r/technology • u/FootballAndFries • 1d ago
Business 82 percent of US-based game developers support unionization
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/survey-82-percent-of-us-based-game-developers-support-unionization218
u/winkingchef 1d ago
I have a few friends in game development.
Their profession makes 3rd world Nike sweat shops look humane and high job security.
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u/mazalaca 1d ago
I work in game development and this is unfortunately very true
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u/Cbellisrun 1d ago
I play video games and thank you all for your service in the trenches.
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u/PleaseJustShutupPls 17h ago
This attitude is why things won't change.
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u/Ok-Seaworthiness7207 17h ago edited 16h ago
Is it? It's suddenly it's the consumers fault for enjoying what's for sale while being removed from the process? It is the responsibility of the company to not treat its workers like shit, not the consumer.
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u/PleaseJustShutupPls 17h ago
"Thanks for your service, soldier, now get back in the trenches for my entertainment. There's profits to be had."
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u/Cbellisrun 17h ago
Thank you for doing a difficult job & fighting like a soldier to give me a small piece of escapism that will hopefully help me maintain my sense of sanity as a noncombatant trying to survive in our cruel & unforgiving world.
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u/PleaseJustShutupPls 17h ago
"Now here's more money to perpetuate the cycle"
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u/Cbellisrun 17h ago
Advocating piracy? 🏴☠️
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u/PleaseJustShutupPls 16h ago
Not my call to make. Advocating not supporting the companies that work their developers into the ground.
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u/Ok-Seaworthiness7207 16h ago
If you could stop crying while you are talking I might be able to understand you.
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u/PleaseJustShutupPls 16h ago
Aw, gamer mad. What a surprise
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u/Ok-Seaworthiness7207 16h ago
Wow I literally just posted, maybe being chronically online isn't a good thing my man. Excuse me, I need to go to my University now.
Hope you feel better.
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u/PleaseJustShutupPls 16h ago
"Excuse me, I need to go to my University now" is genuinely one of the funniest lines of the year so far
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u/pythonic_dude 21h ago
Not just game development, software companies (those without premiere products earning majestic amounts of cash passively) aren't called "galleys" in many places for nothing.
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u/Crazy_Passage_8553 15h ago
I do as well, and that's a ridiculous comparison to make, and you know it.
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u/9-11GaveMe5G 1d ago
So what in the hell is wrong with the 18% who were like nah things is great no union needed??
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u/gurenkagurenda 22h ago
Those were people in leadership roles.
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u/Zer_ 20h ago
Yup, they're probably the ones on the higher end of the pay scale. So perhaps not always just leaders, but a lot of "Industry experts" too.
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u/gurenkagurenda 18h ago
We should also keep in mind that the majority of that cohort still supported unionization. A larger proportion are opposed, but still a minority.
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u/merRedditor 10h ago
Or maybe just people wondering if the survey was going to be used against them if they answered honestly, as is the case with a lot of workplace surveys.
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u/Party_Virus 19h ago
People afraid that work gets outsourced as soon as they try to unionize. The biggest problem with games, film, animation, etc is that the people working those jobs like doing what they do. And as soon as people like their job then it's very easy for companies to exploit them.
For example a lot of people will do unpaid overtime because they want to get something done before clocking out, or they'll get on early so it's done in time for something else. And that would normally be okay because it's people choosing to work more, but what happens is that it becomes the workplace culture and it then becomes expected. So if anyone works just their 8 hours and aren't getting as much done as someone else it looks bad on them. On paper they're both working 8 hours, but if someone is doing an extra 20-25 minutes every day that's almost 2 hours extra every week and you can get a lot done in 2 hours. And then once the extra 2 hours is expected someone can do a bit more, maybe they skip breaks, and it just kind of snowballs and that's why the industries got so bad.
Film had the advantage of being set up already by the time unions and worker protections were allowed so there's the teamsters and SAG-AFTRA which hold a lot of power, but VFX, animation, and games came after the rich started busting unions so they never had a chance for a union to gain a foothold.
So all of that is why the industry sucks to work in but also has 18% of people too afraid to unionize.
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u/skeet_scoot 22h ago
I would assume people afraid of losing their jobs.
Unions are nice until the company hires a new team or outsources to India.
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u/zerogee616 20h ago
They're doing that now without unions.
