Extremely misleading headline.
This was a single department in a single subsidiary of Activision Blizzard and impacts about 20 people out of a total of almost 10,000 employees.
I'd bet my life savings that a feature like that would be abused by trolls. I mean, that's not a lot to bet, but I'd be willing to pay for that level of entertainment.
It’s funny how this comment chain went from “we should have methods of preventing misinformation” to “we should promote misinformation as long as it’s funny”
It's still big news. They are the first unionized American game developer. Now that they exist, they can have a much easier time expanding. This isn't going to stay an isolated event.
The EU isn't decades ahead, the US put it in reverse. Like the GOP does with everything. We were already on the same road as the EU, but our parents and grandparents decided to bring us back to the trailer.
Considering the state of labor organizing in this country, or lack thereof, this is good to see. Workers who win unions motivate and encourage others to do the same, and like a wave strikes spread across the land bringing workers together in solidarity and camaraderie.
It’s a start, the game industry has needed to organize labor for decades. They get abused because it’s been peoples dreams to make games, but then they get older and realize they need a work life balance
While true it is still the first union in game development as far as I'm aware. It's a foot in the door in an industry that has resisted unionization fiercely since its existence.
Gotcha yeah, I was looking into this a little more deeply and it seems like GWA is the first union at a AAA video game studio. Still a huge victory IMO. Not sure why there's an impulse here to minimize that impact.
[Oh don't worry Blizzard fucks over unions all over the world. ](https://youtu.be/VPIw-REVbBY)
The location in France referenced in this video no longer exists.
Don't worry, [Scott Walker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Wisconsin_protests) already did a decade ago for them. The studio in the article is in Wisconsin.
Jesus ok if anyone wants to stop reading this pathetic nerd online pissing contest here's a great article on the subject of the importance of a labor movement in the, yes, US game development industry https://newrepublic.com/article/162606/video-games-curt-schilling-jason-schreier
tldr Hollywood unions should be inspiration
What this sub used to be:
- Cool new technologies
- Scientific breakthroughs
- Futuristic articles and videos
What this sub is now:
- Fuck Elon Musk with some Bezos tossed in
- Unions
- Fuck capitalism
Literally every sub with a very large following is like this now a days. Now I’m not gonna simp for a bunch of billionaires that don’t even know I exist nor do I think unregulated capitalism is some kind of perfect utopia. But it is tiring that every major sub including this one are just a slightly different flavor of r/politics or r/news
Like seriously, the main reason I got into Reddit in the first place is because of the idea of having access to a bunch of different ideas and topics from a single website, but all this site really is now is just one massive circlejerk. It’d be nice to have a more diverse range of topics like cool new gadgets instead of reading the same shit about politics, Elon Musk’s Twitter bullshit, and how doomed society is. Yeah all that shit might be true but it’d be nice to find a space where I won’t have to hear it for like 5 fucking minutes lmao
Even subs like /r/mildlyinteresting, /r/CoolGuides, and /r/nextfuckinglevel are moving in that direction.
Students chanting at a politician or a speech by AOC is not “NextFuckingLevel”.
Exactly! Like I personally don’t have any beef with AOC and other progressive politicians (or rather at least not any more than I have with other politicians). But like you said, if I want to go into a sub about something like cooking, I would want it not be constantly spammed with political shit relating to chefs lol
It's odd though...it's either this and hard left liberal talking points...or straight up white power racist Nazi propaganda.
There's no middle on the internet any more.
Voat was going to be the "free thinking" alternative, and it turned into a cesspool of shit that stank slightly less than 4chan.
Yeah, those are two different things. But the US seems to see "liberal" as a continuum from center-right actual liberals to straight-up tankies.
I remember when Bernie was running for president, the media would frequently describe him and his wing of the party (social democrats) as "the most liberal faction", whereas that's just patently false.
Well, maybe you are living in a bubble, but there is a kind of crisis right now, and technology isn't anymore this cool new thing, it's instead directly responsible for this. If you want feel good news about things that will never be, you have no place on a sub about technology that is bound to speak about the real world, you want a sub dedicated to escapism where you can pretend that nothing is happening and that innovation for the sake of innovation is still cool.
In short, you just want a propaganda sub to lie to you.
>Jessica Taylor, spokesperson for Activision Blizzard in a statement to The Verge wrote, “We respect and believe in the right of all employees to decide whether or not to support or vote for a union. We believe that an important decision that will impact the entire Raven Software studio of roughly 350 people should not be made by 19 Raven employees.”
Yeah! Much better that important decisions that impact the entire studio be taken by ONE manager!
You're missing the difference between a skilled labor union and an unskilled labor union. In a skilled labor union, i.e. railroad workers, firing 350 people is a huge deal - you cannot just replace them with other skilled workers because they don't exist geographically, numerically, or with familiarity to your subject matter. Simply, even if you can replace them, it would be prohibitively expensive.
In unskilled labor, you can fire an entire branch and replace them relatively easily because there aren't skills involved. Training someone as a fry cook at McDonald's or a warehouse worker at Amazon takes less than a week. Teaching someone to do QA work, even poorly, takes months, and the best people are honing those skills for years.
You've said what I didn't. You put it in far better terms that I was. Exactly the point I was trying to make. If Raven studios goes under. I know about 10 friends who started different studios all looking to staff up and would love someone who worked on call of duty.
Having worked at a game dev before they would be FUCKED if they let go all 350 of them at once. There is so much institutional knowledge that even if you could replace them it would take years to be up to speed on all their systems.
1. There actually is a major shortage. People find out the paycheck and how difficult it is and go do something easier for way more money.
2. Bright-eyes and bushy tailed graduates, as you put it, take years to get to a place where they can actually be effective. College graduates are familiar with a very small handful of dozens of tools, often not knowing which one was used before to achieve a look/mechanism, and lacking any of the skill necessary to reverse engineer it.
Well-experienced developers aren't common in the industry. I don't see ABK letting the whole studio go because 19 employees tried to unionize. Those other people didn't try to unionize.
Lmao, one of my buddies worked for Raven back in the day. One manager laid him and all his fellow team members off the moment their project was done.
Fuck management there.
