackles are off for our industry-leading designers to build and create cards and in-depth gameplay around new mechanics and unexpected but widly fun concepts, all of which can be adapted for MTG Arena thanks to the new GRE under the hood. At the time, this claim of using "sophisticated machine learning" to (apparently?) translate natural language card text into code that a rules engine could enforce struck me as obviously fake. Now nearly ten years later, AI is starting to reach a level where this is plausible. In their letter, the union writes: >Over the past few years, pressure has ramped up from leadership to adopt LLMs and Gen AI tools in various aspects of our work at WOTC, often over the explicit concerns of impacted employees I'm curious if this would include fighting against turning WotC's old fanciful claim into a reality as the technology matures?
- nicolas-siplis 5mo agoI'm actually working on this right now! https://chiplis.com/ironsmith https://chiplis.com/ironsmith It's a parser + (de)compiler and rules engine which I'm trying to get to 100% coverage over all Standard/Modern/Vintage/Commander legal cards. About 23000 of them are partially supported, while 15k currently work in full (~3k more than what MTGA currently supports, IIRC). It also allows for P2P 4-way multiplayer which Arena unfortunately does not :/
- HanClinto 5mo agoThis is seriously impressive!! What are you planning on doing with this? Where should I follow along?
- JRandomHacker42 5mo agoThe Arena card engine is based on CLIPS [1] and not modern LLM-based tools. Magic cards are written in a very constrained language (usually called "card templating") that lends itself very well to machine-parseability. [1]: https://www.clipsrules.net/ https://www.clipsrules.net/
- nonethewiser 5mo agoI understand why workers in the video game industry want to unionize. They like the industry but the standards are shit. I do not see how unions will catch on in the video game industry. The ability to unionize has very little to do with the ideology of the workforce and everything to do with the structure of the industry. Unions tend to catch on when labor is irreplacable, workplace is large and centralized, if they can halt critical operations beyond their industry (ie railroads, ports, etc), there is low exposure to competition/off shoring, etc. The video game industry itself is not very ripe for unionizatoin.
- rhcom2 5mo agoI'm not sure that's true. Surely doormen, janitors, and security guards are not "irreplaceable" and can't "halt critical operations beyond their industry".
- xienze 5mo agoThat's all labor that can only be done "here and now." Can't just have Indians do it over the internet. And replacing the workers at a moment's notice is usually complicated by the striking workers harassing and attacking the replacements. Again, hard to do that when your replacement is on the other side of the globe.
- qq66 5mo agoYou cannot simply transfer Magic the Gathering to overseas workers and expect any kind of usable result. It will be from an entirely different cultural framework.
- satvikpendem 5mo agoHard but not impossible, whereas with something like a longshoremen union, it is literally impossible to move the work elsewhere.
- xienze 5mo ago
- looneysquash 5mo agoSomewhat related, this book is pretty good: https://ethanmarcotte.com/books/you-deserve-a-tech-union/ https://ethanmarcotte.com/books/you-deserve-a-tech-union/ It answers a lot of the questions I see being asked in this thread.
- bwestergard 5mo agoI'm glad to see this. I don't work in games, but I am a software developer and a member of the Communications Workers of America. I've also taken leave to help workers in games organize. I'm seeing a lot of ideological takes that are disconnected from the reality of unions with software developer members today. If anyone has questions about the CWA or game worker organizing campaigns, I'll do my best to answer.
- northern-lights 5mo agoThis thread is filled with so many anti-union takes that you have to wonder if they are paid bots. If you assume that most of the crowd that visits this website works in tech or tech-adjacent fields, how can you be against an entity whose main objective is to safeguard and work for your interests over your employers? Unfathomable that people are willing to do so much against their own best interests. Or...they are bots.
- xboxnolifes 5mo agoI don't think they're bots, since I've seen the sentiment on HN for a long time. Instead, it reminds me of the idea of people seeing themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires". If you see yourself as being part of the capital class in the future and think strong unions hurt the capital class, one might be against them.
- satvikpendem 5mo agoI mean, many on HN are actual millionaires who've made fortunes from tech money. They are the capital class, so unions hurt them directly.
- northern-lights 5mo agoHow many?
- 5mo ago
- zulux 5mo agoI hate unions, but I've noticed they only form when there's some sort of abuse. Treat employees well, and this isn't a problem. Also, flip the hierarchy: a business that puts employees first and profits for owners last can often have a shit ton of profits for owners. Executing isn't easy and requires wisdom and work - but that's why owners are paid the big bucks. If owners can't hack it... Then it's a skill issue. Get gud.
- darkwater 5mo agoIn other news, with common sense and widespread honor, dignity and honesty, every form of government can work beautifully well, from anarchy to plutarchy to democracy to dictatorship, either using capitalism, communism or any other -ism.