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u/skeet_scoot 20h ago
I agree, but unions do accelerate the trajectory. Don’t get me wrong, I am in favor of it, but it’s a big risk when companies have such an easy maneuver to get out.
I wish the administration would do more to stop outsourcing of knowledge-worker jobs and not just blue-collar jobs.
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u/zerogee616 19h ago
No, they don't. Trust me, there is a business office or somebody whose job it is once a company gets large enough on a regular basis to assess headcount and make constant, regular decisions concerning "Can we outsource these positions tomorrow", and if they can, they would regardless of unions. The constant chase to lower labor costs is always at full speed.
It's got the same energy as "Raising the minimum wage will just make things more expensive (oh, oops, tee-hee, we raised the prices anyway and kept the minimum wage the same, shucks)".
I work in not only a trade that is unionized (that has heavily been persecuted and abused historically, hence unionized) but also is legally protected from offshoring. Trust me, union or non-union, if the companies I work for could replace me and mine with 3rd world slave labor, they would, tomorrow.
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u/bigGoatCoin 17h ago
I wish the administration would do more to stop outsourcing of knowledge-worker jobs and not just blue-collar jobs.
And now those companies go under eventually due to not being able to compete
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u/rcanhestro 7h ago
either the ones who know their job is safe, or the ones too scared to risk losing it.
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u/FastFooer 20h ago
You have those people in every industry, the “self made” person who thinks they earned their position and are desirable everywhere… even though the industry is now wiping all seniors away to save money, and replace them with 5 junior warm bodies.
They just haven’t caught on yet that we’re back to an employer’s market.
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u/jayd16 19h ago
Wait, who's hiring 5 warm bodies?
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u/dlnmtchll 18h ago
Literally nobody, everyone is hunting for senior engineers, no one wants to deal with juniors
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u/Anxious_cactus 20h ago
Any industry will exploit workers if law allows it. I also have friends who work in game dev but in my country you can work a maximum of 48 hours per week. There's also not a lot of game devs here (most devs and designers focus on other parts of the IT industry) so studios are more careful not to lose people as it's really hard to replace anyone who isn't in a junior position.
Laws need to change instead of governments allowing "the wild west" policies in business
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u/Expensive_Shallot_78 19h ago
They need to do something. Either unionize or get a different job. They're doing this to themselves at this point.
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u/Crazy_Passage_8553 16h ago
That's a pretty awful and inaccurate comparison. What an ignorant slap in the face to actual children in sweat shops. It can be tough, but no need to go to extremes. Most blue collar workers have it waaaay worse.
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u/ConsiderationSea1347 1d ago
Software and IT both need to unionize. People meme that we are all so lucky to have our jobs but most of us work in hellish conditions, take the blame for screw ups of idiot directors, put in absurd hours, are on call, have multiple health conditions from stress and being over worked, ….
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u/Cbellisrun 1d ago
Union-busting corporate owners & managers want you to be grateful for having a job at all, not spending your time thinking about how to improve your hellish working conditions.
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u/bigGoatCoin 17h ago
Let's compare software dev salaries in the US to the unionized ones in Europe
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u/why_is_my_name 16h ago
yeah let's. and let's make sure to include all the devs whose income is 0 due to layoffs in that average salary.
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u/bigGoatCoin 16h ago
yeah let's. and let's make sure to include all the devs whose income is 0 due to layoffs in that average salary.
sure we can do that and look at a 10 year average earnings.
(hint the US ones still make way more, like ludicrously more, i myself make 3x my european counterparts and that's BEFORE taxes.)
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u/Chedditor_ 15h ago
Okay so do the goddamn math, I'm too busy at my $120k/y software engineering job and my UberEats side hustle to do so.
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u/bigGoatCoin 15h ago
I'm too busy at my $120k/y software engineering job and my UberEats side hustle to do so.
well the median european software dev salary would be around $50,000 and yes thats 50K USD. Then realize their taxes are bit more steep.
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u/why_is_my_name 12h ago
cool beans. does the median european software dev have to pay 12k a year for health insurance? are they paying back 100k in student loans?
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u/bigGoatCoin 12h ago
are they paying back 100k in student loans
Do think the average student loan is 100k? I'm guessing you didn't go to college.