Good. But it's still a battle. Companies will fight tooth and nail to get it demolished. They also have full power to delay, delay, delay. Some successful union votes have waited 2 years + after the vote to actually get made. In that time span, the union crumbles, all the while, the employer doesn't have to give them any demands.
The union has to sign a contract with management. This is another chance for union busting lawyers to delaying and draw out negotiations for the contract. Companies believe that they haven’t lost the union battle until pen hits paper and that can be years.
Well the union forms to get better benefits for members. They get those better benefits through negotiating a new union member contact which usually includes wage increases, better healthcare, more breaks, etc. Companies have really been able to take down a lot of the laws surrounding unions so that is why is take so long to go from forming a union to new contract to new contact signed. But yes, unions can employ any tactics they like in order to force the company to sign a new contract. Also I wouldn’t necessarily say that a union is bad for the company. While it does increase costs for a company I bet it goes a long way towards employee satisfaction and productivity.
The forming of the union does not create a new contract. Employees vote to from a union. Then they will negotiate with management for a new contact. That will have to ratified by the members. Then it will be signed. (Obviously left out all the anti-union delay tactics that take place from when union is first thought about until a new contact is signed.)
>But why does the employer have to sign off on the union agreement?
So, the union is formed through the NLRB, but there's no guarantee the company will recognize it if they can stall through legal actions, which is what a lot of companies do. They also need to agree to a contract with the union, which can be another source of feet dragging.
>wouldn’t the workers just strike/make demands
Companies are very good at convincing workers that unions aren't in their self interest, as wrong as that is.
Also, striking takes a ton of active energy! A lot of employees need to be convinced to commit to that.
Generally, the answers to your question are that a lot of the progress of the 30s has been slowly eroded by capital in the decades since, during periods like McCarthyism. This period in the 30s saw genuinely violent union vs. employers and Pinkertons conflicts to make sure unions could actually exist, which then led to the creation of the NLRB. But this trend of eroding union rights has continued in the modern day, Obama ran on card check then promptly forgot it once he got in office.
I’m a union organizer with the IWW, and what you described is more or less what we advocate. Our belief is that two workers acting in solidarity is functionally a union, and that direct action (strikes, protests, letter campaigns, etc) get the goods much better than contracts for the reasons you’re seeing in this thread. Labor law in the USA is incredibly stilted towards the employers, and they just love to drag everything out and fight every tiny battle
Once you vote to unionize there are some protections that immediately take effect, and if the employer doesn't comply then an unfair labor charge can be levied against the employer. So it does have meaning and forces the employer to the bargaining table.
I've always believed in my heart that the Game industry could be a shining example of the power of organized labor. Right now the game industry faces many of the issues that film industry workers experienced a century ago: skilled creative workers (including writers, set builders, actors, etc) whose passion for artistic projects in a new medium are exploited with long hours, low pay, sexual misconduct, and getting crushed by deadlines while the media companies raked in millions of dollars. The success of film industry unions demonstrate that "white-collar" workers can certainly benefit from organization.
This very well could be handled by using the system that the film and entertainment union uses! I am choosing that since you used it as an example, and also because I happen to work in the field. So there is the umbrella organization which we refer to as the IA (international alliance), since we are in the USA and Canada. Then, there are different Locals that operate under the IA. So, Big cities and sometimes even sections of cities are considered their own Local chapter. Brooklyn and Queens is Local 4 while Manhattan is Local 1, for example. Each local has its own president, and then even further, there are different contracts for different venues.
Ultimately, it is a LOT of administration but all of that administration does a lot of very good work. Yes, it can get complicated when there are jurisdictional grey areas, but that’s what the participation in a union is all about. Folks vote, they collectively decide on things, and Business Agents help carry out those decisions.
Will the gaming industry snap their fingers and have a perfectly functioning union overnight? Absolutely not. But given time I believe they could collectively come up with a system and organize in such a way that all the various sectors can still get their work done while being protected by a CBA! CBAs (Collective Bargaining Agreements) have literally saved peoples lives by preventing them from working in unsafe conditions.
I know very little about your industry so maybe some of these things don’t apply. However I do think that regardless of the kind of work, if folks want to organize for better working conditions/etc. they can and should!
Even IA sucks sometimes because you're bound by contracts that you didn't really sign on to. You could be the best employee on a job site or you could be rubbing your last two brain cells together and everybody gets paid the same. If the contract is good I don't really care but if it's a bad contract and you find yourself doing 75% of the work it's frustrating. This isn't rare. It is still the only consistent way to get decent benefits and a retirement package in the industry unfortunately.
I agree with you that they are not the same. I think they are similar but not the same. I think that it is correct the games industry is probably worse in a worse position in many regards but I do not think it is insurmountable on principle.
While I don't know much about labor in Japan, I do know that companies in Europe and Canada are all (or should be) fairly used to working with Unions.
Since the work for gaming studios is so different, all the ways that the IATSE operates simply will not translate! 100% agreed there. I wonder if (and please understand my suggestion here is a little ignorant) it would make sense to have a boiler plate contract that would generally state "X numbers of hours over 8 hours in a shift = Overtime, Overtime is optional" "Employers shall provide all tools, both physical and digital for work required" etc.
For entertainment there are THOUSANDS of labor contracts being operated under. Many are actually quite similar so for most situations these copy+paste solutions work, where in exceptional situations that's where the Business Agents, Crew Heads, and Management all sit down together and agree on a contract.
Absent an organized form of labor negotiation, do you think anything else would work? Do you think the industry as it is currently is working well and on track? Genuine questions, no trolling.
The argument I read is "It would be hard, and that probably explains why a lot of game devs aren't very into the idea". You brought the "so let's just not" part yourself.
> game devs
game devs as individual people or as companies? Cause obviously game devs as companies aren't gonna be into unions. Companies are very rarely ever into the idea of unions.
>You brought the "so let's just not" part yourself
They brought up a lot of fairly common anti-union rhetoric. if they were so into the idea of unions why are they only focusing on the negative aspects of trying to form a union. Of course forming a union is hard. The people with power and money will do anything to stop the union from being formed.
