Game Workers Unite
gameworkersunite.org
Game Workers Unite
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Re: Game Workers Unite
#2[deleted]
Re: Game Workers Unite
#3As someone who went to school for game design but hasn't actually been blessed yet with getting a job in games, this seems like an interesting idea. I know from my personal experience at the software companies I have worked that the culture is what drove the work to personal life ratio. My first job out of school was a start up and when the product the team I was a part of was nearing it's set-in-stone deadline, for about 3 months I was working 6 days a week and about 12ish hours a day. We weren't a game studio but we still had a taste of that crunch time that the game industry is infamous for.
Re: Game Workers Unite
#4Great to see some movement here!
Re: Game Workers Unite
#5Supply and demand. Turns out a lot of people want to develop games and are willing to be underpaid compared to other developers.
Either an overwhelmingly high amount of developers join a game developer union and raise salaries, or a company will simply hire someone else.
Re: Game Workers Unite
#6Supply and demand. Turns out a lot of people want to develop games and are willing to be underpaid compared to other developers. Either an overwhelmingly high amount of developers join a game developer union and raise salaries, or a company will simply hire someone else.
Workers in the game industry are not only devs. There are also artists, testers, IT techs, marketers. I'm not sure the biggest issue is about the salary, but the (unpaid) overtime, precarity, sudden lay-offs, etc.
Re: Game Workers Unite
#7Why only game workers? Why not software workers/codewriters in general?
I'd prefer something closer to SAG than the auto workers union personally.
Re: Game Workers Unite
#8Supply and demand. Turns out a lot of people want to develop games and are willing to be underpaid compared to other developers. Either an overwhelmingly high amount of developers join a game developer union and raise salaries, or a company will simply hire someone else.
Workers in the game industry are not only devs. There are also artists, testers, IT techs, marketers. I'm not sure the biggest issue is about the salary, but the (unpaid) overtime, precarity, sudden lay-offs, etc.
Okay, let's call it compensation. That is a good umbrella term that includes salary, overtime and benefits.
The compensation for game workers sucks compared to their counterparts in other software fields. This is probably because it is sexier to be a game dev than, say, working at Salesforce.
It is a good idea for game industry workers to form a union or guild.
Re: Game Workers Unite
#9Why only game workers? Why not software workers/codewriters in general? I'd prefer something closer to SAG than the auto workers union personally.
Generally software engineers have a better pay(30-50%) and work-life balance than the game industry as a whole.
While the tech is similar the project cycles are usually quite different so I don't know if one-size-fits-all would get splintered by different concerns.
Re: Game Workers Unite
#10Why only game workers? Why not software workers/codewriters in general? I'd prefer something closer to SAG than the auto workers union personally.
The games industry is the one where the abuses are especially bad.
But I see no reason why this couldn't eventually blossom into a "Software Developer's Guild".