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Game Industry Workers Get Voice

Posted by Zonk on

Shodan writes "eToychest writes that a new game union of sorts has been formed to both recruit new industry talent, as well as give them a unified voice when it comes to maintaining a work/life balance. PEER (Professional Electronic Entertainment Recruiters) was created to establish and maintain ethical work standards and optimum recruiting service for game industry developers, publishers, and related industry companies." From the article: "The part that catches my eye is 'ethical work standards', which I cannot help but think was established, at least in part, due to all of the fervor surrounding EA and the treatment of its employees. The group seems to be a sort of 'worker's union', as they say that in an era where quality of life and rapid growth are chief concerns, PEER gives its members 'a representative voice.'" It will be interesting to see where this leads.

19 of 48 comments (clear)

  1. This is not a union at all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is a group of recruiters who get from 15%-30% of the first years salary as a placement fee.

  2. Just another form of Peer to Peer comunications by technoextreme · · Score: 2, Interesting

    that some companies will try and squash.

    --
    Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
  3. Unions... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...the best way to get your job outsourced!

    Unions are bred out of necessity, don't get me wrong. They are a great way for truly oppressed workers to force a change for the better. But, the problem is, once they get up a head a steam they become unstoppable juggernauts. Eventually, they run their own business into the ground. They first use their power to lift themselves up to some necessary minimum standards, then they force things, slowly but steadily, more and more in their favor. Until, eventually, they are getting guaranteed easy work at excellent pay from which it's nearly impossible to fire them. With costs so high, The Man to whom they just Stuck It To hemmorhages to death.

    With some notable exceptions, game industry workers have it pretty good over all. You hear lots of talk about EA in particular, but nobody ever mentions their nice benefits packages. Last I checked -- this may not be true any more -- salaried professionals there get stock options and bonuses, along with PPO medical coverage (that includes drugs, pretty standard dental, and even a little for vision as well), and respectable paid time off. I worked there five years, and while I was called on to put in long weeks every now and again, those were the exception rather than the rule. Mostly they were 50-hour "crunch" time weeks, with a couple 60-hour ones thrown in, maybe 5-10 weeks out of the year. The rest of the time it was 8x5, with the occasional company-provided beer party starting on a Friday afternoon (during business hours) thrown in to help everybody unwind after meeting a milestone.

    The game industry doesn't need a union. We're not the underpaid, overworked, downtrodden masses people want to think we are.

    1. Re:Unions... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Great republican attack line, but generally not true, just FUD.

      Chances are that if you are working at a place where they will try to get rid of you when you unionize (i.e. Wal*Mart), you have a piss poor job anyway and no other choice.

      Next you will claim they outsourced, lets say production of The Simpsons to Asia because the artists doing it where unionized.

    2. Re:Unions... by mad.frog · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Glad to hear you had an OK experience there. Many others at EA didn't share that experience.

      Had a reputable union been available during my stint at EA, I would have joined in a heartbeat. I don't know if the game *industry* needs a union, but EA (when I was there) absolutely did.

    3. Re:Unions... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      While I wouldn't call myself downtrodden (I don't work for EA), my girlfriend, who works for a retail chain, has benefits comparable to mine, and when she was promoted to manager she's paid a wage (not salary) that isn't too far off from mine. She doesn't have to deal with overtime (because the company doesn't want to pay it), and she comes home every day after eight hours. Granted, those eight hours might be in the morning or the evening, but its always eight hours. Compare to me, who even when I am home I am usually on my computer with my dev kit, crunching away on some chunk of code. I'm not doing BAD, but I don't have nearly the free time, and I often question if my work is worth it. Contrast with my friends at EA who I never get to see, and you can tell that this industry as a whole needs some help, and I believe that a voice is the best help we could get. But then again, maybe its just those poor people at EA that need it.

    4. Re:Unions... by Dachannien · · Score: 2, Informative

      The U.S. auto and airline industries have been in such dire straits because of their pension and health plans, which became exorbitant because of the continuous hardball played by the labor unions.

      The problem isn't the concept of the labor union, though, but rather the execution. Since unions are controlled by elected officials who serve as career union officers, they effectively have a mandate to continue to negotiate new contracts further and further in favor of the workers, even when all of the issues of safety and exploitation have long since been resolved. If they don't deliver, they don't get re-elected, and then they're out of a job.

      Ideally, the company and the union would negotiate a contract that specified an indexed annual cost-of-living adjustment and reasonable benefits, and the two could go for decades just rubber-stamping the same contract over and over again. You wouldn't need some nationwide bureaucratic organization overseeing the contract negotiations - you'd just need a few of the most well-respected guys from the shop floor to come in and make sure the company just wanted to renew the same contract. But when you have career union officers running the show, even a fair deal isn't good enough.

    5. Re:Unions... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I would have to say the opposite of what you just said. I worked for EA for over 3 years and although the permanent full time employees do get nice benefits there aren't that many permanent full time employees. EA had a bad habit of keeping people in a temporary or probationary position for multiple years before finally giving them a permanent position and those nice benefits. But that is just health coverage; the majority of permanent employees no longer get bonuses. They were phased out for stock options that you must retain employment as a permanent employee for a minimum of a year in order to take part of. So I would say you would have to be working for EA for a minimum of 2 years before you get to enjoy most of their benefits.

