On Thursday, the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) and Rockstar staff members announced the Rockstar Game Workers Union. This union will be part of the IWGB. The reveal came in the form of an informative video which delves into their motives and what we should be looking out for in the future.
Can anyone comment on why "big video game" dev pay has lagged "big tech" pay so badly? Ostensibly they are doing remarkably similar engineering problem solving, so why is there such a disparity?
Basically - building video games is (or seems from the outside) fun and cool, and so there are lots of people who want to do it. In effect, people are willing to be paid in fun, rather than in money. Also, games just generate a lot less revenue overall than boring, run-of-the-mill, dime-a-dozen SaaS apps. By a wide mile. When you look at these SaaS companies they're generating maybe $1M/yr in revenue per employee (not just developer). Some blockbuster games can achieve that, but not many.
So basically, high supply of labor and relatively lower demand for it in games than in boring business/SaaS software.
I imagine it is because people who aspire to work in gaming will also aspire to lower pay for the prestige, even if in reality the work is equally boring.
A lot of game development is not technically sophisticated, especially when the engine is bought or developed already.
The other factors are the hit driven nature of the business, meaning you can spend years building a game that flops, and the fact that many people want to make games which drives down salaries.
In my opinion game developers should work like movie staff; mid level wages but the ability to earn residuals from all their games. It means a secure life if you have enough hits.
Most industries or companies that have a brand or make something people are passionate about, get away with paying lower salaries since they'll attract workers who want to work specifically at that company or in that industry. Companies that do boring things have to compete harder for workers.
This is great news, unions not only improve working conditions, but also improve the final product by not having underpaid stressed staff with high turn-over.
It's a good sign for the future product quality of any company to see workers unionise.
I’m wondering if that’s simply a rational thing available to do as opposed to an actual opinion about collective representation whether thats bargaining or something else
“hey, here’s this regulatory overhead you can completely avoid by merely being present, unless people interested in the regulatory overhead are more persistent. just don't fire them though”
"Pay transparency" is only 1 of the 3 main initial changes the workers mention, and the amount they take home is only part of that. Besides, with schemes like % of profit there is a peculiar tendency for profit to disappear as revenue goes up (e.g. "hollywood accounting" type things).
What is the career ladder like for game devs? In a union, the only way up is seniority or, in other words, the amount of money you've paid in dues over the years. A great developer isn't going to get rewarded with higher pay or a better role unless they've spent enough time/money as a union member.
> In a union, the only way up is seniority or, in other words, the amount of money you've paid in dues over the years.
I’m unaware of this ever being the case in the UK — the lack of closed shop units means that even when collective agreements cover promotion they cannot meaningfully set this based on dues paid, both because they don’t necessarily know how long each employee has been a member of the union, and regardless that would be illegal discrimination based on union membership vs not.
In the common case for private-sector white-collar collective agreements in the UK, promotion is mostly just required to be transparent, rather than setting out procedural rules for promotion.
Your focus on union dues also makes me suspect you’re commenting from the US, expecting a union environment much more like the US — and US unions are outliers in many ways.
Per https://iwgb.org.uk/en/join/game-worker/ union dues max out at £35/month for those earning £80k and more — this is vastly less than unions require as dues in the US, and that almost certainly reduces the impact that union dues have, even beyond the illegality of closed shop units.
A) Allowed a bug in the code make all GTA5 Load times on every single copy on every platform take exponential times longer to load, for YEARS, unchecked or investigated, until some random kid FIXED IT by reverse engineering compiled code?
B) The bug was a simple and unneeded look up for SHOP items
C) The never rewarded the kid, with say a job or something worthwhile for him like 100k ( when they earn billions ). I mean even this decision ALONE is such terrible optics clearly mgmt were AFK.
D) They then came onto HN to argue with me in the comments about how " its not nice to say mgmt responsible should have been fired over this"
I mean Ive had my share of almost blinding incompetence, but the one that really bothers my crumpet, is when they come on here and start denying things.