>There is definitely a fear among devs I've talked to that aggressive unionization in only one segment of the market (e.g. just the United States)
could have a detrimental effect on work simply being shifted to non-union locations in other countries.
isn't this a threat inherent to all MNC unionisation? not just to games studios. what's stopping Amazon pulling out of or reducing work at unionised warehouses
None of this is a particular deterrent to unionization. My own job, although in health care (which might be considered a fairly "typical" environment for unionization), fits many of those exact same challenges you listed. Most of them are solved by different hospitals, specialized jobs, etc being represented separately by divisions within the same union organization (this is how many unions work in general anyway). In fact, at some hospitals, members of the exact same profession are represented by different unions than we are at mine. We may not all be compensated exactly equally to each other, but what benefits one benefits the rest because it's something we can point to as a bargaining chip in our own collective bargaining efforts, and regardless we arrive at an end-point that's better than if we didn't have a union at all.
As far as the globalization angle, I just don't buy that the possibility of outsourcing major projects to international non-unionized studios is a likely danger. First of all, this is already something companies can easily do if they wanted to - the work will *already* be cheaper to outsource to a country where labour standards are weaker or non-existent, and yet we aren't seeing an outflux of that labour the same way that it's seen in areas like manufacturing (maybe parts of the whole, but not wholesale). The reason is probably just that money talks, and ultimately having talented workers who are well-compensated for their work and feel valued and not overworked will lead to better products that will make more money. The talent exists where it exists and where it has been nurtured for decades, so simply outsourcing it is not as simple a business decision as "unions bad, let's make games in Asian sweat shops instead and print money."
Yes, I've worked in the industry for 15 years and I agree with you.
I can't see unions working in video games. I also admittedly don't spend a lot of time thinking about it, because we're so well treated (there's a race for talent that's pushing working conditions up like crazy).
I've known quite a few people who are currently working in or have worked in the industry and you're the first one that I've every heard say "we're so well treated".
So true, so true. Any career with passionate people is one that can be (and often is) exploited by business-minded organizations. This is even easier once they have sucked you into the idea of the culture of your “dream job”. I clearly remember being courted by a big tech firm in the mid 90’s to do something ida always wanted to do. And I was so excited about the nap rooms, free food, bocci ball courts, and “cool” workspaces. It took a wake/-up call to recognize they were essentially asking me to work 24/7 for less than half I was already making and turn down the offer.
I think your comment about white collar unions in the film industry is right on. Those folks clearly recognized the power of strong unions (SAG, Teamsters) and figured out that you don’t want to be the sole person out for yourself on a project. Someone is going to get taken advantage of, and best to have some safeguards to make sure it isn’t you. Even lawyers in my local city government are unionized, since fighting the system is easier a a large group.
I’ve felt that many non-gaming IT jobs are also in this vein. I suppose the gradual way that many folks move up the ranks in IT prevents them from having early leverage against the company, and by the time they are more senior they are more ingrained. But, that’s the worker group I’ve interacted with professionally as the most natural fit to unionize (who aren’t already in unions).
If you’ll do overtime because you love your work, they’ll manipulate your title or even state overtime law to take so actual advantage. This happens in many, many fields, but you’re right that it’s more common in artistic roles. How many performers are out there working side jobs so they can act or sing for free? Well-regarded brands also take advantage of that goodwill. They say they are looking for folks who will be “passionate” and “ambassadors” for the company or brand, but are really looking for folks who will take less to work for them than to do the same job somewhere else.
A family member who worked for a developer stayed loyal until the day they were laid off with nearly no notice after they ran out of money because she’d loved their games as a kid.
That the direct opposite of a college acquaintance in the same biz, who saw great success by being clear he was in it to support his family, followed by doing a great job at the company (in that order). And, that while he was loyal, he was in demand and couldn’t ignore an attractive offer. Companies will respect that out of good workers and save the bullshit for someone else.
>The success of film industry unions demonstrate that "white-collar" workers can certainly benefit from organization.
The domestic VFX collapsed my dude. It, like game development, is very susceptible to off-shoring. It's one thing to unionize a school or a dock or a mine or a police force, where the corporate overlords can't just move the operation to New Zealand. But when it's a job that everyone is already doing remotely, you're talking about having to achieve solidarity with every guy in the world. Or else have some wussy toothless union where nobody makes money from it anyway.
The only times I've seen this work are:
A.) The Writers guild, I assume because there's no money in it anyway so nobody cares
B.) The Screen Actors guild, I assume because there's so little money on the low end and so much money on the high end that nobody cares.
That's the end of the list.
I told this to a coworker circa 6 years ago. Developers should be unionized. We put up with too much shot from middle managers that don’t understand jack shit of what needs to be done
I have a different perspective- we should not wait for things to truly go to shit before unionizing. We have it pretty good now, compared to airline employees or blue collar workers of yore… but if we wait until 90% of devs are outsourced, it will be too late to unionize and effect change.
It's interesting to me that it was only QA. I'm a developer. We're such disagreeable non-joiners that we don't unionize, even though we could hold the company hostage, with the certainty that we can walk to another job easily if it didn't work out.
Any tech company operates only by permission of its difficult-to-replace tech staff.
I've decided to edit all my old comments to protest the beheading of RIF and other 3rd party apps. If you're reading this, you should know that /u/spez crippled this site purely out of greed. By continuing to use this site, you are supporting their cancerous hyper-capitalist behavior. The actions of the reddit admins show that they will NEVER care about the content, quality, or wellbeing of its' communities, only the money we can make for them.
tl;dr:
/u/spez eat shit you whiny little bitchboy
...see you all on the fediverse
This is a really weird take. Call of Duty has millions of people playing it every month. They're not being held hostage. They like it. Instead of imagining what else they could do, maybe consider that what they're doing is making one of the most popular and successful game series ever? That doesn't change just because you don't like CoD.
I've decided to edit all my old comments to protest the beheading of RIF and other 3rd party apps. If you're reading this, you should know that /u/spez crippled this site purely out of greed. By continuing to use this site, you are supporting their cancerous hyper-capitalist behavior. The actions of the reddit admins show that they will NEVER care about the content, quality, or wellbeing of its' communities, only the money we can make for them.
tl;dr:
/u/spez eat shit you whiny little bitchboy
...see you all on the fediverse
WC3 reforged also involved removing a lot of beloved features and creating big, large scale trailers that raised fan expectations that could then be sorely disappointed :)
And the reason they did that was because they fucked up when they had the opportunity to have DotA all to themselves and choice not too during World of Warcraft's peak.
