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Comment by lewdev | Hacker News Reader

I agree, I dislike the use of "exploit" in this context because it sounds like enthusiastic people are mindlessly accepting these poor paying jobs. I like to believe that they know exactly what they're getting into, why it pays less, and they are taking the job for other reasons such as the ones you've named: prestige and glamour.

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I meant no offense by the use of the word—rather that I think game devs should be able to enjoy the prestige and good pay/working conditions ;) If anything it's a jab at the companies who make record profits and still don't compensate their employees fairly, not the workers who take those jobs.

Unless there are significant anticompetitive forces in your industry, unfair compensation is simply not a stable state. Since the gaming industry is very large and many upstarts seem to find success, how can the prevailing wages be considered unfair? Everybody would have a profit motive to quit their employer and become a greedy exec themselves.

Probably a lot fewer upstarts find success than you imagine - it may seem like "a lot" but the rate of success is abysmal. It's hard to get accurate statistics because it's not obvious what to count, but from the attempts I've read it's somewhat over 90% of games that do not breakeven and has been this way since the early 90s at least (probably earlier but it's even harder to find data the further back you go).

The vast majority of startup game studios go bankrupt within a couple years of founding and the vast majority of solo indie devs only release one game.

There is no international industry-wide wage-suppression conspiracy, the supply-demand equilibrium is simply at a lower wage level than non-games tech.

It can be "unfair" in an intuitive and specific case while still being the result of market forces (is it fair that I'm paying rent to my former landlord's son? he did nothing to earn it except inherit this building)

EDIT: I realize you were not claiming it was a conspiracy, I just wanted to correct a common perspective by industry outsiders that see a lot of success stories and think "how hard can it be?" - the world is big and the "many cases" you are seeing a tiny % of the whole, which are overwhelmingly unsuccessful.

Is it fair that you're paying rent to your former landlord's son? It is if the rate is fair. Being a landlord is actually a job and it can involve quite a bit of risk (property damage, housing market crashes, etc). It's not exactly rare for landlords to actually lose money. Maintenance costs, taxes, and that risk should be priced into your rent, plus a reasonable fee. If that fee is unreasonable, now you're in an unstable market state. There would have to be significant anticompetitive forces in the property market (onerous zoning, natural limitations) to keep it that way, otherwise you would want to move to a new landlord with a reasonable fee.

Whether or not private inheritance is fair is a completely separate debate. We could do away with private inheritance, and all these market forces would still work to keep prices fair.

Oh, absolutely the failing is actually of the city to get enough housing built as to create an efficient market. But my point wasn’t really about my landlord but that the fact that some executive at Ubisoft or Activision are paying themselves generously while paying employees worse than non-games tech isn’t an indication that the lower wages in the games industry are due to collusion, rather than supply/demand equilibria being different in different sub-industries.

Well in that case is it also unfair if someone, highly interested in exotic sports cars, can't afford a Ferrari on their salary?

I don’t know what point you think I was trying to make, but I don’t think it is the same one I was thinking of.

> It can be "unfair" in an intuitive and specific case while still being the result of market forces (is it fair that I'm paying rent to my former landlord's son? he did nothing to earn it except inherit this building)

It's the same market forces.

That's why I gave it as an example. It feels unfair but that doesn't mean it's evidence of collusion/conspiracy.

So then your question

> (is it fair that I'm paying rent to my former landlord's son? he did nothing to earn it except inherit this building)

has a clear answer.

I don’t want to sound snarky but did you miss that this was a rhetorical question meant to illustrate my actual point as part of a much longer post?

I was addressing the comment:

> I don’t know what point you think I was trying to make, but I don’t think it is the same one I was thinking of.

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