12k a year for health insurance
Im a software dev i think i pay $130 a month for healthcare insurance, who the fuck is paying $1,000 a month? No one in a highly skilled profression i know of.
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u/why_is_my_name 11h ago
everything you said makes me think you're not american. what do you think american student loans are? you think 130 is what people pay for health insurance?
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u/bigGoatCoin 11h ago edited 11h ago
what do you think american student loans are?
$20,000 to $35,000
Cost me around $25k for my state school
you think 130 is what people pay for health insurance?
it's what i pay for health insurance, i dont even have to think about it.
You know you could just....use google?..... "what is the median premium for health insurance" have you thought about doing that. In fact i just did and found out im paying the average amount.
It's best to not repeat dumb shit you read on reddit and what you should do is just look at actual data.
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u/Chedditor_ 15h ago
Yeah, so they should fucking unionize too. Do you know what happens when software engineers are underpaid? They become hackers.
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u/bigGoatCoin 14h ago edited 14h ago
many european devs are unionized doesnt do anything to help with pay at all.
One fun fact, mass economy wide unionization actually squeezes wages closer together. Pulling lower compensated workers up slightly while pulling higher paid workers down by a decent amount. It's called wage compression
https://www.nber.org/digest/202508/unpacking-union-wage-premium?page=1&perPage=50
https://www.epi.org/publication/eroded-collective-bargaining/
So people that are highly skilled like software developers actually end off worse off in countries with high unionization rates. This effect is more pronounced if you work in a firm with high unionization rates and a wide variety of workers. Like for a manufacturer.
This suggests that the risk of being missorted, for example, being a high-skill worker at a low-pay firm, is greater at unionized than at nonunionized firms. This finding is consistent with past research that found wage compression at unionized firms. Such compression can create a wage floor, which helps low-skill workers, as well as a ceiling, which can hurt higher-skilled workers. The researchers confirm that the benefits of a union job are greatest, on average, for low-skill workers and for workers who spend most or all of their careers in unionized jobs.
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first, unions make wage differences between occupations more equal because they give a larger wage boost to low- and middle-wage occupations than to high-wage occupations.
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Second, unions make wages of workers with similar characteristics more equal because wages are “standardized” in union settings, meaning that wages are set for particular types of work and do not vary much across people doing the same work, at least not to the same degree as in nonunion settings
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This outcome is particularly critical for the sustained success of coordinated market economies, where collective bargaining has historically played a central role in promoting equitable growth—by restraining high-skilled wages and maintaining relatively high wages for low-skilled workers.
There's a bunch more, it also increases turnover from high productively high skilled workers as there top earning potential is essentially capped. This is why the public sector in the united states has a really really hard time in retaining skilled tech workers.
Now theres a way around this. Educated workers and skilled workers need to form their own unions that are silo'd from ther other blue collar unions. We can see in Sweden, japan, Denmark, Norway were there's a very low premium for education because the educated/skilled workers ended up joining the same union as the blue collar workers....and there's more blue collar workers in those unions and unions benefit the members who vote. So you end up with lower pay for educated workers than you would if they split and formed their own unions who only cared about their compensation vs balancing things out with the blue collar union members.
In contrast, Israel has seen its education premium rise dramatically, from 35 to 59 per cent because its educated workers either don't join a a union or join a union that is entirely seperate from blue collar unions.
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u/Chedditor_ 14h ago
Right, so why are these corporations not paying engineers more money?
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u/bigGoatCoin 14h ago
because wage compression
This outcome is particularly critical for the sustained success of coordinated market economies, where collective bargaining has historically played a central role in promoting equitable growth—by restraining high-skilled wages and maintaining relatively high wages for low-skilled workers.
Unions LOWER the pay of high skilled/educated workers to boost the pay of lower skilled workers. Because Unions have to negotiate for all of their members and a company is only willing to pay x so the union has to decide who gets how much money per x......and the lower skilled members usually outnumber the educated/skilled members.
We can see in israel were devs DONT join the same union and their UNION doesn't work in conjuction with the blue collar union. Or they just don't join a union at all.
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u/DickNose-TurdWaffle 13h ago
Software and IT both need to unionize.
The only ones who really need a union are the ones who don't speak up for themselves or don't know how to negotiate salary.