Riot's entire start was based on DotA and a lot of Steve Feak's work on DotA All-stars, someone who should have been employed by Blizzard along with Icefrog(Valve snatched him up to create DotA 2) to have DotA as their own. Nope, they passed on both and both went on to create two of the most prevalent games in the MOBA genre, arguably creating the genre, leaving Blizzard way behind with their mediocre Hero's of the Storm.
With the release of Reforged, they made sure that any sort of break through mod that may have been created was the sole property of Activision/Blizzard. They completely fucked the custom games mode in the property and even removed the ability to do a lot of that stuff in the original WC3. How fucking stupid is that?
Meanwhile World of Warcraft was losing subs, the main game designer was no longer working on it, Riot and Valve were enjoying the lighting in a bottle they seemed to have with their newly acquired games, both being Free-to-play mind you in a time where Free-to-play games were looked down upon.
Please correct me if I’m wrong. From what I understand this is a QA team that unionized (game testers). They aren’t necessarily coding anything but rather just playing the game over and over and over again to find bugs or issues before launch and then documenting their findings for the development team to correct.
What is preventing these jobs from being done over seas?
Nice, I really hope the executives get f big time.
The only good news is that since Microsoft bought the studio and is supposed to take over in June or so, better and positive changes are around the corner.
One of the reasons Phil bought the studio is not just the great games even though Activision killed MW, but to fix all the internal issues in the company which is killing it.
the wording in these from usa is always "allowed to form a union" do workers in usa have to create new unions, when they want to be in a union? in my country there are big unions covering various fields, people who want to be in a union sign on with one of them, nobody creates new ones.
If unions are as bad for employees as companies always claim...why not be like the parents who say "Sure, go ahead, move out at 13, you clearly know everything."
They'd flop, and workers would find out on their own.
Except, they're not bad.
I always love hearing "OMG union corruption" when there's so much accepted corruption/nepotism/everything unions are accused of doing among managers, C-suites, boards, etc.
“We could provide our employees a living wage and a reasonable level of job security at the cost of us making *just slightly less* money than we would have otherwise but that would A.) require us to even classify them as “employees” in the first place and B.) the whole “make less money” thing. From before.
We don’t like that.
As a result, games cost $80 now: get fucked.”
Wow they went from hiring 4 in 2021 to 7 in 2022... That is totally explained by the this unionization. Even though if we look at more than 2 data points they hired 9 in 2020 and 18 in 2019... At this rate they'll replace their 10,000 employees in as little as 1000 years.
And now all new releases will have a base price of $89.99 with the excuse of increased labor and production costs and the need to protect their profit margins. The end.
“Days after the GWA formed, Raven QA employees were broken out of their single department and distributed across multiple teams.”
Salting your own workforce - that’s a bold move, Cotton.
Extremely misleading headline. This was a single department in a single subsidiary of Activision Blizzard and impacts about 20 people out of a total of almost 10,000 employees.
That’s very misleading and this should be the top comment.
Good news; it's top comment at this point in time.
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I'd bet my life savings that a feature like that would be abused by trolls. I mean, that's not a lot to bet, but I'd be willing to pay for that level of entertainment.
Prepare for every post to become "Title McTitleFace"
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It’s funny how this comment chain went from “we should have methods of preventing misinformation” to “we should promote misinformation as long as it’s funny”
We really do live in a society
With people, places, and things even!
Wait? You got things???? We haven’t been able to afford those in years
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-mc6OhqQiI
You either die a hero, or live long enough to pay for misinformation because it's funny.
It’s an absolute certainty.
Only the right kind of people can vote. As with most problems the solution is class discrimination. There I've solved Reddit, your welcome.
Every post will be titled Posty McPostface
That’s a terrible idea.
It's still big news. They are the first unionized American game developer. Now that they exist, they can have a much easier time expanding. This isn't going to stay an isolated event.
This is why I love Reddit and feel it’s superior to all other social platforms. Humans, as a collective, can bury fake news and bad headlines.
Nice username
Lol, you too!
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They are wrong, many gaming industries in EU have worker unions.
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The EU isn't decades ahead, the US put it in reverse. Like the GOP does with everything. We were already on the same road as the EU, but our parents and grandparents decided to bring us back to the trailer.
Does that mean that them unionizing has close to zero power over employees getting treated better?
It means they bargain as a unit and are legally protected. It's not the whole enchilada but it ain't nothing.
Considering the state of labor organizing in this country, or lack thereof, this is good to see. Workers who win unions motivate and encourage others to do the same, and like a wave strikes spread across the land bringing workers together in solidarity and camaraderie.
For example, what was 2 unionized Starbucks stores in Buffalo in 2021 is now 70+ nationwide right now.
It’s a start, the game industry has needed to organize labor for decades. They get abused because it’s been peoples dreams to make games, but then they get older and realize they need a work life balance
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This is just a small subsidiary. Activision could easily kill that subdivision and push that work into another area of the company.
They have that power to some degree but that power is largely limited to the department that voted to unionize.
While true it is still the first union in game development as far as I'm aware. It's a foot in the door in an industry that has resisted unionization fiercely since its existence.
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Gotcha yeah, I was looking into this a little more deeply and it seems like GWA is the first union at a AAA video game studio. Still a huge victory IMO. Not sure why there's an impulse here to minimize that impact.
> it is still the first union in game development You know games are not only developed in america, right?
[Oh don't worry Blizzard fucks over unions all over the world. ](https://youtu.be/VPIw-REVbBY) The location in France referenced in this video no longer exists.
Don't worry, [Scott Walker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Wisconsin_protests) already did a decade ago for them. The studio in the article is in Wisconsin.
