GTA 6 Developers Unionize • Hacker News Board

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#451

Post by zamadatix » Sat, May 30, 2026, 6:34 AM UTC

guywithahat wrote: post #354

vortegne wrote: post #206

Any and all discussions about unions on HN sadly just shows how the supposedly smart people can be extremely misinformed and propagandized. Not even really worth engaging in the discussions when it seems like any compassion has been beaten out of the (mostly USA-based, which explains a lot) audience here. Happy for the devs, more power to them! For the sake of workers everywhere, I hope the US also catches up one day…

I think anti-union sentiment comes from the practical reality which is if you go to union-towns, they often look bombed out and horrible. The UAW, arguably the largest private union in the US, was founded in Flint, Michigan. The union didn't care about the city or its future, it simply sucked money out of the economy until there was nothing left, and then they ran off to DC. Conversely, industry towns without unions…

Grew up in the rust belt of Michigan, but not with parents holding unionized jobs, and still live elsewhere in it (also without a unionized job). Can't say I've seen the same sentiments or patterns be as common as presented. Of course I've always leaned towards supporting unions so that colors the perspective a bit too, but, in general, approval of unions in the US has actually been in an upswell https://news.gallup.com/poll/694472/labor-union-approval-rel...

There are obviously areas with decline for sure, e.g. the auto industry, but unions are usually seen as lessening the impact of that on the workers rather than the source of blame (not that everyone holds a single view). E.g., for the most part, people don't blame the union (or non-unionized industry) for the problems in Flint as neither is meant to privately fund e.g. the water pipes. They blame the downturn of the auto industry, which then gets into whatever reasons one prefers to assign. For some that's unions, but it's not actually been a very big mind changer on that aspect.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#452

Post by trueno » Sat, May 30, 2026, 6:35 AM UTC

cmpxchg8b wrote: post #394

sonzohan wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game dev here, have worked on AAA and indie. First off let me get on my high horse and say the engineering in video gaming is generally more complex than the engineering I've done working in big tech. You need a lot more creativity and ingenuity to solve the unusual problems you run into in gaming. From there, as others have said, it's a simple supply and demand issue. Nowadays I am a university professor, nearly eve…

Former gamedev here. This matches my experience. However, working in the games industry from 2000-2011 did wonders for my ability to thrive in big tech. It is easy mode compared to games.

i spent 2 years learning c by fucking with carmacks idtech3 engine. game dev is incredible. i found myself even in such an old engine in awe of the incredibly creative ways problems are solved to get things drawn on screen, the event journals and everything that marry it together, the client server architectures... bruh game dev is next level.

* this doesnt even include graphics programmers who are also awesome. and are just a different breed than i am, for whatever reason my brain just won't process the world of graphics pipelines

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#453

Post by Arbortheus » Sat, May 30, 2026, 6:38 AM UTC

Flere-Imsaho wrote: post #442

j1elo wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's surprising how Wild West it gets out there. In the EU that would strictly fall into unlawful working conditions; I kid you not, in Spain the law doesn't allow to work overtime for more than 80 total hours per year .

I worked in the games industry from 2000 to 2010 in the UK... We very much did crunch.

I remember it was very common when the UK was in the EU to have employers get you to opt-out from the European Time Directive.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#454

Post by usefulcat » Sat, May 30, 2026, 6:38 AM UTC

sonzohan wrote: post #177

WarmWash wrote: post #4

Can anyone comment on why "big video game" dev pay has lagged "big tech" pay so badly? Ostensibly they are doing remarkably similar engineering problem solving, so why is there such a disparity?

Game dev here, have worked on AAA and indie. First off let me get on my high horse and say the engineering in video gaming is generally more complex than the engineering I've done working in big tech. You need a lot more creativity and ingenuity to solve the unusual problems you run into in gaming. From there, as others have said, it's a simple supply and demand issue. Nowadays I am a university professor, nearly eve…

This description absolutely checks out, even from ~30 years ago when I graduated.

I worked on games for several years early on but quit after going through an EA spouse experience.

In some ways it’s too bad, because the great thing about games is that there is such a great variety of different kinds of problems to solve. Even so, I quit cold turkey and never looked back. It is what it is.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#455

Post by oreally » Sat, May 30, 2026, 6:44 AM UTC

vouwfietsman wrote: post #147

flohofwoe wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This JSON-parsing problem is the least of Rockstars problems I think. But I bet it happened like this: - when the game was still in active development, it was maybe anticipated that the shop might have a couple dozen items, no problem even when the JSON parsing is extremely slow - game is released, a separate maintenance team takes over, online mode is running for several years - over time more and more items are add…

Although this is possibly true, at any time the dev team could've gone: "loading is slow man, can we just profile it and see if there's anything obvious?". To someone with access to the source code and a debugger, that's probably less than 30 minutes of time to go from zero to hero. I've done this kind of stuff many times, and something like a json array taking minutes to parse would likely be very very obvious when…

The dev team is usually under immense pressure to deliver. This probably slipped under the radar to let all the other features get through.

The maintenance team probably maintains other games as well.

