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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

#181

Post by whatevaa »

axus wrote: post #98
immibis wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can a Steam Deck install games without using Steam? If so, big advantage over Google Play and the App Store.

Steam Deck desktop mode is full blown KDE desktop. The only nuance is that system updates are managed by A/B partition scheme, so root is readonly. Can be made writeable but it's an overlay, so changes get lost on system update and need to be reapplied.

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

#182

Post by jrflowers »

shaky-carrousel wrote: post #9

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

I’m also kind of concerned about the game itself suffering. If they’re shedding institutional knowledge to avoid unions we could end up with a vibe coded GTA 6.

Like imagine if MindsEye had thirteen years of anticipation before it came out.

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

#184

Post by aquariusDue »

worldfoodgood wrote: post #155
xhrpost wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

[flagged]

Well yeah, but nobody stops you from doing what Notch did with Minecraft way back when you just bought it from the games website.

itch.io and so on are still alternatives, you're not paying just for ease of digital distribution you're also paying for eyeballs.

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

#185

Post by worldfoodgood »

mathgeek wrote: post #168
Whoppertime wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't understand. You think Steam exists without Half Life and Counterstrike?

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

#186

Post by ElevenLathe »

I would encourage anyone in tech that is interested in forming a union at their workplace to sign up for CWA's CODE (Campaign to Organize Digital Employees) training: https://code-cwa.org/

CWA is a big, traditional, national union (think phone company employees, health care workers, flight attendants) that has voted to set aside a portion of their dues to help organize us, their fellow workers in the tech sector, which I consider a truly beautiful act of solidarity. They are having some successes, which seem to be building.

Getting plugged in with the training and, almost as importantly, a CWA organizer, is a great first step if you know you'd like a union but don't know where to start.

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

#187

Post by 9rx »

martin-t wrote: post #110
pixelpoet wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And this is why "vote with your wallet" does not work. As a consumer there's no way to decide who gets the money. In fact, even the people who made the game (did the actual work, not managers, advertisers, etc.) don't get to decide. Correct me if I am wrong but the programmers, designers, artists have already been paid and any money from sales goes to the company and its execs/shareholders. (And yes, employees can al…

> And this is why "vote with your wallet does not work". As a consumer there's no way to decide who gets the money.

Huh? That doesn't make any sense. "Vote your wallet" does not mean throw money on the ground haphazardly and pray that it finds its way to the appropriate home. It means hand the money directly to the person you want to have it. There is no way to avoid deciding who gets the money. That's the only choice you get to make.

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

#188

Post by martin-t »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #157
martin-t wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is why "vote with your wallet" does not work. As a consumer there's no way to decide who gets the money. In fact, even the people who made the game (did the actual work, not managers, advertisers, etc.) don't get to decide. Correct me if I am wrong but the programmers, designers, artists have already been paid and any money from sales goes to the company and its execs/shareholders. (And yes, employees can al…

It would work if we dispensed with intellectual property and instead voted on what should be created rather than on what already has.

I hear this argument with some regularity and i don't think it would work the way you expect. Have you gamed it out in your head?

1) A lot of people would immediately stop contributing to open source. In fact i ahead have because ML is being used to launder my work to use it without resourcing my licenses. Same with any other area where people share their work for free. It would all be monetized by those with access to better advertising.

2) Anything published would be immediately scooped up by the big players. How would a small competitor like Nebula compete with YouTube if YouTube took all its content and offered it for free with ads?

3) How would you even know who the original creator was if those stealing the work stripped away attribution? They already do but at least you have some limited ways to fight them.

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

#189

Post by m0llusk »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #147
m0llusk wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Systems need to be managed. If you cook with high temperatures and let your attention wander then the food burns. If you drive fast with bald tires then you may fly off the road. We know that strong regulation on industry, especially monopolies, high taxes on the wealthy, and powerful unions can keep Capitalism in balance, but we have chosen not to use these mechanisms. Is that Capitalism being flawed or is it us as…

Crony capitalism is capitalism. How do you know it can be kept in balance if it is not?

We've been through this before. As recently as the 1930s the Capitalist economy tried to eat itself and had to be stopped. That is historical and everything changes, but the basic principles are the same. Find out where things are going wrong and address that with some basic controls and limits.

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

#190

Post by worldfoodgood »

sugarpimpdorsey wrote: post #169
worldfoodgood wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Can you point to the word entitled in my posts? Or are you putting words in my mouth?

Can you point to any demands? Or are you arguing against something I didn't say?

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