Is the Video Game Industry Closer to Unionization Than Ever Before? (msn.com) 81
"Video game companies in North America have never successfully unionized," reports the Washington Post. "That changed December 16, when a union at the indie developer Vodeo Games was recognized by management."
While video game companies rake in billions of dollars, their workers complain of unfair labor practices, long hours, sexual harassment and workplace misconduct... In the past, game workers would avoid speaking out publicly against their employer, as it could tarnish their reputation within the industry and make it difficult to find future jobs. But after decades of major gaming companies expecting employees to work 80- or 90-hour workweeks, and of workers fearing retaliation from management, Vodeo employees told The Post that the tide was changing...
What's happening in the games industry at Activision Blizzard and Vodeo is unprecedented. No single gaming company like Activision Blizzard has dominated the headlines with lawsuit after lawsuit for months before, topped off with an explosive Wall Street Journal report in November that claimed CEO Bobby Kotick did not inform the company's board of directors for years about sexual misconduct allegations. A petition calling for Kotick's resignation that was circulated among employees netted over 1,850 signatures... At least several dozen Activision Blizzard workers across the company are in the midst of their third work stoppage following a California state agency lawsuit that alleged widespread sexual harassment and misconduct at the company. The strike is on its third week as workers demand that management rehire 12 contractors from Call of Duty developer Raven Software and promote all Raven quality assurance testers to full-time status. Some in-person demonstrations have taken place at the quality assurance office in Austin, Texas.
Activision Blizzard management responded to employees in a Dec. 10 email that ongoing work toward improving company culture would be best achieved without a union...
Activision Blizzard's tumultuous battle with lawsuits, government investigations and worker protests has Wall Street analysts downgrading their rating of its stock. Unionization would further lower the company's market value, according to Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter. "If they were to succeed [in unionizing], the company would have to determine whether to recognize the union or to bust it," Pachter said. "If only the hourly workers chose unionization, Activision could decide whether it is cheaper to recognize them or to export their jobs to a nonunion locale."
That possibility looms large for workers in the industry. "I do fear for my job," said Aubrey Ryan, a contractor working for Blizzard. "Even if I'm fired, I have been part of a movement that is going to change the games industry. I might not benefit, but future people like me will."
Some interesting quotes from two pro-union figures interviewed by the Post:
What's happening in the games industry at Activision Blizzard and Vodeo is unprecedented. No single gaming company like Activision Blizzard has dominated the headlines with lawsuit after lawsuit for months before, topped off with an explosive Wall Street Journal report in November that claimed CEO Bobby Kotick did not inform the company's board of directors for years about sexual misconduct allegations. A petition calling for Kotick's resignation that was circulated among employees netted over 1,850 signatures... At least several dozen Activision Blizzard workers across the company are in the midst of their third work stoppage following a California state agency lawsuit that alleged widespread sexual harassment and misconduct at the company. The strike is on its third week as workers demand that management rehire 12 contractors from Call of Duty developer Raven Software and promote all Raven quality assurance testers to full-time status. Some in-person demonstrations have taken place at the quality assurance office in Austin, Texas.
Activision Blizzard management responded to employees in a Dec. 10 email that ongoing work toward improving company culture would be best achieved without a union...
Activision Blizzard's tumultuous battle with lawsuits, government investigations and worker protests has Wall Street analysts downgrading their rating of its stock. Unionization would further lower the company's market value, according to Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter. "If they were to succeed [in unionizing], the company would have to determine whether to recognize the union or to bust it," Pachter said. "If only the hourly workers chose unionization, Activision could decide whether it is cheaper to recognize them or to export their jobs to a nonunion locale."
That possibility looms large for workers in the industry. "I do fear for my job," said Aubrey Ryan, a contractor working for Blizzard. "Even if I'm fired, I have been part of a movement that is going to change the games industry. I might not benefit, but future people like me will."
