If their main concern is layoffs – which it sounds like, at least from the article text, though I don’t know if that’s just the author’s take or not – I doubt that the union is going to have much leverage. CDPR isn’t laying people off for fun; the whole industry is seeing a major decline in investment at the moment.
Video Game VC Funding Slumps as Publishers Battle Covid Hangover
Funding opportunities dry up with game companies cutting jobs
Total peaked when people were still indoors because of Covid
VC groups invested $700.3 million in gaming in the third quarter, the lowest total since the second quarter of 2020, according to data from PitchBook. The industry attracted more than $2 billion in every quarter for two years ending in mid-2022.
The past few weeks have been marked by layoffs and studio closures by game companies. Epic cut 830 jobs, while Sony Group Corp.’s Naughty Dog and Worms maker Team17 have also let go dozens of workers.
The Swedish video-game holding company Embracer Group AB, which bought up dozens of gaming companies starting in 2020, is now canceling games, eliminating jobs and closing studios. The company is looking to sell Borderlands developer Gearbox Entertainment.
Since the beginning of 2023, there has been an abundance of layoffs that have hit the tech and gaming industry like a storm. Disney, Take Two, Unity, Twitter (now ‘X’) and even Microsoft have faced massive layoffs since January, and CD PROJEKT RED is the latest to follow this unfortunate and growing trend.
That’s how employment works. Calling them slaves is ignoring the fact that they have agency and compensation, unlike actual slaves.
No job is permemnent, it would be ridiculous to expect otherwise, but it varies between industries. Gaming is a low-frequency project-based industry, you know there will be lots of work while in development, and once that’s over, there’s not going to be as much work to do.
I believe this sentiment is taken not because of the actuals of the situation, such as waning work and ended employment, but because at the end of the day when everything is done and packed up it seems like the “boots on the ground” made just enough to scrape by, while the ceos/x suites fly away in private jets to jump out and golden parachute to their mansion.
Single employee doesn't have much negotiating power and shit flows down hill.
Shit industry practices are management's poor planning and workers have to take it.
If they got royalty share for their work like pre streaming TV shows staff did, this system would make some sense. Currently worker is getting a shit deal for the "privilege"
If they (the boss) knew the job was temporary, then they (the workers) should have known that going in and had been given proper compensation to make up for the looming layoff with plenty of heads up time to prep for the next job hunt.
The formation of a union tells you that the boss did not share that tidbit with the worker. Thus the problem, as the money keeps rolling in for the fatcat for the next decade, the workers who actually did anything of value are starting from scratch at a new job after losing insurance, healthcare, rent and food money, any chance at a raise, etc etc etc.
How else should it work? Almost any other way, is how. With honesty and respect for the people who actually did anything of value, is how.
I mean, what are their salaries? I genuinely don’t know, one would assume that a specialised job like that would command a pretty solid salary, and the assumption would be that working on a project like this would get them to the top of the list for applications to other companies.
I don’t know how the job was advertised, but seeing how the industry works from the outside, I would never assume a job for life at a game studio, but you could still count on security after working on a project like this.
I work a steady job, it’s hard, and the pay is okay for me, I suspect a game dev will earn several times what I do, part of which is due to the short term, or at least risky nature of the roles, the rest would be down to the specialist skills.
I don’t really think that forming a union signifies that at all, I’d say it’s more likely down to the ongoing working conditions.
Because you can always go and get a warehousing job or similar, it’s steady, but kinda boring and lower pay.
The money may keep rolling in for those who invested the most and took the largest risks. But that’s irrelevant IMO. You take a job for the pay that’s offered, and it lasts as long as it does, how long that is depends on the kind of role.
I’m making assumptions, but I think everyone here is too. But I do particularly resent the ‘slaves’ comment as it is disrespectful of the employees, and diminishes actual slavery which is bigger than ever.
Your first paragraph is so wrong its funny, then hurts, then wraps back around to being funny again.
Game development is pretty infamous for being paid like shit, where management gets you to do it as a passion project or dream job. They likely did not make much more than you do, with almost guaranteed worse hours given how normal crunch time is in the gaming industry.
A lot of game developers abandon game design, even after making massively successful titles that are beloved for decades, because they literally cannot afford to keep the job.
Years ago, it was really big. I often heard about humble bundle online, but now it’s very rarely talked about. The only time I recall reading about them recently was an article about how they’re struggling.
I still hear about them and buy from them, but I buy a lot less because:
They were bought by IGN, so they’re a for profit group now
Changed Choice to offer major AAAs more often instead of being focused on indies
They set slider for minimum percent to Humble in bundles to 15% (I used to give about 20-30% to Humble, now I do 15% as a form of minor protest)
Bundles often come with coupons for the store instead of just being bundles of games, and the $1 tier is either complete trash or non-existent
And so on. Basically, they’ve gotten more corporate, so they’re less unique vs the competition. In fact, I’ve picked up more bundles from Fanatical than Humble in the last couple years because I no longer feel a preference for Humble, and now just go where the deals are.
