will anybody think of the C-suite!!! How will they be able to face their other rich friends if they don’t wage-steal to ensure they hit record profits quarter after quarter???
Yeah having worked in a call center for 3 years I always find it amusing when people think these issues are related to a certain industry when in reality it’s just the core essence of capitalism calling for infinite growth in a finite market
I don’t know how to say this but corporations suck. They turn human spirit into profits and excrement. Anything led by a corporation will inevitably suck if it doesn’t right off the bat.
What even is the point? The stock market is just a ticking time bomb and when it fucks up, somehow people lose their job and their house and anything else thats sustained by income. This makes sense how??? How is the stock market not considered a crime against humanity? It doesn’t benefit anyone except maybe rich people but rich people are already rich so who tf cares.
I’m sure there are. But, at least in the states, many tech people are also right-leaning libertarians. Co-ops are unpopular with them because they want to be the kings in the castle, not equal with their peers.
Co-ops are quite rare in Europe as well. I can’t name a single tech co-op.
In fact I’d say it worse over here. In my experience stock options are a very rare kind of remuneration, whereas as far as I understand it’s common in US Big Tech companies like Google or Apple (though of course non-voting shares are a far cry from actual co-ownership of the company).
On the other hand corporate profits are taxed pretty high in many countries (for the smaller tech companies that aren’t based in Ireland). It’s 30 % here in Belgium IIRC. So at least some of the profits make it back to the people, in a more general sense.
I could feel every traction loss and wipe out that would have happened in that video through my entire body. And the feeling of my hands slipping and a metal edge jamming under my fingernails.
On a different note I just watched a very similar video that was recommended to me by a pretty much unknown creator about the importance of indie developers and pretty much everything Alanah says here shows how important they really are. To imagine where we would be without tiny indies breaking the mold… it sends a shudder down my spine. ‘Indies > AAA’ has been my way to go for many years, now that I think about it.
I was initially interested in the original, but the studio’s transphobic, misogynist, and homophobic “jokes” both within their games and their communities pretty quickly dissuaded me.
[Edit] it sounds like this has a new team behind it, so possibly disregard the above
I was initially interested in the original, but the studio’s transphobic, misogynist, and homophobic “jokes” both within their games and their communities pretty quickly dissuaded me.
I was not aware of that. I’m not the biggest fan of the Build engine, so I was never anything more than barely aware that the game exists. I’ve skimmed over en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Fury#Controversy a bit after your comment. I agree with you. Had I’ve been initially interested in the original, such “jokes” would have put me off as well.
it sounds like this has a new team behind it, so possibly disregard the above
The successor is done by a different studio (Slipgate Ironworks, who are also doing the RTS Tempest Rising). The original team (Voidpoint) works on the expansion for the first game. I hope Slipgate isn’t using Voidpoint’s “joke” template.
Oh I know. But every time I try to go back and play counterstrike it bothers me that I can’t aim down the sights and I really wish that was something they “fixed” in counterstrike 2.
Not going to lie, I haven’t played a competitive shooter in years, but I used to play the shit out of CS back in the day. I kind of want to jump into this again.
Indeed. I was pretty decent back in 1.3 days playing on a friend’s server who had a frickin T1 line at home. It was just as competitive play was starting to develop and there was no voice chat until Roger Wilco came about. That’s partly why I’m not a WASD guy. Gotta keep the fingers on the home row ready to type “I had sex with your mom.” not just say it.
Ah, memories.
Played some CS2 last night and it was death match rounds on Dust 2. Unbelievable how fast I die. I just can’t even…
However, the game did feel really well polished. Very snappy except for a few lag spikes. I started to limber up and even earned a positive K:D in one round. Well, for most of the round. I fell to - 3 in the last moments, but overall it was pretty fun. Don’t think I could hang in a regular match though. Too much time sitting around dead.
I get that, especially when the map is fairly small, but I’m talking about the insane twitch reflexes and aim of these players. I feel like 90% of the time it’s just thp-thp! and I’m dead, from practically any distance, whereas I’m firing bursts and need a second or three to actually kill someone.
Plus AWPers are unreal. The crosshairs in the scope blur if you move at all, so I can’t fathom how these folks are so accurate, but there you have it.
I’m not calling anyone a cheater, just saying the average skill level is far beyond me. I still had fun. Gotta remember, it’s easy, just click on their heads.
These games are inherently competitive with an unbelievably steep learning curve, so people git gud, which drives off casual players, repeat ad nauseam. The only people who regularly play CS are either absolute masochists, or very good at clicking heads even if by that game’s standard they’re only silver or gold or whatever.
To be halfway decent at CS means that no singleplayer shooter will ever be a challenge to you again, because there’s no intersection between casual gaming and competitive shooters.
Don’t they have a mechanism for filtering you into games with people who have similar stats so there’s a bit of balance? Play a while and get wrecked until you fall down to your own level?
It absolutely sucks, but many of the standard calls of “it’s always been shit” and “boycott” aren’t really doing anything outside of virtue signalling or trying to hold a moral view to a company that couldn’t give a fuck about the 0.001% of people that action these views.
Regarding software engineering, I’ve often said that “if the games industry doesn’t unionise, there’s no hope for the rest of the tech industry”, and I still stand by that. While there are obvious complications in forming unions in a global market, I truly believe that the US is often the barrier towards workers rights. If American workers can unionise, you can bet that those in Europe would do so too.
I’m British, so I don’t have a great understanding of French law, but do they have unions in the same way, or are they similar to works councils in Germany? I know French law is protective of workers, so wonder if it’s as divisive as it would be in the West.
Union is actually mandatory in France if the company is more than 50 people iirc. But depending on the place, and especially in computer related work, very, very few people participate in the union.
Unions often suffer very bad reputation, and people are very often afraid either that they will act against their company interest or antagonise their bosses. I think about 15% of workers are unionised in France.
Too many devs think they’re above unionizing. It’s going to be very difficult to pull off. They won’t be interested until it’s too late.
Bottom line is that tech is chock full of greedy fucking people who only care about what they’re getting paid this year.
I don’t think the gaming industry could lead on this issue though. It’s tech companies like FAANG that really lead the market and that’s where people refuse to organize.
I couldn’t agree more. I’m a software engineer at a FAANG company, and the split is very apparent. There are either people that would love to see a union (but know their employer would happily fire 100k+ people for even trying it), alongside people that believe unions are the devil. There was a shift in the last 12 months due to the mass layoffs and the nature of how someone with a decade or more of loyal work can be locked out and fired immediately without so much as a “goodbye”, but there is still a huge number of people that view tech as a “survival of the fittest” thing. I work with some people that even love the idea of URA and the “weakest” people in the team losing their jobs.
Game dev is an interesting thing, though. For decades now, even smaller companies (at the time) like Rare were built from the mentality that you cannot just work 50 hours a week to make a good game, or that once a release is complete, you move on to your next gig. That culture has existed throughout corporate, not just in tech, which is why I’m surprised that there hasn’t been a true effort towards unionising industry-wide. Hell, I would’ve thought that the Activision issues from a while ago would have spurred something too.
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