Then you add in the knowledge loss through the churning of developers and over time the organization forgets how things should be.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#456

Post by overfeed » Sat, May 30, 2026, 6:45 AM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #433

abcde666777 wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of things you're trying to simulate within the the performance contraints (games push computers to their absolute limits). An example - a 3d humanoid character. You need code to manage the mesh, the animation (probably skeletal), the animations themselves, all the blending logic, probably specialised code and data for facial animations, and then you need to make sure all of that can mesh with both input dr…

>> games push computers to their absolute limits The overwhelming majority of games actually don’t. Even 5+ year old rigs can run most modern games just fine.

> Even 5+ year old rigs can run most modern games just fine

AI-hardware demand is responsible for slowing down the AAA graphics frame-rate treadmill. Back when Nvidia and AMD were releasing improved mid-range consumer GPUs at a steady clip, there was incessant pressure on AAA games to have ever-increasing frame-rates and "photorealistic" graphic-fidelity. Making a game update at 144Hz at 4k resolution/max graphics quality, with no upscaling shortcuts would be a challenging problem, were it a common target.

In an alternate universe where the LLM boom didn't happen, we probably would have 24GB midrange GPUs (and 32GB/48GB Nvidia 5090 Ti), allowing for humongous textures, and likely games rendering at 8k, which 5+ y.o. rigs would struggle with except at low-quality settings.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#457

Post by usefulcat » Sat, May 30, 2026, 6:47 AM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #321

ernesto905 wrote: post #308

> An end to crunch I was unaware of the crunch concept: "In the video game industry, crunch (or crunch culture) is compulsory overtime during the development of a game. Crunch is common in the industry and can lead to work weeks of 65–80 hours for extended periods of time, often uncompensated beyond the normal working hours" -- wikipedia Needless to say this seems extremely predatory.

It's been an issue in the game industry for decades, and yes, crunch is predatory. It's exploiting the passion people have for making games to make them commit to burnout-inducing working conditions. Some game companies have taken steps to improve their working culture, but based on what I've read I get the impression it's still a big problem.

At the last game company I worked for (decades ago now) the pay was at best average, and crunch time lasted for at least several months each year, every year (title had an annual release schedule). AFAICT this was both expected and considered normal by my coworkers.

And that’s why it was the last game company I ever worked for.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#458

Post by 8n4vidtmkvmk » Sat, May 30, 2026, 6:48 AM UTC

miiiiiike wrote: post #384

michaelsalim wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a game dev but I used to dabble in it. Quite surprised by this take honestly. Sure, each domain has its own complex things to solve. But on average, I think it's quite safe to say that game development consistently demands more creative solutions to problems compared to many other fields.

All development requires creativity. Different types of creativity for different types of problems. Creativity isn’t narrowly defined to exclude everything but art, game mechanisms, and narrative. You think the creation of GMail didn’t take creativity? I’m suspicious of anyone who tries to lay a special claim to creativity for their class or type of work. Creates a false creative vs cog narrative that always seems to…

I work in big tech but dabbled in games. Games are much harder. Lots of math and you have to process 8 million pixels in 16 milliseconds, in addition to running your physics and NPC AIs. Big tech is 90% CRUD and 90% squabbling over variable names and we somehow think pushing a bit of HTML in 500ms is both hard and acceptable performance.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#459

Post by miiiiiike » Sat, May 30, 2026, 6:51 AM UTC

Thaxll wrote: post #424

miiiiiike wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All development requires creativity. Different types of creativity for different types of problems. Creativity isn’t narrowly defined to exclude everything but art, game mechanisms, and narrative. You think the creation of GMail didn’t take creativity? I’m suspicious of anyone who tries to lay a special claim to creativity for their class or type of work. Creates a false creative vs cog narrative that always seems to…

In web dev there is little creativity because everything has been done and there is a library / service to solve every problems, none of that exists in major games. Try Claude in your frontend/backend service, then try that in a game client.

Games have engines that provide so much. Unreal, Gadot, Unity.

Have you tried doing modern frontend work? Creativity is required.

I played with Claude recently. It wasn’t able to refactor a CSS one liner into simple sass mixin.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#460

Post by miiiiiike » Sat, May 30, 2026, 7:02 AM UTC

8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #458

miiiiiike wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All development requires creativity. Different types of creativity for different types of problems. Creativity isn’t narrowly defined to exclude everything but art, game mechanisms, and narrative. You think the creation of GMail didn’t take creativity? I’m suspicious of anyone who tries to lay a special claim to creativity for their class or type of work. Creates a false creative vs cog narrative that always seems to…

I work in big tech but dabbled in games. Games are much harder. Lots of math and you have to process 8 million pixels in 16 milliseconds, in addition to running your physics and NPC AIs. Big tech is 90% CRUD and 90% squabbling over variable names and we somehow think pushing a bit of HTML in 500ms is both hard and acceptable performance.

Is it harder because you’re less experienced with games. Your big tech job really requires no creativity?

Modern sites are extremely complex. BASH, Docker, Kubernetes, Python, Varnish, NGINX, Postgres, Cassandra, Elastic, Redis, Celery, CSS/Sass, Typescript. Observability, logging, build systems, testing, backups, CI, and a consistent design system. That’s all just to get to HTTP 200 “hello world”.