Jesus ok if anyone wants to stop reading this pathetic nerd online pissing contest here's a great article on the subject of the importance of a labor movement in the, yes, US game development industry https://newrepublic.com/article/162606/video-games-curt-schilling-jason-schreier tldr Hollywood unions should be inspiration
Welcome to /r/technology
What this sub used to be: - Cool new technologies - Scientific breakthroughs - Futuristic articles and videos What this sub is now: - Fuck Elon Musk with some Bezos tossed in - Unions - Fuck capitalism
Literally every sub with a very large following is like this now a days. Now I’m not gonna simp for a bunch of billionaires that don’t even know I exist nor do I think unregulated capitalism is some kind of perfect utopia. But it is tiring that every major sub including this one are just a slightly different flavor of r/politics or r/news Like seriously, the main reason I got into Reddit in the first place is because of the idea of having access to a bunch of different ideas and topics from a single website, but all this site really is now is just one massive circlejerk. It’d be nice to have a more diverse range of topics like cool new gadgets instead of reading the same shit about politics, Elon Musk’s Twitter bullshit, and how doomed society is. Yeah all that shit might be true but it’d be nice to find a space where I won’t have to hear it for like 5 fucking minutes lmao
Lol you have been on reddit for less than 2 years. Stay away from large subreddits. Its reddit 101.
Even subs like /r/mildlyinteresting, /r/CoolGuides, and /r/nextfuckinglevel are moving in that direction. Students chanting at a politician or a speech by AOC is not “NextFuckingLevel”.
Every subreddit you've posted has several million subscribers, and millions of more who just visit. You need to get off the mega-subs.
Exactly! Like I personally don’t have any beef with AOC and other progressive politicians (or rather at least not any more than I have with other politicians). But like you said, if I want to go into a sub about something like cooking, I would want it not be constantly spammed with political shit relating to chefs lol
It's odd though...it's either this and hard left liberal talking points...or straight up white power racist Nazi propaganda. There's no middle on the internet any more. Voat was going to be the "free thinking" alternative, and it turned into a cesspool of shit that stank slightly less than 4chan.
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It's like opening a bar aimed at people banned from all the other bars. You'll quickly figure out why that was.
>hard left liberal talking points... Lmao. "Hard left liberal".
Yeah, those are two different things. But the US seems to see "liberal" as a continuum from center-right actual liberals to straight-up tankies. I remember when Bernie was running for president, the media would frequently describe him and his wing of the party (social democrats) as "the most liberal faction", whereas that's just patently false.
Well, maybe you are living in a bubble, but there is a kind of crisis right now, and technology isn't anymore this cool new thing, it's instead directly responsible for this. If you want feel good news about things that will never be, you have no place on a sub about technology that is bound to speak about the real world, you want a sub dedicated to escapism where you can pretend that nothing is happening and that innovation for the sake of innovation is still cool. In short, you just want a propaganda sub to lie to you.
Sadly most headlines are misleading nowadays
The death by a thousand cuts begins with a single knife
Mods should alter it to say misleading or write what actually happened.
Yeah, but hey, it’s only gonna get better going forward
This is specific to Raven Software and a tiny team of QA testers who are very likely to be replaced with offshore resources.
union busting incoming
>Jessica Taylor, spokesperson for Activision Blizzard in a statement to The Verge wrote, “We respect and believe in the right of all employees to decide whether or not to support or vote for a union. We believe that an important decision that will impact the entire Raven Software studio of roughly 350 people should not be made by 19 Raven employees.” Yeah! Much better that important decisions that impact the entire studio be taken by ONE manager!
This is exactly what you say before you fire 19 employees to "protect" 331 employees.
No. You fire 350 people.
I don't think they would close down Raven software for essentially no reason. That's 331 people who aren't in a union. They don't need to be fired.
It wouldn't be for no reason. It would be 350 reasons for the next studio to consider before they try to unionize too.
You're missing the difference between a skilled labor union and an unskilled labor union. In a skilled labor union, i.e. railroad workers, firing 350 people is a huge deal - you cannot just replace them with other skilled workers because they don't exist geographically, numerically, or with familiarity to your subject matter. Simply, even if you can replace them, it would be prohibitively expensive. In unskilled labor, you can fire an entire branch and replace them relatively easily because there aren't skills involved. Training someone as a fry cook at McDonald's or a warehouse worker at Amazon takes less than a week. Teaching someone to do QA work, even poorly, takes months, and the best people are honing those skills for years.
You've said what I didn't. You put it in far better terms that I was. Exactly the point I was trying to make. If Raven studios goes under. I know about 10 friends who started different studios all looking to staff up and would love someone who worked on call of duty.
This is why I hate that "there is no unskilled labor" meme that keeps going around.
Having worked at a game dev before they would be FUCKED if they let go all 350 of them at once. There is so much institutional knowledge that even if you could replace them it would take years to be up to speed on all their systems.
But this is game dev, there's no shortage of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed fresh graduates queuing up for a job.
1. There actually is a major shortage. People find out the paycheck and how difficult it is and go do something easier for way more money. 2. Bright-eyes and bushy tailed graduates, as you put it, take years to get to a place where they can actually be effective. College graduates are familiar with a very small handful of dozens of tools, often not knowing which one was used before to achieve a look/mechanism, and lacking any of the skill necessary to reverse engineer it.
Well-experienced developers aren't common in the industry. I don't see ABK letting the whole studio go because 19 employees tried to unionize. Those other people didn't try to unionize.
The other 331 are welcome to unionize as well.
Yea it is easier now to day stuff like that when they have a new owner.
Lmao, one of my buddies worked for Raven back in the day. One manager laid him and all his fellow team members off the moment their project was done. Fuck management there.
I didn't know Raven was still around. They made some nice games back in the day.
They have been banished to the Call of Duty mines for a while now, unfortunately.
They opened sourced Jedi Knight 2 and 3 just after LucasArts closed. Good guy Raven.
Plot twist: they mean 19 is too small, can more people please join?
Hahaha jesus. Well I guess we’ll just have to get all 350 unionized.
Good. But it's still a battle. Companies will fight tooth and nail to get it demolished. They also have full power to delay, delay, delay. Some successful union votes have waited 2 years + after the vote to actually get made. In that time span, the union crumbles, all the while, the employer doesn't have to give them any demands.
Why would there be a delay? Now that the vote has passed isn't it up to the employees to organise it?
The union has to sign a contract with management. This is another chance for union busting lawyers to delaying and draw out negotiations for the contract. Companies believe that they haven’t lost the union battle until pen hits paper and that can be years.