Im for the union, Rockstar North made one of the greatest games of all time. It will probably result in an inferior product but crunch is unethical and always due to poor management. Ironically it was probably mgmts' own incompetent hiring policies that resulted in a union being formed.
PS - I got a bit heated and have edited this comment so its readable apologies.
PS - All of this can be verified in previous posts on HN regarding both the bug and replies
PS - And to whoever is downvoting me, feel free to reply and tell me what I am wrong about
Don’t expect any sympathy from the general public or your customers when the 1 year late game devs are complaining about crunch, ultimately they’re gonna get dragged for this and the gaming community will cheer if they manage to remove the union individuals.
Any and all discussions about unions on HN sadly just shows how the supposedly smart people can be extremely misinformed and propagandized. Not even really worth engaging in the discussions when it seems like any compassion has been beaten out of the (mostly USA-based, which explains a lot) audience here.
Happy for the devs, more power to them! For the sake of workers everywhere, I hope the US also catches up one day in empathy and rational thinking, when it comes to labor laws and rights.
> Together, we are organising around the things we want to change. Starting with:
Pay transparency
Flexible working
An end to crunch
That’s a lot of demands, what next? Competitive salary?! /sarcasm
I hope more people will start fighting together for better work conditions. Company owners have money and lawyers so workers must unite to fight them back. I’m saying this as employer.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 60.2 ms ] threadSo basically, high supply of labor and relatively lower demand for it in games than in boring business/SaaS software.
“employer seen as blocking union effort”
I’m wondering if that’s simply a rational thing available to do as opposed to an actual opinion about collective representation whether thats bargaining or something else
“hey, here’s this regulatory overhead you can completely avoid by merely being present, unless people interested in the regulatory overhead are more persistent. just don't fire them though”
(ah s** here we go again by the way).
I’m unaware of this ever being the case in the UK — the lack of closed shop units means that even when collective agreements cover promotion they cannot meaningfully set this based on dues paid, both because they don’t necessarily know how long each employee has been a member of the union, and regardless that would be illegal discrimination based on union membership vs not.
In the common case for private-sector white-collar collective agreements in the UK, promotion is mostly just required to be transparent, rather than setting out procedural rules for promotion.
Your focus on union dues also makes me suspect you’re commenting from the US, expecting a union environment much more like the US — and US unions are outliers in many ways.
Per https://iwgb.org.uk/en/join/game-worker/ union dues max out at £35/month for those earning £80k and more — this is vastly less than unions require as dues in the US, and that almost certainly reduces the impact that union dues have, even beyond the illegality of closed shop units.
A) Allowed a bug in the code make all GTA5 Load times on every single copy on every platform take exponential times longer to load, for YEARS, unchecked or investigated, until some random kid FIXED IT by reverse engineering compiled code?
B) The bug was a simple and unneeded look up for SHOP items
C) The never rewarded the kid, with say a job or something worthwhile for him like 100k ( when they earn billions ). I mean even this decision ALONE is such terrible optics clearly mgmt were AFK.
D) They then came onto HN to argue with me in the comments about how " its not nice to say mgmt responsible should have been fired over this"
I mean Ive had my share of almost blinding incompetence, but the one that really bothers my crumpet, is when they come on here and start denying things.
Im for the union, Rockstar North made one of the greatest games of all time. It will probably result in an inferior product but crunch is unethical and always due to poor management. Ironically it was probably mgmts' own incompetent hiring policies that resulted in a union being formed.
PS - I got a bit heated and have edited this comment so its readable apologies.
PS - All of this can be verified in previous posts on HN regarding both the bug and replies
PS - And to whoever is downvoting me, feel free to reply and tell me what I am wrong about
That’s the industry you’re in unfortunately.
Happy for the devs, more power to them! For the sake of workers everywhere, I hope the US also catches up one day in empathy and rational thinking, when it comes to labor laws and rights.
That’s a lot of demands, what next? Competitive salary?! /sarcasm
I hope more people will start fighting together for better work conditions. Company owners have money and lawyers so workers must unite to fight them back. I’m saying this as employer.