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Rockstar employee shares account of the company's union-busting efforts

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Re: Rockstar employee shares account of the company's union-busting efforts

#161

Post by guywithahat »

elephanlemon wrote: post #8

As a kid I always lamented that every studio seemed to sell out as soon as they had the chance. Valve is basically the only one that didn’t… clearly it’s paid off very well for Gabe and the employees. Wish more people would resist the payday and keep what’s theirs.

But union "busting" isn't selling out, if anything it's keeping to their true cause. Companies don't function well with adversarial units within them, and companies don't start out with unions.

Case and point: Valve doesn't have a union.

Re: Rockstar employee shares account of the company's union-busting efforts

#162

Post by righthand »

pixelpoet wrote: post #57
shaky-carrousel wrote: post #9

Well, there goes GTA 6. Better for my wallet, I guess. Don't want to finance some thugs.

I'll probably end up buying GTA 6, once it's on sale or something; good people worked on it too I would imagine, and helped make it a good game. Also, with apologies for the whataboutism, we unfortunately finance thugs all day every day (my internet provider, German government and pension, Deutsche Bahn, etc are massive extortionists); it's not really black and white.

It’s so nice to be guilted into supporting awful people, because a bunch of nice people were abused by the awful people but at least the art will keep one entertained and the corpos keep on abusing.

Re: Rockstar employee shares account of the company's union-busting efforts

#163

Post by [deleted] »

immibis wrote: post #11
elephanlemon wrote: post #8

As a kid I always lamented that every studio seemed to sell out as soon as they had the chance. Valve is basically the only one that didn’t… clearly it’s paid off very well for Gabe and the employees. Wish more people would resist the payday and keep what’s theirs.

Gabe is the Apple of PC gaming, taking a 30% tax on all transactions. It's not this particular kind of evil, but it is a different kind of evil.

[deleted]

Re: Rockstar employee shares account of the company's union-busting efforts

#164

Post by tialaramex »

exabrial wrote: post #99

Every union I've been a part of has been more of a pain than its worth, or has tried to keep individuals from become any more successful that others. I don't understand the obsession with them on HN.

I am an individual who doesn't like just being one of a group, so I have never joined a union, but I support some union actions at my employer and so I too go on strike (and thus don't get paid) if I agree with the cause of their action. It can be simultaneously true that unions aren't perfect and that unionisation is better than not.

Indeed that's par for the course, there's plenty to dislike about democracy, but the alternatives we've tried are worse for example.

Re: Rockstar employee shares account of the company's union-busting efforts

#165

Post by roggenilsson »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #105
umvi wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happier to pay Valve's 30% than Apple's. With Valve you could always switch to Itch or something if you didn't want to pay, but with Apple you have no alternative. Valve gives you access to a huge player base and lots of useful marketing tools and such.

> Valve gives you access to a huge player base and lots of useful marketing tools and such. So does Apple. Despite this, they are both engaged in rent-seeking ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking ), which has a harmful effect on everyone but them. Imagine if roads weren't public, but were built by a single private company. You have a business that moves goods by truck. You can use the private company's roads,…

>Rent-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating public policy or economic conditions without creating new wealth

Would the PC video game market be bigger or smaller without steam?

Re: Rockstar employee shares account of the company's union-busting efforts

#166

Post by kwanbix »

xhrpost wrote: post #108
worldfoodgood wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve makes a significant amount of their money from the gambling they've attached to their games, and profits immensely from the culture of farming loot boxes to gamble on for skins and such. They also take an absurd cut of developer income and saddle devs with costs that they don't always want. (Selling on Steam? Valve takes 30% and forces you to moderate the forums on your listing page that you cannot opt out of.)…

If you were a dev selling a game years ago when physical distribution was the only method, you'd likely end up with a lot less than 70% after both the publisher and retailer take their cut. https://www.latimes.com/archives/blogs/company-town-blog/sto...

The difference is that the company had to risk manufacturing cartridges, distributing them, etc. If the game didn't sell, you ended up with lots of money lost.

Steam is much much easier for Valve.

I am not saying it has a value, but 30% seems a lot.

Of course, in the end that 30% we end up paying it ourselves.

Re: Rockstar employee shares account of the company's union-busting efforts

#167

Post by righthand »

elephanlemon wrote: post #8

As a kid I always lamented that every studio seemed to sell out as soon as they had the chance. Valve is basically the only one that didn’t… clearly it’s paid off very well for Gabe and the employees. Wish more people would resist the payday and keep what’s theirs.

They definitely get a free pass from people. Valve is plenty evil.

Re: Rockstar employee shares account of the company's union-busting efforts

#168

Post by mathgeek »

Whoppertime wrote: post #101
worldfoodgood wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok! Happier is a fine place to be. They are both still too high. Not everything has to be binary -- I can think Valve is offering some utility and also think that Valve is charging too much for that utility. The fact that Gabe has a billion dollars worth of yachts probably suggests that maybe, just maaaaaybe, that 30% could be lower and Steam could still provide you the same level of marketing support and player base…

The only reason EpicGameStore was able to rise as a competitor to Steam was because of the Billions Fortnite was earning.

Pretty much. If it weren’t for free games and exclusives there would be no Epic Store to speak of.

Re: Rockstar employee shares account of the company's union-busting efforts

#169

Post by sugarpimpdorsey »

worldfoodgood wrote: post #160
sugarpimpdorsey wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They also have an internal culture that's been fairly regularly criticized as being pretty uncomfortable for women and minorities. If they don't like the culture, then they should work elsewhere. I hear Google is hiring. Nothing worse than joining a company you contributed zero to building from the ground up, then unilaterally deciding the culture needs to change according to your whims, right now . You might feel…

What nonsense. A decision about workplace should be a combination of factors -- workplace culture, products you can work on, compensation, skill fit, alignment with your interests, etc. You should feel empowered to have a voice in the products of your labor. And you should feel empowered to have a voice in the culture that produces those products.

They're a game company. They're not feeding the poor.

Your employment is "at will".

You are not entitled to any item in your list of demands.

You are, however, free to leave at any time for something more suited to your tastes.

Re: Rockstar employee shares account of the company's union-busting efforts

#170

Post by mjr00 »

gruez wrote: post #136
mjr00 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what the person who started this comment chain said, though. Every Steam competitor has been "does the same thing as Steam, but worse" so why would anyone switch over?

That's not the same as "terrible" though? Signal is basically "whatsapp but not facebook", but you wouldn't say it's "terrible". Same with lyft (which came after uber), or ubereats (which came after many food delivery startups).

Right but if there were a better platform than Steam for buying games it'd win out in the marketplace. It's not like anyone is locked into Steam really.

Every online gaming platform other than Steam and GOG sucks. And in fact GOG competes very well with Steam precisely because it offers something Steam doesn't, which is DRM-free games. Steam didn't just beat the Epic Games Store and Origin and Games For Windows Live because it came first, it's just a better platform and the others offer nothing outside of exclusives which they paid for.

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