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Nearly Half of Game Developers Want To Unionize (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Unionization isn't a new idea for the game development industry, but it is a particularly hot and contentious topic right now. A handful of events in 2018 thrust the unionization conversation to the forefront, including Rockstar boss Dan Houser's comments about developers working 100-hour weeks to finish Red Dead Redemption 2, and the tragic implosion and bitter residue of Telltale Games. Groups like Game Workers Unite have been pounding the pavement (physically and digitally) and gathering support for unionization across the globe, with a goal to "bring hope to and empower those suffering in this industry." In December, a UK chapter of Game Workers Unite became a legal trade union.
With all of this conversation swirling around studio life, the folks behind the Game Developers Conference added new questions to the seventh annual State of the Industry Survey, which included responses from nearly 4,000 developers. The questions were broad: should the games industry unionize, and will the games industry unionize? Forty-seven percent of respondents said yes, game developers should unionize, while 16 percent said no and 26 percent said maybe. However, developers weren't exactly hopeful about unionization efforts. Just 21 percent of respondents said they thought the industry would unionize, and 39 percent said maybe. Twenty-four percent said it simply wasn't going to happen. The survey also found that 44 percent of developers worked more than 40 hours per week on average. Just over 1 percent said they worked more than 110 hours in a week, while 6 percent reported working 76 to 80 hours, "suggesting that deadline-related crunch can go far beyond normal working hours," according to the survey.
With all of this conversation swirling around studio life, the folks behind the Game Developers Conference added new questions to the seventh annual State of the Industry Survey, which included responses from nearly 4,000 developers. The questions were broad: should the games industry unionize, and will the games industry unionize? Forty-seven percent of respondents said yes, game developers should unionize, while 16 percent said no and 26 percent said maybe. However, developers weren't exactly hopeful about unionization efforts. Just 21 percent of respondents said they thought the industry would unionize, and 39 percent said maybe. Twenty-four percent said it simply wasn't going to happen. The survey also found that 44 percent of developers worked more than 40 hours per week on average. Just over 1 percent said they worked more than 110 hours in a week, while 6 percent reported working 76 to 80 hours, "suggesting that deadline-related crunch can go far beyond normal working hours," according to the survey.
56% work less than 40 hours? EA must be better than their reputation.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Neckbeards and Spreadsheet Sam who doesn't believe in unions because he can write a spreadsheet based on CATO institute journals that assure him that unions cause cancer.
The only reason the companies make them work this much is because they actually do it.
If they tell EA or whoever to fuck off at 5PM they wouldn't be in this shit.
You have two years experience. You get paid $72,000/year.
But I do twice the work of the old fart over there making 155k.
Sorry. Union rules. When you have 20 years experience, you too can make 155k/yr.
As a self employed software developer still going, but long in years. I am not going to say anything pro or con either way.
;)
So go for it! Good Luck and Best wishes!
Just my 2 cents
As a poor person in the third world I thank everyone unionizing for sending more jobs our way. Love you guys!
So long as it's okay for the company to hire whomever they want.
Game development is the coal mines of the software industry, these people must be masochists.
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One earlier on a glut of computer science degrees and programmers, the other a desire to unionize. With the high number of available employees they have their pick of programmers - which means if you unionize they will close up shop and go somewhere else. They can hire someone who will work more hours for less pay elsewhere. Thinking a strike would convince them - nope because their investors will just go overseas and hire even cheaper labor.
Which means the only real reason for unionizing is the age old one. To restrict the labor pool to union members only. But good luck when the Democratic Party does not give two shits about labor unions and they are big believers in open immigration and globalization. Republicans have never cared about labor unions, although they currently pay lip service to immigration and labor moving overseas just to steal votes.
Also and this cannot be understated - gaming is now similar to making films. Investors demand performance and schedules, the studios do not care about 40 hour work weeks, and you are easily replaceable. Welcome to the entertainment business.
100% of game developer companies have both the ability and motive to prevent game developers from being able to unionize in the next thousand years.
How dare they! Using historically proven method to get better work condition.
What's next? DRM-free game?
Ha! you see they will ruin everything.
Apparently the half that "wants to unionize" doesn't want it all that badly, or they would have done it already.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I come from coal country. Unions can be toxic as hell, note the shit the teamsters continue to do, and government employee unions are straight up crooked. However, I'll say that every company that's gotten a union has deserved a union for their shitty treatment of their employees.
of Jordan Huubard centralized Discussion I'm
protect the unions first then maybe the members.
I have been a member of 4 different Unions on 4 different occasions, all 4 were entirely unsatisfying.
Gaming companies are not a long term employment thing, you have to start somewhere.
Crappy jobs or predatory employers are not limited to gaming companies or coding jobs either.
I have many times voted with my finger to decline further employment from certain companies.
Sometimes my leaving benefited the remaining employees!
There are too many good places to work don't stay with a job with poor conditions. It only reinforces their continued abuse. Some companies operate purely in predatory mode by design, they lie and mask the true conditions dangling carrots while slowly turning up the heat. They prey on workers with low self esteem (willing victims).
