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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

#191

Post by tbrockman »

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…

Please don't try to spread the idea that it "does not work", it's incorrect and discourages one of the most effective non-violent mechanisms consumers have for driving change in market economies. It may not necessarily be sufficient (coordinated boycotts, for instance, are much more effective than individual decisions), it may not always be an option (particularly when there aren't viable alternatives), it may not work immediately, there may not be enough people who "vote" a certain way, and there may be insufficient information to make informed decisions--but consumers absolutely decide which products and companies live and die, and every single dollar you spend allocates power.

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

#192

Post by vkou »

worldfoodgood wrote: post #38
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.

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.)…

Valve charges 30% for access to their marketplace, and allows you to sell Steam keys for your game at whatever price you want through your own sales channels, without paying Valve a cent.

I'm not sure how any of that is sketchy or gross. As far as marketplaces and platforms go, this is quite reasonable, and there are many successful games which are either not on Steam, or are cross-listed on multiple platforms, or are cross-listed on both Steam and the developer's own distribution channel.

I'll give you lootboxes, they are pretty shitty.

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

#193

Post by galkk »

worldfoodgood wrote: post #67
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.

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…

That’s weird argument. How about letting man to enjoy the fruits of his work?

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

#195

Post by castwide »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #132
t-writescode wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet Costco still does just fine.

Costco might not be your intended example. It has amazing revenue growth: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/COST/costco/revenu... While simultaneously growing profit margin: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/COST/costco/profit... Hence growing annual net income from $2.3B to $8B in the last 10 years.

I imagine the GP was referring to the fact that Costco experiences that kind of growth while giving their employees excellent pay and benefits. Even low-level store employees typically make $20-30 an hour.

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

#196

Post by mlrtime »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #44
immibis wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who are nice and treat their employees like human beings are not allowed to become CEOs.

This would be less of an issue if game companies operated as co-ops.

Isn't that what indy game developers are, why can't both exist? You don't have to play GTA.

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

#197

Post by hamdingers »

PetitPrince wrote: post #116
jsheard wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Valve is basically the only one that didn’t They kind of did, with their sudden pivot from primarily making singleplayer games to almost exclusively making F2P GaaS titles the instant they got a taste of lootbox money. Half-Life 3 and Portal 3 will never happen because Valve makes 100x as much money with 1/100th of the effort by peddling Counter Strike skins.

HL3 kinda happened though, but it was called Half-Life Alyx. And while it wasn't a conventional FPS like HL1 and 2, there's absolutely no trace of GaaS in it.

Alyx is a great spinoff, a mindblowing tech demo, and a thrilling prequel. It is not Half-Life 3.

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

#198

Post by pixelpoet »

cj wrote: post #140
pixelpoet wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to get downvoted into a massive smoking hole in the ground for daring to state this opinion, but, as a lifelong enjoyer of the English language: native speakers butcher it the most.

This is true of many skills you grow up learning. E.g. someone who grew up playing piano might be able to play at an incredibly advanced level, while also being terrible at reading or writing sheet music. The science around skills acquired during childhood/adolescence vs. learned skills is interesting. For example, I would not be surprised if non-native speakers, on average, have a better handle of the difference bet…

English is my 4th language, after German, Afrikaans and Indonesian. People get very angry about it when it's pointed out, and yes, "you just say Bingo" (non-native speakers tend to get idioms and certain turns of phrase wrong), but at least we get singular vs plural, past vs present vs future tense etc right. I'm not sure why but "most" (therein lies the thesis) native speakers struggle so much with that basic stuff, to say nothing of its vs it's, were vs we're vs where, maybe caring about much vs many, past perfect "had had 'had had', had had"...

Shoot the messenger if you want, but the evidence is literally ubiquitous.

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

#199

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

martin-t wrote: post #188
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

1) I contribute to open source because I want the thing to exist. I use open licenses because I don't want anybody to use the law to deny anybody else access to it. If we gut the parts of the law by which others would deny access, I no longer have to worry about licensing, but my original motivated is untouched.

2) what do you mean "scooped up"? What's to stop a small platform from providing the same content that a large platform does, if we've done away with intellectual property?

3) I'm confused. If you're paying somebody to create a proposed work, and then they create it and get paid for doing so, and then nobody is allowed to restrict access to it, where does the theft come in?

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