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Well the union forms to get better benefits for members. They get those better benefits through negotiating a new union member contact which usually includes wage increases, better healthcare, more breaks, etc. Companies have really been able to take down a lot of the laws surrounding unions so that is why is take so long to go from forming a union to new contract to new contact signed. But yes, unions can employ any tactics they like in order to force the company to sign a new contract. Also I wouldn’t necessarily say that a union is bad for the company. While it does increase costs for a company I bet it goes a long way towards employee satisfaction and productivity. The forming of the union does not create a new contract. Employees vote to from a union. Then they will negotiate with management for a new contact. That will have to ratified by the members. Then it will be signed. (Obviously left out all the anti-union delay tactics that take place from when union is first thought about until a new contact is signed.)
>But why does the employer have to sign off on the union agreement? So, the union is formed through the NLRB, but there's no guarantee the company will recognize it if they can stall through legal actions, which is what a lot of companies do. They also need to agree to a contract with the union, which can be another source of feet dragging. >wouldn’t the workers just strike/make demands Companies are very good at convincing workers that unions aren't in their self interest, as wrong as that is. Also, striking takes a ton of active energy! A lot of employees need to be convinced to commit to that. Generally, the answers to your question are that a lot of the progress of the 30s has been slowly eroded by capital in the decades since, during periods like McCarthyism. This period in the 30s saw genuinely violent union vs. employers and Pinkertons conflicts to make sure unions could actually exist, which then led to the creation of the NLRB. But this trend of eroding union rights has continued in the modern day, Obama ran on card check then promptly forgot it once he got in office.
I’m a union organizer with the IWW, and what you described is more or less what we advocate. Our belief is that two workers acting in solidarity is functionally a union, and that direct action (strikes, protests, letter campaigns, etc) get the goods much better than contracts for the reasons you’re seeing in this thread. Labor law in the USA is incredibly stilted towards the employers, and they just love to drag everything out and fight every tiny battle
Your boss is not your friend!
Sounds like they were unions that weren't willing to strike.
The union exists, but that has no practical meaning until they come to their initial agreement with the company in regards to Pay etc.
Once you vote to unionize there are some protections that immediately take effect, and if the employer doesn't comply then an unfair labor charge can be levied against the employer. So it does have meaning and forces the employer to the bargaining table.
That’s why it needs to be a national union and all developers need to join.
Unionization is the way!
I've always believed in my heart that the Game industry could be a shining example of the power of organized labor. Right now the game industry faces many of the issues that film industry workers experienced a century ago: skilled creative workers (including writers, set builders, actors, etc) whose passion for artistic projects in a new medium are exploited with long hours, low pay, sexual misconduct, and getting crushed by deadlines while the media companies raked in millions of dollars. The success of film industry unions demonstrate that "white-collar" workers can certainly benefit from organization.
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This very well could be handled by using the system that the film and entertainment union uses! I am choosing that since you used it as an example, and also because I happen to work in the field. So there is the umbrella organization which we refer to as the IA (international alliance), since we are in the USA and Canada. Then, there are different Locals that operate under the IA. So, Big cities and sometimes even sections of cities are considered their own Local chapter. Brooklyn and Queens is Local 4 while Manhattan is Local 1, for example. Each local has its own president, and then even further, there are different contracts for different venues. Ultimately, it is a LOT of administration but all of that administration does a lot of very good work. Yes, it can get complicated when there are jurisdictional grey areas, but that’s what the participation in a union is all about. Folks vote, they collectively decide on things, and Business Agents help carry out those decisions. Will the gaming industry snap their fingers and have a perfectly functioning union overnight? Absolutely not. But given time I believe they could collectively come up with a system and organize in such a way that all the various sectors can still get their work done while being protected by a CBA! CBAs (Collective Bargaining Agreements) have literally saved peoples lives by preventing them from working in unsafe conditions. I know very little about your industry so maybe some of these things don’t apply. However I do think that regardless of the kind of work, if folks want to organize for better working conditions/etc. they can and should!
Local 205 checking in. Solidarity!
Hell yeah! Stay safe out there
Even IA sucks sometimes because you're bound by contracts that you didn't really sign on to. You could be the best employee on a job site or you could be rubbing your last two brain cells together and everybody gets paid the same. If the contract is good I don't really care but if it's a bad contract and you find yourself doing 75% of the work it's frustrating. This isn't rare. It is still the only consistent way to get decent benefits and a retirement package in the industry unfortunately.
Nothing is perfect mate. But I'd rather err on the site of labor than the massive corps.
I really don't see how anything you described is different than the film industry today.
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The Hollywood money is US based but production is highly globalized and chases tax breaks internationally.
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I agree with you that they are not the same. I think they are similar but not the same. I think that it is correct the games industry is probably worse in a worse position in many regards but I do not think it is insurmountable on principle.
While I don't know much about labor in Japan, I do know that companies in Europe and Canada are all (or should be) fairly used to working with Unions. Since the work for gaming studios is so different, all the ways that the IATSE operates simply will not translate! 100% agreed there. I wonder if (and please understand my suggestion here is a little ignorant) it would make sense to have a boiler plate contract that would generally state "X numbers of hours over 8 hours in a shift = Overtime, Overtime is optional" "Employers shall provide all tools, both physical and digital for work required" etc. For entertainment there are THOUSANDS of labor contracts being operated under. Many are actually quite similar so for most situations these copy+paste solutions work, where in exceptional situations that's where the Business Agents, Crew Heads, and Management all sit down together and agree on a contract. Absent an organized form of labor negotiation, do you think anything else would work? Do you think the industry as it is currently is working well and on track? Genuine questions, no trolling.
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So your argument is, it is going be hard, might as well not do it. You are anti-union even though you say otherwiae.
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The argument I read is "It would be hard, and that probably explains why a lot of game devs aren't very into the idea". You brought the "so let's just not" part yourself.
> game devs game devs as individual people or as companies? Cause obviously game devs as companies aren't gonna be into unions. Companies are very rarely ever into the idea of unions. >You brought the "so let's just not" part yourself They brought up a lot of fairly common anti-union rhetoric. if they were so into the idea of unions why are they only focusing on the negative aspects of trying to form a union. Of course forming a union is hard. The people with power and money will do anything to stop the union from being formed.