Some interesting quotes from two pro-union figures interviewed by the Post:
- "There's been a lot of groundwork that's been happening in the game industry over the last few years in terms of raising awareness about unions." — Vodeo designer Carolyn Jong
- "Vodeo has broken the ice on smaller studios. There are definitely folks at smaller studios that are realizing that unions are not just for triple A studios..." — a Southern California games-industry organizer
A quote (Score:2, Funny)
The True conservative seeks to protect the system of private property and free enterprise by correcting such injustices and inequalities as arise from it. The most serious threat to our institutions comes from those who refuse to face the need for change. Liberalism becomes the protection for the far-sighted conservative.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, speech, Sep. 29, 1936
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https://www.thenation.com/arti... [thenation.com]
Presidential scholars have consistently ranked Roosevelt as the best chief executive in the nation’s history for his handling of the Great Depression and World War II. But even among liberal Jews who still hold him in high regard for those achievements, his reputation has been tarnished as he has been viewed increasingly through the prism of the Holocaust. What started out in the late 1960s as legitimate historical revisionism—looking critically at what the Roose
Re: A quote (Score:1)
Yeah, history is so complex that his plan to create a forced diaspora that would see the Jewish faith and culture erased was totes justifiable.
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Is there an equivalent to Godwin's Law that can be invoked in cases where any political discussion devolves into an argument over antisemitism/Zionism?
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I think FDR was silent on the issue of unionization of the video game industry.
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The not-so-subtle message: like the Jews of Europe in 1939, Israel is under an existential threat and cannot count on anyone for help—even the United States, even liberals, even Jews in the United States, most of whom are insufficiently committed to Zionism. Betrayal happened before, and no matter how friendly a president or a country may appear to be, it can happen again.
Which is blatantly, obviously, even to the most idiotic of idiots, true.
Seems really ridiculous... (Score:3, Insightful)
Every time I see this idea of "unionizing" in the tech field it just makes me laugh...
Technical fields are meritocracies. We aren't the local electrical contractor (skilled trade with a homogeneous skill set).
Unionize... and lose all your talent. The talent will move to companies that will reward ability rather than cutting all the trees so they are equal.
Unionizing tech fields is a stupid idea put forth by the marginally competent.
Re: Seems really ridiculous... (Score:4, Insightful)
Industries where the workers are easy to train are better suited for unions, as people in those are easy to replace so they need to join up in a powerful group to have any saying (but would be good to not have any sort of union leader as power does corrupt and we have the technology to not need one anymore).
The game industry requires hard to come by, highly skilled individuals that are not as replaceable.
If the right three people decide to leave any company, they can basically cause billions of dollars of damage to that said company.
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So far it seems to not be quite the case, as it's a lot of very political signaling etc..
But yes, they should indeed make a power block of sorts to not get treated like cattle by the big corporations.
Re:Seems really ridiculous... (Score:4, Insightful)
Unionizing tech fields is a stupid idea put forth by the marginally competent.
No, unionizing is always an idea put forward by the abused. You clearly don't understand the concept at all.
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They are a good idea in theory, but in practice they tend to be crap.
The Unions have no legal requirements to be honest with it's members or the public. But because everyone likes to support the little guy, they often believe the Unions claims no matter how bizzar, while the big bad company can only counter with that is untrue.
Unions really don't work for the workers, but for the union. Being paid in dues, they are apt to get more unioned members. Which often means they will allow the long term higher ran
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Agreed, unions are no panacea. However, we've seen what game studios do to their workers to the point where there is slang to describe it: crunch. If businesses continue to abuse workers then the outcome is already determined.
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In practice everything run by people generates plenty of justification for calling it "crap". You can point to countless things that "prove" that capitalism is "crap", but that doesn't make a planned economy *better*. The same goes for democracy; the things you don't like about unions apply to politicians too; they're not legally required to be honest with their constituents either. So if you don't have a democracy who ends up running the country? Someone who inevitably turns out worse than a politicia
Re:Seems really ridiculous... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mass unionization seems pretty unlikely to me. I've actually never had a conversation about unionization with a co-worker, or even heard it being discussed. But of course, that's just my own impressions from 25 years in the game development industry, working at a range of indie to AAA studios. I can only report what I've seen and heard. Maybe other game developers have had different impressions.
So... why isn't there an obvious groundswell of support for unionization? If things are so miserable for us poor, downtrodden wage slaves, why not unionize? The simple answer is that things are not nearly so bad as they're often portrayed (like in this summary, which portrays a sewer like Activision Blizzard as the entire industry). Sure, deathmarch crunches happen. Sexual or other abuse happens. But as far as I can tell, it's much more rare than the impression most people seem to have, looking from the outside in. Those stories you read are news because these situations are more the exception, not the rule. Many of us would have bailed a long time ago were that not the case. I love making games, but I'm no masochist. The excessive crunches are much less of a thing than they were twenty years ago, when some bosses were able to bamboozle young employees into believing eternal crunches were normal and expected in the industry.
