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Comment by me_me_me | Hacker News Reader

> I agree that putting developers on death marches is antithetical to everything that is human

You agree that this things are happening and its not OK.

why do you follow that up with:

> but it's not like you don't have options in this industry...

Clearly if people are being taken advantage of its an issue. And its issue for large enough percentage of workforce for us to talk about it.

Also this is global problem and salaries in game dev do not compare to SV. Well nothing compares to SV pay.

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What infuriates me about the GP post is:

unionizing is literally one of the options they have.

It's enshrined in law, has a long history, has been implemented to great benefit to scores of people worldwide -- why shouldn't that option be on the table as well for these workers?

And, frankly speaking, "go find another job" is a terrible rejoinder, if they like their job, but don't like their working conditions, let them come together in a group to change their working conditions. It's their legal right to do so, as well as a human right.

Unpopular opinion: Large segments of the american population don't even real realize they have foolishly internalized decades of anti-union propaganda.

They just think they are smarter/better/more rational.

I disagree. I think you have just eaten up the propaganda pushed by billionaires. There is an entire industry that is dedicated to pushing anti-union propaganda.

The union bosses do it to themselves:

Misuse of union funds and a union boss passing over union workers for private workers because they cost less for the job.

Utopian unions don't happen.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/20...

There are corrupt unions everywhere, but the only thing more corrupt than unions is management.

Yup, and every person on welfare eats caviar and drives a Cadillac.

The fact that this is your go to story on unions vs. the millions of well-protected and empowered workers across the world is just more evidence of how internalized this propaganda is in the US.

I googled it in 30 seconds. There are more too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_into_Trade_Un...

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tsg3e/e...

Discrediting single instances of bad union behaviour is an endless game, there's a lot of history to draw from.

And there are endless instances of bad corporate behavior. So we are at an impasse.

Not when the orders of magnitude are different.

Is there a study comparing corruption rates?

This is just a logic error masquerading as an argument. Discrediting single instances of x’s behavior is an endless game, therefore all instances of x are bad. You haven’t provided anything inherent to unions to discredit them that wouldn’t be true of any other form of social organization, from governments to corporations.

There’s more history of unions winning protections, better wages, and improved quality of life for workers across the world than there are evidence of their corruption. It’s why millions upon millions of workers, have created, joined, and maintained them throughout the history of Capitalism. But feel free to try and convince everyone why, for example, the vast majority of trade and industrial workers in developed countries or everyone in the NBA are all just wrong and confused.

I don't mind unionizing factory work on institutionalized sports, even though that can go poorly in some cases. There are some industries that have finite requirements and no amount of union bending can change the nature of the industry. There's only a few games that employ enough people to become an institution that requires worker protection. Star Citizen, Blizzard, Riot Games are institutions in their own right. Thousands of indie games are not and can make good wages or average wages by working solo or in small teams. Forcing these people to work to union rules (which will happen with union capture) breaks the model of independence for the sake of salaried employees. The large companies will merge and the industry will die. I can't agree with that.

The game industry will do just fine with a union presence. It won't die.

Solo game developers will feel no union pressure, nor will small teams.

If there are triple-A studios that are so fragile that they'll go under with their employees getting better working conditions, I will shed no tear for those. I will shed no tear for any employer whose continued business success depends on working staff 80, 120 hours a week, in the game industry or any other.

That is the dream that we can unionize without it becoming an all-encompassing force. Hollywood has not experienced that.

Indie films still get made, big actors work at scale, or certain content shifts to new platforms (e.g. streaming). The decline of independence in Hollywood has little to do with unions and more to do with unregulated, entertainment industry monopolies.

Who do you think enforces those monopolies? Working outside SAG can have deleterious effects on your access to future roles. Disobeying Disney as a movie theater can sink your access to their future releases. Both the institution and the union work together to make the monopoly. They are two sides of the same coin.

Psy, gangnam style becoming a billion-view hit doesn't happen in a heavily controlled music industry. YouTube made that happen. Unions are bad news and they are meant to be. The decade of good is over.

Again, this is a failure of imagination, believing that unions are inevitably shaped like the unions of the past. As tech is founded on disruption and innovation, it is defeatism to assume that worker relationships have to be a certain way- especially when there are models of unions and management having a less antagonistic relationship, as in Germany.

I think op is saying that the video game developers are choosing to subject themselves to it and therefore they don't need protections. Even though conditions are said to be bad studios somehow seem to have an endless supply of developers.

They do subject themselves to it. However, what that analysis lack is an understanding that the worker/employer power relationship is completely asymmetrical. Workers have everything to lose, Employers have nothing to lose. That leads to 'illogical' decisions such as workers who could find work elsewhere opting not to: Shit, their rent, their medicine, their family is on the line here. Maybe the new job will be worse, or have worse benefits, or not let you skip out early on Friday to go to soccer practice?

> "Employers have nothing to lose."

Wrong in general and doubly wrong in the games industry where small game studios go bankrupt pretty much every other week. Not everybody is a FAANG or a billion dollar game publisher swimming in cash.

Are not some of the worst abuses at AAA studios?

As do coal miners.

And soldiers. You'll hear rumblings that both are a form of class warfare.

I'm not trying to lump game developers into that class, but it makes me wonder what kind of 'happy accident' that is for influential people.

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