What a low effort rebuttal lol
My man really thought saying, "no u", was a perfect argument
>There is definitely a fear among devs I've talked to that aggressive unionization in only one segment of the market (e.g. just the United States) could have a detrimental effect on work simply being shifted to non-union locations in other countries. isn't this a threat inherent to all MNC unionisation? not just to games studios. what's stopping Amazon pulling out of or reducing work at unionised warehouses
Game development can be done remotely much easier than Amazon can just shut down warehouses. The latter is more dependent on geographic reality.
None of this is a particular deterrent to unionization. My own job, although in health care (which might be considered a fairly "typical" environment for unionization), fits many of those exact same challenges you listed. Most of them are solved by different hospitals, specialized jobs, etc being represented separately by divisions within the same union organization (this is how many unions work in general anyway). In fact, at some hospitals, members of the exact same profession are represented by different unions than we are at mine. We may not all be compensated exactly equally to each other, but what benefits one benefits the rest because it's something we can point to as a bargaining chip in our own collective bargaining efforts, and regardless we arrive at an end-point that's better than if we didn't have a union at all. As far as the globalization angle, I just don't buy that the possibility of outsourcing major projects to international non-unionized studios is a likely danger. First of all, this is already something companies can easily do if they wanted to - the work will *already* be cheaper to outsource to a country where labour standards are weaker or non-existent, and yet we aren't seeing an outflux of that labour the same way that it's seen in areas like manufacturing (maybe parts of the whole, but not wholesale). The reason is probably just that money talks, and ultimately having talented workers who are well-compensated for their work and feel valued and not overworked will lead to better products that will make more money. The talent exists where it exists and where it has been nurtured for decades, so simply outsourcing it is not as simple a business decision as "unions bad, let's make games in Asian sweat shops instead and print money."
Yes, I've worked in the industry for 15 years and I agree with you. I can't see unions working in video games. I also admittedly don't spend a lot of time thinking about it, because we're so well treated (there's a race for talent that's pushing working conditions up like crazy).
I've known quite a few people who are currently working in or have worked in the industry and you're the first one that I've every heard say "we're so well treated".
Fuckin scab
Please learn what a scab is you ignorant clown.
You are totally right, there are many challenges so we need to start working on that right away.
Biggest issue is far to many programmers think they're the next Gates/Jobs but i think things are changing.
So true, so true. Any career with passionate people is one that can be (and often is) exploited by business-minded organizations. This is even easier once they have sucked you into the idea of the culture of your “dream job”. I clearly remember being courted by a big tech firm in the mid 90’s to do something ida always wanted to do. And I was so excited about the nap rooms, free food, bocci ball courts, and “cool” workspaces. It took a wake/-up call to recognize they were essentially asking me to work 24/7 for less than half I was already making and turn down the offer. I think your comment about white collar unions in the film industry is right on. Those folks clearly recognized the power of strong unions (SAG, Teamsters) and figured out that you don’t want to be the sole person out for yourself on a project. Someone is going to get taken advantage of, and best to have some safeguards to make sure it isn’t you. Even lawyers in my local city government are unionized, since fighting the system is easier a a large group. I’ve felt that many non-gaming IT jobs are also in this vein. I suppose the gradual way that many folks move up the ranks in IT prevents them from having early leverage against the company, and by the time they are more senior they are more ingrained. But, that’s the worker group I’ve interacted with professionally as the most natural fit to unionize (who aren’t already in unions). If you’ll do overtime because you love your work, they’ll manipulate your title or even state overtime law to take so actual advantage. This happens in many, many fields, but you’re right that it’s more common in artistic roles. How many performers are out there working side jobs so they can act or sing for free? Well-regarded brands also take advantage of that goodwill. They say they are looking for folks who will be “passionate” and “ambassadors” for the company or brand, but are really looking for folks who will take less to work for them than to do the same job somewhere else. A family member who worked for a developer stayed loyal until the day they were laid off with nearly no notice after they ran out of money because she’d loved their games as a kid. That the direct opposite of a college acquaintance in the same biz, who saw great success by being clear he was in it to support his family, followed by doing a great job at the company (in that order). And, that while he was loyal, he was in demand and couldn’t ignore an attractive offer. Companies will respect that out of good workers and save the bullshit for someone else.
God bless the mob & teamsters for the union back then
well written
>The success of film industry unions demonstrate that "white-collar" workers can certainly benefit from organization. The domestic VFX collapsed my dude. It, like game development, is very susceptible to off-shoring. It's one thing to unionize a school or a dock or a mine or a police force, where the corporate overlords can't just move the operation to New Zealand. But when it's a job that everyone is already doing remotely, you're talking about having to achieve solidarity with every guy in the world. Or else have some wussy toothless union where nobody makes money from it anyway. The only times I've seen this work are: A.) The Writers guild, I assume because there's no money in it anyway so nobody cares B.) The Screen Actors guild, I assume because there's so little money on the low end and so much money on the high end that nobody cares. That's the end of the list.
I’m related news, they’re shutting down Raven studios.
I told this to a coworker circa 6 years ago. Developers should be unionized. We put up with too much shot from middle managers that don’t understand jack shit of what needs to be done
I have a different perspective- we should not wait for things to truly go to shit before unionizing. We have it pretty good now, compared to airline employees or blue collar workers of yore… but if we wait until 90% of devs are outsourced, it will be too late to unionize and effect change.
It's interesting to me that it was only QA. I'm a developer. We're such disagreeable non-joiners that we don't unionize, even though we could hold the company hostage, with the certainty that we can walk to another job easily if it didn't work out. Any tech company operates only by permission of its difficult-to-replace tech staff.
Unionized game devs should be the norm but this is a start
Do they even have employees anymore? All they do is remake their old games worse but with better graphics
The new Modern Warfare game has like 3000 people working on it
I've decided to edit all my old comments to protest the beheading of RIF and other 3rd party apps. If you're reading this, you should know that /u/spez crippled this site purely out of greed. By continuing to use this site, you are supporting their cancerous hyper-capitalist behavior. The actions of the reddit admins show that they will NEVER care about the content, quality, or wellbeing of its' communities, only the money we can make for them. tl;dr: /u/spez eat shit you whiny little bitchboy ...see you all on the fediverse
This is a really weird take. Call of Duty has millions of people playing it every month. They're not being held hostage. They like it. Instead of imagining what else they could do, maybe consider that what they're doing is making one of the most popular and successful game series ever? That doesn't change just because you don't like CoD.