These days, companies are wising up and treating employees much better, and trying to retain them for the long haul. If they don't, there are plenty of competitors who will be glad to pay more and treat them better, especially if you've got some shipped titles under your belt - worth gold in this industry. Lots of us are older, have families, kids, etc, and simply won't put up with the sort of nonsense that was more common a few decades ago. It's now widely understood and acknowledged that crunching at the end of a project is nothing more than a failure of management to properly plan for and keep development scope in check. A smart production team knows how to make in-flight adjustments to keep things on track, even over the course of a massive, multi-year project.
I think another reason talk of unionization doesn't necessarily find fertile ground is that unions don't feel like a good fit for our profession - at least to me. There are at least a dozen types of different professions all under the umbrella term of "game developer", and there may be up to a dozen specialist types within each of those major job types. Those professions range from entry-level QA jobs to the most highly technical programming specialists, and a bunch of creative professions ranging in between. How in the world would a single union fairly manage all of those? What would that even look like? Would they deal with pay, or just quality of life issues? This is also a global industry. How does this work across borders? Frankly, it's somewhat hard for me to imagine how this world work that wouldn't result in an unwieldy clusterfuck of a bureaucracy for us to navigate.
I've got nothing against unions. My brother is in a union, and seems to work for him. I just don't feel it's right for me.
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Except wages in the games industry are 30% to 50% less for equivalent talent than in other industries. Their horrible hours and low salaries keep out the best of the best, who much prefer to work at the likes of google or Microsoft, where they get paid much better and even sometimes get equity in the company.
You’re downplaying the numerous stories of crunch time and poor treatment based on your “personal experience” that no one can verify.
Not getting the best (Score:3)
Unionizing the game development industry would lock those companies into a model of being warehouses of low-skill developers, who eek out a modest living in these companies because they aren't good enough to go somewhere else where they could command higher salaries thro
Re:Seems really ridiculous... (Score:4, Informative)
Wages are lower in the videogame industry because making games is pretty fun, and a lot of people would like to do it. Those are market forces at work, I understand that tradeoff and accept it for what it is. Not all of us are motivated solely by money.
I'm not downplaying stories of crunch time and poor treatment. I know plenty of people who have gone through that, and it's not fun. I'm always glad to see stories highlighting abuse by employers, because ultimately, that will help to improve the industry by drawing attention to problems that need addressing.
My horrible hours? I typically work 40 hours a week. I've occasionally worked 60 hour weeks near the end of a project. I've never in my life worked anything like 80 hour weeks. From what I see, most people at my company work pretty normal hours, and plenty of time off is offered and encouraged. Our management is interested in retaining us for the long-term, not burning us out over the course of a single project. I'm encouraged to see this attitude more prevalent today, although sadly, there are still exceptions.
I'm not trying to paint game development as a panacea. Yes, there are serious problems for us as an industry to address, and I think things are slowly improving. But this industry is not the oppressive hellscape that some people seem to think. I'm not going to claim I speak for anyone but me, but I can't believe my experience is completely unique.
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It does sound like you've gotten fairly lucky though, the number of industry layoffs is mind boggling. I've worked with a few ex-game devs and they just got binned at the end of projects despite working 80 hour weeks to get stuff delivered.
That's really my biggest problem with it as much as the abysmal salaries; the complete and utter absence of job security, no matter how capable you are. That studios are run by MBA beancounter types who are incapable of figuring out how to factor talent retention, increas
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Right... everyone knows you're not for unions, and they're afraid you'll tell the boss, and they'll get fired.
But you enjoy regular 60 and 80 hour weeks, and never being able to take your accrued vacation time, and having no life outside of work.
Re: Seems really ridiculous... (Score:3)
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Seems really ridiculous... (Score:2)
what usually holds back unions in tech is that tech is usually full of dudes in their 40s trying desperately to impress a long since out of their lives step father with how much Rush Limbaugh horseshit they can regurgitate. its sad, mom moved on why can't they?
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Professional sports are meritocracies. Many of the participants are in unions. Amazingly this did NOT lose all the talent.
Got any more easily debunked BS?
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I was thinking the same way, until I realized, not everyone is there for their programming talents.