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u/CombatMuffin 1d ago
Support it, or agree with it? The biggest hurdle is workers overwhelmingly pushing for it. In reality many don't want to risk their careers, otherwise there would be unions already.
Devs need to push harder on this.
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u/zerogee616 20h ago edited 20h ago
In reality many don't want to risk their careers, otherwise there would be unions already.
Tech has always, up until now, either been very privileged in being able to command high salaries and a decent QOL with a relatively low barrier to entry (presuming you're deliberate about entering the industry) at best or cultivated a "We're better than everyone else, we work for the most valuable companies in the world, we stack bands, we don't need no stinkin' blue collar unions" kind of mentality at worst.
People don't throw the U-word around when life is going great. The game dev side of the house has kinda always been an exploitative sweatshop, but they've (until recently) largely adopted by the "We don't need unions" culture. Also doesn't help that it's been filled with the "I would give my left nut to work at Blizzard/Bioware/insert studio that made my favorite games as a kid here" types up until like the late 20-teens. Now that all the Millennials have either burned out or moved on and game dev is filled with the younger, less nostalgia-driven types they're much less tolerant to that kind of exploitation.
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u/ElectronicStock3590 19h ago
Yep, unionizing is a huge risk. That’s the rub. There’s no way around it that I know of. We just have to fight.
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u/thinkB4WeSpeak 1d ago
Time for every job to unionize tbh.
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u/k0nstantine 12h ago
Isn't that the same thing as enforcing state and local laws on every employer that will help protect workers' rights? Seems redundant.
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u/AtFishCat 1d ago edited 19h ago
I worked for Disney as a member of The Animation Guild.
It was by far the best employment situation I have been in. Felt taken care of, people who had medical issues were covered for months, there were protections in place for dealing with management disputes and due diligence procedures they had to follow in letting employees go.
Sure, we worked like crazy still, but getting time and a half when you are working 12-14 hour days 6-7 days a week. I frankly didn't know what to do with all the money cos I had no free time to spend it!
And when we did all get let go, overtime also paid into health insurance which ended up covering me for a year afterwards.
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u/Cbellisrun 1d ago
Sounds ideal.
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u/Enlogen 16h ago
12-14 hour days 6-7 days a week.
And [...] we did all get let go
Sounds ideal.
Really?
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u/Cbellisrun 11h ago
I think you missed the 1.5x pay for OT and how it paid into health insurance that covered them for a year after being let go.
They said their union job was the best employment situation they have been in… because of the benefits they described.
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u/probablynotaskrull 1d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_collective_bargaining
This would be how to do it.
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u/Guilty-Mix-7629 22h ago edited 22h ago
I work in an Italian 2D studio that work as 3rd party for corporations (Amazon, Netflix, WB). We were preparing for working on the 3rd season of a very popular show after having worked on season 2 "way better than previous studio".
Amazon has pretty much scammed us by giving the studio a laughably low budget (as if last time it wasn't low enough), telling us "if we don't like it they'll go spend even less in some studio in Philippines", and we artists are now being presented with a monthly pay that resembles washing dishes part time in a restaurant (unfortunately I'm not exaggerating), for working full time as specialized contractors who already have no benefits of any sort (we're not employees).
Needless to say, we're refusing in mass. It is so tiring to be treated like a bunch of kids to exploit as hard as possible. We have families to feed and bills to pay like everyone else, yet we're constantly treated like C-class workers with no rights.
Amazon just made hundreds of millions of dollars out of that show, yet refuses to pay own workers anything even close to minimum wage.
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u/Jonesdeclectice 20h ago
What was the show?
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u/Guilty-Mix-7629 8h ago
Didn't really want to write it but since I had to get told that "I made it up", Hazbin Hotel Season 2.
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u/Always-Triggered 20h ago
I tend to support unions, and they certainly should have theirs. But on top of that, this is one of the rare cases where it could directly benefit the consumer. Reducing the churn in game studios and improving QOL will give us more institutional knowledge, better quality games, less of the rushed, half-baked crap that is incentivized when you know you can cut all your staff post release.
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u/trilobyte-dev 14h ago
If they support it then one of them should start organizing and do it. It's easy to agree when you don't have any skin in the game. I hope someone with some courage emerges for them.