      Also the hours you described were far from the norm of what I experienced. Although there are some employees that get the luxury of 50-hour weeks, 5-10 weeks out of the year those are the people that actually are on a project from conception to completion (executives, some management and a few produces and programmers) the majority were being shifted from project to project working the crunch hours on every project that went though the studio.

      EA has a lot of nice benefits. But they have a lot of ways to avoid them being given out to their employees in mass. Those benefits are reserved for the most senior employees only.

      With that in mind I don't think that unions are a good idea either. The game industry is unstable enough with so many studios collapsing every month adding a thing like unions would just solidify even more that only the big game studios can make it.

    6. Re:Unions... by CastrTroy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I have the same opinion of unions. They sprout up when they need to, when things are really bad, but they stay around even when things are good, pushing the company for more and more. I'd have to even wonder if there is a need for unions in first world countries. Most of the things that unions originally fought for are now in law, so that employees aren't working in dangerous conditions, or aren't working 80 hours a week without proper compensation. There are still a few places where unions could help when employees aren't getting quite as much money as they should. Most of the examples i've seen lately of unions are people getting more than they deserve for a job, or businesses staffing everyone as "temporary part time" even if they've been there for 3 years, working 30 hours a week, because it costs 3 times as much once someone is in the union.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    7. Re:Unions... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The problem is that unions, like standing armies, have to be around in order to be unnecessary.

    8. Re:Unions... by elrous0 · · Score: 2, Funny
      PPO medical coverage (that includes drugs, pretty standard dental, and even a little for vision as well)

      I can also attest that it covers mental health treatment. I had a friend who worked there and they were very generous with benfits after he ended up on that bridge with the rifle. I look after him now, and he's making real progress. Last night he didn't have a single coding-related nightmare!

      -Eric

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  4. I noticed by Daysaway · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The IGDA website is devoid of any mention of this new group. The International Game Developers Association already has a substantial presence in the industry.

    --
    Colonel Cranium this is Rectal Reconnaissance, we are on a collision course sir, Abort Abort!
  5. Bah, game developers have it easy by afaik_ianal · · Score: 2, Funny

    So what if they have to work 80+ hours per week. Back in my day, I had to work 80 hours per day!

    1. Re:Bah, game developers have it easy by mad.frog · · Score: 2, Funny

      You were lucky. We used to dream of working 80 hours a day.

      In my day, we were expected to work 80 hours an hour. And during crunch time, 80 hours a minute.

  6. Recruiting company, not a union by cgenman · · Score: 2, Informative

    I don't see how this is a union. PEER is a recruiting company, and all of their goals revolve around this. "advance professional external recruiting," "improve and manifest the livelihoods of the candidates seeking career growth opportunities," "develop and improve the necessary skills to achieve high performance in professional external recruiting."

    Sure, it's a recruiting company with noble goals, and if I needed a recruiter that's who I would turn to. But it is a recruiting company, not a union.

    --
    The ______ Agenda
    1. Re:Recruiting company, not a union by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      For many contracting people, the recruiter is the equivalent of a union.

      I've had people ask me to work unpaid overtime. A call to the contracting company, and it went away. I've had people ask me to do things in no way related to my job description. Again, a quick call and explanation, and it went away. I've had bosses try to hold my timesheet hostage conditional on various forms of knuckling under to idiocy. A quick call, and it gets sorted out.

      The recruiting company wants money. That means they want you happy, and they want the company happy, but they definitely want all billable hours duly accounted for. In the tech industry the very worst exploitation short of outright fraud (which I experienced without a contracting firm's umbrella helping me) that I've experienced was insistence on insane hours under lousy conditions ... it sounds silly. I'm not losing fingers in a chicken processing plant, I know, but when your health and welfare deteriorate under constant stress and overwork, it stops being silly.

      Good recruiting firms know that companies often want someone they can exploit and throw out. They are there to help.

  7. No they don't. by mad.frog · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm not sure what you'd call this, but it sure ain't a union.

    More like some sort of nebulous standards body for the recruiting agencies that serve the game industry.

    And since the employer (not the employee) typically pays the recruiter's fee, color me skeptical that this is anything more than PR.

  8. Mod parent up by Animats · · Score: 3, Informative
    Right. No way is this a union. It's a trade association for headhunters. Not, incidentally, for contract-type outsourcing firms.

    What it really is, if you read their "charter", is a price-fixing scheme for headhunters. They "agree" that they should get 20% of the first year's salary, payable at hiring time.

    There's a real union for game developers - the Animation Guild, local 839, IATSE, AFL-CIO. They represent most of the animation people in Hollywood, and they're organizing game developers who are artists.

  9. Re:Is it just for the US? by malsdavis · · Score: 3, Informative

    Unions are a firm UK tradition ...just like the riots that they often cause. So there are already lots of powerful unions which UK programmers can join.

    The BECTU http://www.bectu.org.uk/ are a good one with 25,000 members, mainly media company employees though (which apparently includes Game Development). If they identify more as software engineers than game developers then there are a host of engineering unions who would accept them. Amicus http://www.amicustheunion.org/ are amongst the biggest and already have many thousands (I think) of IT employees as members.

    The TUC website http://www.tuc.org.uk/ is probably the best online resource though.