Bringing in a third party with it's own agenda doesn't help anyone.
In California I am a Journeyman electrician the very same union will not honor my status in Oregon and offered me an Apprenticeship!
What does geography have to do with a skillset? How did I as a union member benefit.
How can a union president override a membership vote?
How can a union starting their own (for profit) health plan ask the members to vote on said health plan with no written coverage benefits or costs?
How can a union make backroom deals with employers negotiating terms against members wishes?
How can a union sell out members attempting to organize an area, for a favorable unionization deal in another area?
I choose neither of the two evils and move on.
If you're good start your own business, it's the American way.
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...If the majority of workers of this important area of economy feel unionizing (that means *standing together* and *fighting for your collective rights*) is the same as becoming lazy bums unable to care about the job they produce, then the system has won. Welcome to the Stalinist States of America. You won't oppose the system, because the system already owns you.
The only thing that saves individual persons from losing their work conditions, their freedom, their right to have a family and actually get to spend some time with them... Is standing together and stopping abusive bosses from demanding to put the company ahead of their own life and health.
ya know what this creates? HOLLYWOOD 2.0 where everything ois so costly no fucking way, and you cant do it yourself ever...FUCK THIS SHIT
my experience with older coworkers has not been positive. This isn't going to be a popular thing to say on this forum, but, well, they're often sick, leaving the young guys to do their work. When they're not out sick they seem to have a strong sense of entitlement lacking from the young guys which basically means they're happy to dump their work on them and use their seniority to goof off all day.
Worse, a lot of them have atrophied tech skills. I've seen older coworkers who have to bee kept away from important work because they'll screw it up and make the team look bad. I've seen them repeatedly outmaneuvered when negotiating which team would be responsible for dull, repetitive tasks (which they then stick the young guys with).
I wouldn't care, but bean counters are always looking for teams that do simple, repetitive things and then outsourcing/firing them. In a modern enterprise you're often trying to keep one step ahead of the bean counter's by bringing complex, useful work into your wheelhouse, and every place I've been the old guys just can't do it unless they've been doing it for 20 years.
This is all in line with what we know about age related cognitive decline and just plain what it means to get older. Very few re unaffected by aging. Yes, it happens, but our society has a bad habit of holding freaks of nature up as the norm.
I'd rather see more serious discussions on how to get old folks who are still working to retire sooner. I'm sick and tired of folks who are too sick and tired to be working holding a position they don't particularly want because they need a paycheck after Wallstreet stole their pension and 401k.
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One of the things I find fascinating about the MAGA crowd who want to bring jobs back paying $50 / hour building refrigerators is the degree to which many of them are anti-union - Because SOCIALISM.
...yet when did America enjoy some of its strongest economic growth? The '50s - The period it seems many MAGA folk want to return to - When union membership peaked at 35%.
I bet many of the people on this thread who are anti-union voted for Trump.
Today it's sitting at around 11%.
you god damn lazy bums
So many of these "developers" were just teens who assumed that game development was going to be anything like playing the games they love. Then, because they were so excited and didn't look into what that kind of career actually entails, they're shocked to learn that game development is mostly sweatshop work. So now they want a union to find them a safe space because they fucked up.
Having a union just gives you a second boss. They generally don't give a crap about the workers and simply manage to kill the business with stupid rules. Hell, some of them were run by the mob. Tell us again how great they were, please, I note that you don't give examples of them actually helping, you merely try to associate them with good times without explaining how they caused those (hint: these things take time, they'd have to cause that *before*)
The same time period you quote was when large portions of the rest of the world had most of their infrastructure damaged, so we had little competition. Once competition came online, heavily unionized industries like the automotive industry were severely hurt by competition that didn't need a union guy to plug in every damned piece of equipment or whatever.
I recollect having discussions with engineers in the early 90s about unions. I argued sure unions can be corrupt or inefficient but you have someone advocating for you. The other guys would say "Oh if you are good at what you do, you don't need a union" and to some extent they had a point. Guess what happend to most of those engineers?..... drum roll .......
They were replaced by cheaper less qualified workers on H1B1 visas.
Having a union would have provided push back to the industry which used the H1B1 visa to replace more expensive labor. I talked to my representative years ago and she said, they were getting INCREDIBLE pressure to allow workers in on visas and there wasn't anyone on the other side advocating for American engineers.
The benefit of "crunch time" is that it forces management to make the decisions they should have made months/years before. It has no benefit for programmers or the product.
Christ on a stick, we've been taken advantage of for 3 decades. Made to be on call 24x7 for any reason, paid less than the idiot marketing dept that keeps making my life a living hell, always scrutinized by upper management because the can't quantify my value if everything is running smoothly and output is normal. All the while, being threatened with outsourcing the job to some 3rd party in india.
Bottom line is that the companies we work for could not run without us.
The UAW workers didn't outsource their jobs overseas, the owners bought the government who made the workers sit idly by while the owners shipped off the jobs. Ya know, EXACTLY THE KIND OF EMPLOYEE ABUSE UNIONS ARE DESIGNED TO STOP.
Troll harder.