We have lots of support roles in the industry at the moment. Anyone from technicians, to content moderators, that will do the same repetitive task, and each of whom being easily replaceable.
This would not be such a big issue in the past. Since companies had pathways to go from being janitor to a senior VP. Now not so much. All those "non core" roles are pretty much contractors in a separate company, with very
Re:Seems really ridiculous... (Score:5, Informative)
The talent will move to companies that will reward ability rather than cutting all the trees so they are equal.
Can someone explain to me why is the perception of unions like this? Do they really want everyone to be paid equally?
Unions are pretty strong here on the other side of the pond, and they are *not* affecting how people are paid - not directly, anyway. They have bargained for things like ...and so on..
- Overtime definitions and compensations
- Working during weekends compensations
- Flextime rules
- On-call compensations
- Compensations for getting called in when you are *not* on-call
- Sick leaves/medical/dental coverages
- Vacation days
-
The only thing where they are talking about salaries and wages are minimum wage *increases*, primarily to compensate for inflation. So if union negotiates for 2% minimum increases, it still means that â/$/£2000/month code monkey gets extra 40, while the architect doing 20000/mo gets extra 400. But they are still MINIMUMS. There is nothing preventing the employer from paying extra. I really cannot see how unions are going to drive away top talents.
Or do they really attempt to make such bargains that everyone is to be given your "average" salary?
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In the west union rules are more geared towards maximum salaries than minimum, preventing members from benefiting or suffering from substandard or exemplary performance (the only legitimate reason to make more ever is seniority [being hired before someone else]), and preventing non union members from working.
So their is monetary and emotional incentive for people of above average talent or drive to not be in the union, unless the union gains enough control to make the downsides bad enough.
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Second, at least in countries other than the US, joining a union doesn't mean ability not being recognis
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I ended up in a company that had the reputation of succeeding where other compan
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ROTFLMAO!!!
"Meritocracies"? Really? So, you've actually never worked for any large organization. Or medium sized one.
But then, if you actually worked, rather than got paid for posting wrong-wing bs, you'd have started thinking of unions after a few fifty or sixty hour weeks. Or when your upper management said "whatever it takes", and you were there at 10:00 PM on Sunday after Thanksgiving, along with most of your team.
Oh, and getting paid well under $60k/yr.
It's an indie studio (Score:2)
Re:It's an indie studio (Score:4, Insightful)
Also pointless is unionizing when there are a total of 13 employees -- including independent contractors. At that size, the chief executive should be spending at least an hour each week with even antisocial employee. If the environment is so bad that a union seems necessary, there is probably some dysfunction so deep that collective bargaining won't really help
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This isnt the kind of industry that can unionize. If you unionize at an EA owned shop for example, then EA starts selling all its assets, one by one, to one of its non-union shops, then you get shitcanned, and are never hired at any EA owned shop again, and likely nowhere else in the industry either.
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LOL, nope (Score:2)
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The cops. They have a massively powerful union. It’s somehow different than all those unions full of lazy steel and auto workers.
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I would think that your elected officials would represent the tax payers, which they frequently do by under funding education
The recent Red for Ed movement was pretty effective in Arizona, where if got a republican governor to agree to appropriate pay increases for teachers.
This was in an environment where a republican led state legislature had stolen school funding to pay their bills due to changes to taxes [azcentral.com]
Red for Ed was widely supported and the republicans caved once their mirage was shown for what it was
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I would think that your elected officials would represent the tax payers
Which is fine, so long as what they negotiate for is paid for now, but it isnt... its paid for 30 years from now.
You cannot claim that politicians no matter how free and fair the elections have earned the right to represent people that havent been born yet, but here we are, and your states unfunded liabilities are the result, but you will find some bullshit excuse as to why that isnt a problem that was caused by the allowance of public sector unions.
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Cops used to be widely seen as not part of the workers' movement by unionists as they were more likely to be cracking your skull on behalf of the bosses than to be striking in solidarity. In a real sense police unions are unique and treated specially by the ruling class because the job of the cops is to protect private property from the proles.
need to change the OT laws / salary min to not get (Score:2)
need to change the OT laws / salary min to not get OT.
Maybe if the salary min was pushed to say 60-80K + COL then people would not be working 80+ hours all the time. And maybe if main OT had an X2 at 80 hours for hourly working then 90 hours will not be happing as well.
