Comment on Apex Legends writer gets laid off 24 hours after the character she wrote is revealed, because that's what the games industry in 2025 looks like

• Lemjukes@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  It’s called “a decades long campaign to erode trust and even awareness of unions by corporate business interests”.

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• SorteKanin@feddit.dk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  It’s not that hard to understand. The whole gaming industry is filled with people who are super passionate about games, like passionate to a fault. This makes it very, very difficult to unionize as there’s almost always some other game dev out there who would take the job for less pay and more hours.

  I actually know a friend like that. He was job jumping a lot, looking for game dev roles almost exclusively. He finally landed such a role. Far as I heard, he’s working overtime a lot (voluntarily) and he earns less than half of what I earn as a “regular” software developer.

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  • kattfisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Yeah, like the music or movie industry, it’s rife with abuse because there are so many young people who dream of working in it that there’s always fresh meat for the grinder.

    And selection pressure means the industry veterans in charge are people who somehow thrived in this environment, so they’re unlikely to change things.

    I have a friend who worked in vfx on some very high-profile movies and shows, stuff you have definitely seen. And that industry actually seems even worse! Everyone is a contractor, so you work on one project, and then you don’t have a job anymore, and you better make the bosses happy if you want to get another contract ever again. Everything is stunningly poorly planned, with deadlines that are impossible to meet without working all night, constant last-minute changes from fickle directors and incredible amounts of nitpicking and demands of perfectionism.

    This is likely exactly the type of industry they are turning game development into. Because it’s maximum profit with minimum responsibility. Hire the best in the world, squeeze the most work in the shortest time you can out of them, and then toss them to the wind when they’re spent.

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• drunkpostdisaster@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  To be in the entertainment industry you got to really really really want it. And when you want something that bad you learn to eat a lot of shit because the people with the money that can make it happen know how badly you want to be there.

  I am in entertainment too and right now i pretty much work for free because that’s just how it is.

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• j0ester@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I’m sure it will get a lot worst with AI bs.

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• digitalnuisance@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  AAA dev here; it’s not that. It’s that attempting to standardize development in a highly fluid and innovative sector kills your competitiveness ad a studio. That being said, unionization is desperately needed. Blizzard recently unionized across their while studio, which is probably the best model out there right now; allow companies of a certain scale to unionize so that positive and competitive aspects of company culture/organizational structure can be maintained/improved while ensuring worker’s rights against exploitation from the top-down and abused of shareholders/management. Games, and by extension their studios, are intended to be things greater than the sum of their parts, and this is reflected by each company’s unique internal culture. How many big studios have you seen shed a sizeable amount of senior devs, after which they no longer seem to be able to make the same quality games as before? Happens all the time, and this is why. That’s the magic of gamedev studio culture and the people that create it, and that needs to be protected while also upholding workers’ rights simultaneously. The best way to do that is to allow all members of said culture to create their own rules of union governance from within, not to have standards that maybe disrupt said culture from without.

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  • Tiresia@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Sorry for not engaging with the content, but please add paragraph breaks. kthx

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    • digitalnuisance@infosec.pub ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      No.

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  • brendansimms@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    so yea, they should unionize.

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    • cybersin@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      There are actually quite a few “Hollywood” unions, but unionization rates have fallen dramatically over the past few decades.

      • SAG-AFTRA
      • IATSE
      • Writers Guild of America
      • American Society of Cinematographers
      • Art Directors Guild
      • Costume Designers Guild
      • Director’s Guild of America
      • Location Managers Guild International
      • Make-Up Artists & Hair Stylists Guild
      • Motion Picture Editors Guild
      • Motion Picture Sound Editors
      • Producer’s Guild of America
      • Production Sound and Video Engineers Guild
      • Set Decorators Society of America
      • Society of Camera Operators
      • Stuntmen’s Association & United Stuntwomen’s Association

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• KyuubiNoKitsune@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  We (large European gaming companies employees) have been trying to get a CBA for a year and a half now, sometimes it takes time.

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