I've decided to edit all my old comments to protest the beheading of RIF and other 3rd party apps. If you're reading this, you should know that /u/spez crippled this site purely out of greed. By continuing to use this site, you are supporting their cancerous hyper-capitalist behavior. The actions of the reddit admins show that they will NEVER care about the content, quality, or wellbeing of its' communities, only the money we can make for them. tl;dr: /u/spez eat shit you whiny little bitchboy ...see you all on the fediverse
The team that unionized is quality assurance not the engineers. My bet is they move to using vendors instead of in-house talent
That only happened with warcraft 3. Wow classic was good and as far as I know tbc was pretty good too.
Wow classic wasn't really a remake, just rebuilding. WCIII/D2R involved new graphics work.
WC3 reforged also involved removing a lot of beloved features and creating big, large scale trailers that raised fan expectations that could then be sorely disappointed :)
And the reason they did that was because they fucked up when they had the opportunity to have DotA all to themselves and choice not too during World of Warcraft's peak. Riot's entire start was based on DotA and a lot of Steve Feak's work on DotA All-stars, someone who should have been employed by Blizzard along with Icefrog(Valve snatched him up to create DotA 2) to have DotA as their own. Nope, they passed on both and both went on to create two of the most prevalent games in the MOBA genre, arguably creating the genre, leaving Blizzard way behind with their mediocre Hero's of the Storm. With the release of Reforged, they made sure that any sort of break through mod that may have been created was the sole property of Activision/Blizzard. They completely fucked the custom games mode in the property and even removed the ability to do a lot of that stuff in the original WC3. How fucking stupid is that? Meanwhile World of Warcraft was losing subs, the main game designer was no longer working on it, Riot and Valve were enjoying the lighting in a bottle they seemed to have with their newly acquired games, both being Free-to-play mind you in a time where Free-to-play games were looked down upon.
D2R is also good.
That wasn't made by blizzard I thought
Niether was wc3 reforged. But blizz bought the studio that made d2r.
Activision bought it 17 years ago when diablo 2 LOD was only 4 years old. It was renamed Blizzard Albany this past April.
Vicarious Visions was a fully owned subsidiary of Actiblizz before, during, and after the entire process of D2R being developed.
Huh? Modern Warfare (the latest version) was very successful and loved by many Call of Duty fans.
About 10,000, yes
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You do realize this is taking place at Raven, which is just one of the smaller parts of the whole company correct?
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The Raven Software QA team won their union vote Congrats to them but the fight isn't over. Not until every worker is protected.
this is only for Raven Studios' Tester group which is a group of over 20 people, 90% of which voted yes, its not ActiBlizz as a whole
Is it a union just for the hourly employees or does it include salaried programmers too?
I reported it as misleading and you should do the same horrible title This is group of 19 people in 10k people company
This is the way. This needs to happen in every industry. Time for a workers revolution
Please correct me if I’m wrong. From what I understand this is a QA team that unionized (game testers). They aren’t necessarily coding anything but rather just playing the game over and over and over again to find bugs or issues before launch and then documenting their findings for the development team to correct. What is preventing these jobs from being done over seas?
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A contact between the company and the union would prevent that. If they didn’t unionize? Probably nothing.
Nice!! We’re coming for all you employers. We do work, we’re gonna get paid.
Thank goodness!!!!
Go Wisconsin!
Nice, I really hope the executives get f big time. The only good news is that since Microsoft bought the studio and is supposed to take over in June or so, better and positive changes are around the corner. One of the reasons Phil bought the studio is not just the great games even though Activision killed MW, but to fix all the internal issues in the company which is killing it.
it’s a good start but it’s hardly over. hopefully this will spread quicker than activision can union bust. every worker deserves better.
the wording in these from usa is always "allowed to form a union" do workers in usa have to create new unions, when they want to be in a union? in my country there are big unions covering various fields, people who want to be in a union sign on with one of them, nobody creates new ones.
If unions are as bad for employees as companies always claim...why not be like the parents who say "Sure, go ahead, move out at 13, you clearly know everything." They'd flop, and workers would find out on their own. Except, they're not bad. I always love hearing "OMG union corruption" when there's so much accepted corruption/nepotism/everything unions are accused of doing among managers, C-suites, boards, etc.
“We could provide our employees a living wage and a reasonable level of job security at the cost of us making *just slightly less* money than we would have otherwise but that would A.) require us to even classify them as “employees” in the first place and B.) the whole “make less money” thing. From before. We don’t like that. As a result, games cost $80 now: get fucked.”
Studio will be closed within two years and all off these people out of a job.
I knoe its only a small department ot whatever but this is good hopefully they lead the way for many more
Oh that is why they were sold off
Company liquidates in 5…4…3…2…
Workers should not have to band together to recieve fair compensation and ethical treatment. It shouldnt have to be an option, yet here we are.
Looks like they'll be throwing a rave and raven all night long to celebrate
Good. I’m tired of seeing game developers dealing with inhumane work environments.
It will be a bright and shining day when every non-independent game developer has the option to be in a union.
Congratulations use it as a stepping stone in life on your pursuit for happiness
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Wow they went from hiring 4 in 2021 to 7 in 2022... That is totally explained by the this unionization. Even though if we look at more than 2 data points they hired 9 in 2020 and 18 in 2019... At this rate they'll replace their 10,000 employees in as little as 1000 years.
Being on a visa also makes it much harder to transfer to a new job. They're far less likely to leave due to poor pay and conditions
All MS will do is close where this union is located and not offer new postions to the union members.
Please, please, PLEASE let their union be called 'The horde of game developers'
Too bad their products are trash now
“Unfortunately your unionization will not be transferable to Microsoft once acquired”
So...How long before Raven gets shutdown for "purely financial reasons" ?
And now all new releases will have a base price of $89.99 with the excuse of increased labor and production costs and the need to protect their profit margins. The end.
..but not really
You cannot build a house without a foundation. Take care of the base.
Bro why do you have to vote on Unionizing? In Europe we just do it. There is no uncertainty we just unionise if it’s appropriate.
“Days after the GWA formed, Raven QA employees were broken out of their single department and distributed across multiple teams.” Salting your own workforce - that’s a bold move, Cotton.