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You just need better employment laws in general. Here the overtime law sets the minimum rules for everybody, like maximum 37.5h - 40h work week after which any work is always overtime. And there is annual maximum overtime limit. Unions can bend those rules somewhat, usually to exceed the limits temporarely, but it must average annually. And most people are covered by collective agreements, there is no per company unions, instead we have unions per profession/type of work.
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Yeah, unfortunately, in the US, the overtime laws specifically consider IT workers as exempt, therefore there is no requirement for paid overtime in the tech industry. This should be fixed, but I can't imagine the will being there to correct it.
I wonder who the union stewards will be (Score:3, Insightful)
I will watch to see what happens.
Maybe some good will come out of it, but the early pilots will be crap. Some really good people will be cut, cause they are socially unskilled.
The kind of people that offend the righteous when they run out of managers to fire.
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That's if you're lucky. If you're not lucky, the union leadership will get taken over by the mafia.
It's closer to a 1983 than ever. (Score:1)
NFTs, shit unfinished games, prices going up and up. A 1983 is due.
Going to be a lot more small indie devlopers if so (Score:2)
Could work... except for wage parity. (Score:2)
I don't know of too many fields where the skill and productivity differences within identical titles are as large as in software development. If you pay the seat fillers and the top talent identically based on years of service, one of them will leave. Thing is, both the seat filler and the extraordinary resource generally know where they stand in that balance. But by design unions don't generally acknowledge it.
Too much art and too few effective metrics make role standardization possible.
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You understand the difference?
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A Guild is a collective bargaining organization for independent contractors. A Union is a collective bargaining organization for employees.
The AFLCIO also teams up with Guilds, and you are a fuckball. When it was explained to you what the difference was, you got your fucking sock puppet and modded that explainer down, and then replied and that reply was you going "NAH AHHH!" while claimed the explainer was doing it.
Its obvious that you are a lefty. Learning things isnt high on your prio
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LOL! You literally googled "guild vs union" and copy/pasted the first thing that came.
Yes thats how easy it was to discover knowledge. The person you are defending, which is yourself after you exhausted your sock puppet, didnt even go that far, until you realized that his imagination didnt match reality once again. It still doesnt.
Actors are guild members, not union members, you've been wrong, and will continue to be wrong, because you dont care about being right you care about winning which is why you are such a disgusting dishonest fuck that is easy to destroy within any forum where you
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Yes thats how easy it was to discover knowledge.
It's funny, because when I googled "Screen Actors Guild" before my first reply I came to this: "SAG-AFTRA brings together two great American labor unions: Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists." from their own website: https://www.sagaftra.org/about [sagaftra.org]
And SAG from Wikipedia: "The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) was an American labor union which represented over 100,000..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And SAG-AFTRA wiki: "The Screen Actors Guild - American Federation o
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Let's inject some reality:
You're a moron [nwladvocates.com]:
What’s a union and what’s a guild? In Washington they can be the same thing or entirely different depending on the structure of the organization.
Now, quit crying like a little bitch and admit you were just pulling shit out of your ass and that you didn't know the first thing about unions until after you made your retarded post.
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you got your fucking sock puppet and modded that explainer down
You give me a lot of credit. I don't have nearly that much ambition.
When it was explained to you what the difference was
You didn't EXPLAIN a fucking thing. You could have just said "A Guild is a collective bargaining organization for independent contractors. A Union is a collective bargaining organization for employees." in the first place, but you chose to be a smug dickhead about it.
Its obvious that you are a lefty.
Fuck off with the "left" vs "right" bullshit. Either make a valid argument, or let the adults talk.
I wonder if unionization can work (Score:2)
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What happens to their contract when the next big release flops or is delayed?
Same thing as now: The employer blames the employees, and then they either figure it out or they don't. If it happens enough, the studio folds, then another company swoops in to pick up the slack. Is it possible that the "next big game" dies on the vine because of this? Sure. But as you said, it's something humans can live without.
"Vodeo has broken the ice on smaller studios" (Score:2, Interesting)
Bullshit.
What's broken the ice on unionization is the widespread recognition (mainly starting with Blizzard) how how toxic it can be when socially stunted tech bros are given money and power and still can't comprehend how to treat women as people.
Unionization happens when the rest of society around it goes "yeah, you know, that sounds like a pretty shitty place, those people really DO need some protections".
Otherwise, in the US, unions are seen negatively by the public, as a way to compel a company to grant
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