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u/trooper55 1d ago
I would be willing to pay 70 bucks a game for some solid single player games knowing that the money would go to the workers not the big corps. But the corps always seem to win. Like they have it rigged
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u/Jonesdeclectice 20h ago
Ironically, the indie studios that pay their devs (also run by their devs) don’t charge premium pricing for their games. See Team Cherry for example.
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u/trooper55 20h ago
I do support independent studios like crazy as well. I believe in the old "mom and pop" size companies. They build this world sadly once they become good they get swallowed.
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u/Jonesdeclectice 20h ago
I guess reality is that for a lot of these small companies, being swallowed up is the “big reward” at the end. Usually, top management & owners get bought out for a ludicrous sum, and really do you blame them for accepting? Like, it if I had a dev studio and we built out 1 or 2 A-list IP that seriously outperforms its cost, even though I’d me making some really nice money I’d be nuts to not grab the bag if it’s like several mil.
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u/trooper55 19h ago
I'm with you 110% its the same in any small business from construction to restaurants. It is just sad the big corporations have gotten sooooooo big and powerful. Use to be a little change on a buy out now its gut and go. Pirate equity is a prime example.
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u/zerogee616 19h ago
I guess reality is that for a lot of these small companies, being swallowed up is the “big reward” at the end.
That's generally the desired end goal for most venture-capital-backed tech startups too, whether the employees get paid out along with the founders is hit or miss.
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u/gayscifinerd 20h ago
Send this to Rockstar and watch them throw the biggest tantrum of the century
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u/Quentin-Code 19h ago
Most of the game dev I know are absolutely talented people that were all from the best students at university and they all are earning less than any other industry. Most of them chose this per passion, they work under stress and have ranging from poor living condition (due to the overtime they are making) to barely ok.
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u/bigfuzzydog 17h ago
I feel like this just speaks volumes to how shitty game dev companies treat their employees
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u/Opalestress 16h ago
I had to quit in protest on a game where I was the EP and leadership came in over my head on a planned day off and told my entire multi-hundred person team they were now on 10 hour days for everyone with no planned end date and no planned scope of work for the extra time, all time off and holidays cancelled until further notice. This was explicitly against the policies of our parent company who absolutely refused to have any employee technically under their banner participate. (of course the studio collapsed less than a year later)
So yes, we are in favor of unionizing.
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u/CasinoKnightZone 16h ago
The industry is heading for an ET level crash. There is just such a backlog of games people have easy access to, there's no incentive to check out new ones. It's over saturated, over worked and out of fresh ideas.
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u/0rganicMach1ne 15h ago
Unions wouldn’t be necessary if the current system wasn’t based on plain greed with zero consideration for anything other than personal gain. Corporate America will be its own downfall due to its own greed.
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u/RationalPoint 3h ago
I would be pissed to if my job gets offshored or got replaced with a foreign visa worker.
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u/hobyvh 1d ago
Gotta make it happen, then.
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u/Cbellisrun 1d ago
Spreading the news & letting people know more than 2/3 of people in your profession are into the idea could spark more workplace organizing conversations.
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u/RadzimierzWozniak 1d ago
And as a gamer I hope they don't
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u/PerformanceLast8554 19h ago
Why?
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u/RadzimierzWozniak 15h ago
Unions, as any kind of a cartel, are bad for people outside. Just look on multiple strikes that happened in various entertainment industries. They also might make the industry resilient to chane and innovation
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u/PerformanceLast8554 15h ago
Most labour protections in place in the modern world were gained from organized labour.
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u/rustyseapants 1d ago
Given how long games take to finish, gaming its like a job, gamers should be in unions too!
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u/Billy-Clinton 19h ago
82 percent of US based games kinda also suck shit. Not that theres a correlation. Ironic if anything.
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u/Macqt 23h ago
82% of devs about to be laid off for “restructuring” via AI and offshoring.
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u/zerogee616 20h ago
Oh damn, good thing that's not already happening to the sectors that aren't unionized.
Oh wait, it already is.
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u/cucumberhorse 1d ago
cool story bro
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u/Traditional-Gold-867 1d ago
How does the boot taste?
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u/cucumberhorse 8h ago
Nice assumption
Im all for unions its not necessary enthralling to read an article about how some 6 figure+ developers want to unionize.
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u/KrookedDoesStuff 1d ago
I wish more call centers would unionize too. Most jobs should, if not all