I’m guessing some or all of that is why the sources you follow don’t mention it as much. It’s still very much a thing though.
I don’t think I have any of them, but I’ll likely get a Zachtronics game (not sure which) and maybe Human Resource Machine. Those have been on my wishlist for a while, but I haven’t seen a lot of these so there are probably a bunch of other gems.
Really stoked to see the amount of support this game is getting! I do hope they up the difficulty a fair bit for this expansion though. I was feeling pretty much invincible after a few ship upgrades in the main game.
Not sure what Half Life 2 is doing on there, pretty sure Valve is fully in control of that one on PC at least. Didn't EA publish the PS3 version of the Orange Box? I'm guessing that's for a console port.
Also, Biomutant? That only just came out like two years ago. Not sure what the online features are for that game though, I thought it was singleplayer.
This is all just another reason why I don't buy games where online multiplayer is the main selling point of the game. I might not even get around to playing it much before that feature is removed.
Old PC games with dedicated servers are still (and always will be) playable online, while games from a couple years ago have their centrally-managed servers taken offline. People are still playing Doom, Quake, and Unreal Tournament while games from this console generation are already unplayable.
I just saw it on the PlayStation store on sale for like $50. May as well just give it away at this point and I still won’t play it, it’s silly they’re charging that much for it still, especially since the devs shut down
A German Youtube channel named Game Two, did a documentation about what went wrong and released it this weekend. Like the Developers they are based in Hamburg and did many interviews with former employees. It’s linked in the article but unfortunately only available in German.
This game feels more like a chore with a million fetch quests. I never made it out of new Atlantis in my play through. Bg3 is so much more nuance and a way better game.
Yeah I don’t know why they can’t make space travel to work similar to NMS. That would have been so much better. I don’t really feel like I’m exploring anything jumping from system to system. Hell even planets to planets.
Yeah I don’t know why they can’t make space travel to work similar to NMS
Because the Creation Engine is a pile of shit stacked on top of another pile of shit known as Gamebryo. The only way it even is able to handle high speed vehicles for the space combat is by having much smaller external cells with absolutely nothing in them.
What they could have done, though, is make the planets fully walkable. For some reason, those are also not seamless. You eventually hit invisible walls in any sector you land at. The engine is very capable of handling that, though. Especially if it’s just empty terrain.
Seriously, I wish they had dropped that engine. It’s so hodge podge and lacking, they had a decade to make starfield in a new to them engine. Instead we get this shit in 2023
When you work on something for longer than 5 years, the tech and expectations from competing games will run ahead of you.
And you can’t just rewrite the story and engine and map and characters every time you get delayed.
So you should just shoot every AAA project that lags more than 5 years on the spot. It’s way too late for it at that time. And start from market analysis, not just rewriting everything in the ‘current engine and style’.
They do except there’s the additional condition of 2 weeks since purchase date. So as long as you’ve played less than 2 hours and purchased within 2 weeks, you’ll get an automatic refund (unless you abuse the system, but I’ve returned many games over the years and never had issues).
I’ve only taken advantage of this once. When I had VR, I got some utility program because it advertised being able to do something I was trying to do (I don’t remember what exactly), but it didn’t actually do that thing. I requested a refund after like 20 minutes of using it and it was pretty much instantly refunded.
Damn good policy, as long as you check out what you buy pretty quick to make sure it’s what you want, IMO.
It’s not often that any video game company gets to turn 50
In no sense is this company 50 years old. Atari was cleaved in half by Warner 40 years ago. One half was purchased and used for branding, right before the new parent company also went out of business… five separate times. The other half did quite well in arcades until those stopped existing. The absolute latest you could say “Atari” lasted was 2003, when Midway Games West ceased operations.
Even the modern company calling itself Atari, formerly Infogrames, has been in and out of bankruptcy, and no longer owns most of the IPs either brand was known for. This company is that shambling wreck.
This brand is such an L factory that their bold new direction is re-releasing the machine that came in third place behind the NES, basically unmodified, and pretending it’s downright archaic 1970s hardware that was brought low by the technical demands of Pac-Man.
And it’s honestly a good idea.
I’m excited to see how it goes. More companies should do it. But acting like this is a victory lap for a titan of industry is a punchline in itself.
It’s even funnier when you realize that arguably their biggest competitors back in the day, Nintendo and Sega, both have far better claims to being 50+ years old, with both having continuous operations since. Bonus points to Nintendo for being over 100 years old.
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