- nsingh2 5mo ago> a business that puts employees first and profits for owners last can often have a shit ton of profits for owners. Owners can make 100x that shit ton if they put profits for owners first, so why wouldn’t they do that instead? Out of the goodness of their own hearts?
- monknomo 5mo agoTo me, this comment is a bucket of contradictions. Why do you hate them, when you recognize that they are general the result of abuse? I'll cop to unions not always being great; the rules can be counterproductive, or sometimes limiting, but they are up to the union members, so at the end of the day there is some kind of reason for them. And the second paragraph - barring ESOP or employee-owned co-ops a union is pretty much the only game in town other than crossing your fingers and hoping the company owners, or board, or stock market are capable of pulling their head out of their ass. this can be a big lift.
- charcircuit 5mo agoThis is a cancer that needs to be addressed as quickly as possible by firing them all. It is a toxic ideologically that should not be allowed to permeate. >Layoff Protections Businesses need the ability to layoff employees when markets change and projects are no longer viable. >Remote Work Protections Data has shown proven benefits of in person time and in a competitive environment such as gaming every advantage matters. >Generative AI Protections AI is revolutionizing all industries. If you refuse to use it to disrupt yourself someone else will. These demands are very dangerous to the company and should not be considered.
- DonaldPShimoda 5mo ago> Layoff Protections Companies often expect employees to give advance notice of termination of employment, but employers do not feel beholden to their employees to reciprocate. This is unreasonable. > Remote Work Protections Many companies showed improved productivity when people were given flexibility. Claims to the contrary are often not backed up by actual data outside of cherry-picked results chosen by those in managerial positions. > Generative AI Protections MTG is a creative endeavor, and its output is protected by copyright. Copyright is, so far (thankfully), only enforceable when the media is produced by humans. Protections against the use of generative AI are not only good for workers' long-term productivity, but also for legal purposes. --- I think maybe you should stop licking boots and start understanding why any of our society works today at all. As a hint, every protection you have ever enjoyed (40-hour work weeks, pensions or retirement funds, health insurance guarantees, mandatory paid time off, health and safety regulations, and so on) was paid for in blood by someone a company decided was not more important than profit. Unions are a fundamental capability by workers to ensure their own safety. Shockingly, I think it more reasonable to rely on the interpretations of those working in these jobs who want to unionize than some random person online who thinks "no wait, but think of the poor endangered company! :("
- jujube3 5mo agoCompanies often expect employees to give advance notice of termination of employment, but employers do not feel beholden to their employees to reciprocate. This is unreasonable. Workers can leave their jobs with no notice period at all and suffer no legal consequences. The traditional two weeks notice period is a courtesy and not legally required. Meanwhile, employers often have extensive legal limitations on how many workers they can fire at a time (for example, because of the WARN act). It may be impossible to fire some workers (for example, those on disability leave). It's traditional for employers to pay severance to employees that are fired or laid off, and this may sometimes be legally required. Nobody can force a worker to work, but an employer is often forced to employ someone they'd rather not. Maybe sometimes this makes sense, but it's actually the exact opposite of what you're trying to claim. Many companies showed improved productivity when people were given flexibility. Claims to the contrary are often not backed up by actual data outside of cherry-picked results chosen by those in managerial positions. If remove work is so productive, then management should choose remote work without any coercion. If you want more benefits, then just be honest and don't make claims that you know better than management about what is productive. MTG is a creative endeavor, and its output is protected by copyright. Copyright is, so far (thankfully), only enforceable when the media is produced by humans. Protections against the use of generative AI are not only good for workers' long-term productivity, but also for legal purposes Copyright applies to works that are partially produced by AI and partially produced by humans. Refusing to use the tools that everyone else is using to be more productive is just going to make companies into dinosaurs. I think maybe you should stop licking boots and start understanding why any of our society works today at all. The union is also a corporation, which makes profit for its officers. Maybe you should stop licking its boots? As a hint, every protection you have ever enjoyed (40-hour work weeks, pensions or retirement funds, health insurance guarantees, mandatory paid time off, health and safety regulations, and so on) was paid for in blood by someone a company decided was not more important than profit. Unions are a fundamental capability by workers to ensure their own safety. Shockingly, I think it more reasonable to rely on the interpretations of those working in these jobs who want to unionize than some random person online who thinks "no wait, but think of the poor endangered company! :(" I'm not a member of any union. The protections I enjoy are because of the law, which applies to everyone, and because of the economic situation. If the economic situation changes, I will be fired no matter what unions or governments do, the same way saddle-makers were after the rise of the automobile.
- drusepth 5mo ago> Remote Work Protections: Leadership is instituting a mandatory RTO, forcing numerous remote employees across the US to work from a physical office or be forced to resign. This alone is enough reason for anyone to be up in arms and unionize. Kudos to them for banding together for better working conditions. I hope more big companies follow suit.
- aidenn0 5mo agoGiven the historic opposition of many employers to unions, perhaps this should be tagged NSFW?