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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

#21

Post by SaltyBackendGuy »

samiwami wrote: post #14
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.

There is nothing forcing developers to release on steam, they can sell directly through a website. It’s not Valve’s fault no other competitor has gotten close to the quality of Steam. Epic Games could have made a dent, but they decided to try to bribe customers instead of making a functioning store.

This made me laugh. I tried Epic because I got a free game that I was interested in, but could only play it on the Epic Game store. After a week, I was no longer able to login no matter what I tried. So anecdotally, your statement tracks with my experience.

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

#22

Post by joshe »

What's sad is that unionizing will accelerate whatever the decline of the company is causing the dissatisfaction. Wiser for employees to just jump ship or found a new game studio when this kind of decline happens.

The chances of a company turning around are super low, adding a union makes it harder. Just run.

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

#23

Post by Loughla »

daedrdev wrote: post #13
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.

Its definitely the ones that sell. There are plenty of small studios run by founders, but often once they sell they start burning consumer trust and goodwill as if those things don't exist and have an actual cost

Once you have an IP that's massive and you know people will buy regardless of if you're a trash monster or not, there's zero incentive to do the right thing.

Until people stop buying games from these places nothing will change.

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

#24

Post by acedTrex »

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.

This is in no way true because there is no requirement to use steam for PC releases.

Apple is a firm technical gatekeeper to their ecosystem. Steam is not at all analogous to that for PCs.

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

#25

Post by monospacegames »

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.

Financially Valve exists in an incomparably different space compared to companies like Take Two that actually have to make games to make money.

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

#26

Post by gruez »

zer00eyz wrote: post #19
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.

Uhhh.... 11 percent. That is the charge back rate in gaming. The "overall" stat for all transactions is something like 3 percent. Card processing isnt free. There are fees, and supporting card processing still has more humans in the loop than one needs. Never mind all the technology that comes with running the dam platform. Is 30 percent a lot. It sure is. Valve isnt a charity, this is how they chose to make money. M…

>11 percent. That is the charge back rate in gaming. The "overall" stat for all transactions is something like 3 percent.

1. source?

2. How does that justify a 30% rate, when presumably it's clawed back from developers?

>Card processing isnt free. There are fees, and supporting card processing still has more humans in the loop than one needs. Never mind all the technology that comes with running the dam platform.

Again, nowhere near 30% though

>Meanwhile, AWS has a 30+ percent margin and I dont see CTO's lining up to run hardware...

30% margins on renting hardware is totally different than a 30% tax on transactions, and it's disingenuous to imply they're comparable. At the very least amazon needs to spend the other 70% on running servers and investing in datacenters, whereas valve doesn't. It's studios that are actually doing the development. Valve just is charging 30% on top of that. To take an extreme example, compare the 2-3% fees charged by visa vs the ~15% gross margins that car companies make. Even though that's 5x higher, I doubt many are outraged about car companies' profiteering.

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

#27

Post by saubeidl »

fn-mote wrote: post #20
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because no amount of profit is ever enough for the stock market, everything must perpetually grow.

That’s a very reductionist take on what happened here. I don’t think increased profit is likely to result from these firings. How would it?

Profit = revenue - expenses.

Firings reduce expenses, the equation above explains the rest. Of course, that's only in the short term, but that's what exec bonuses are given out on!

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

#28

Post by saubeidl »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #3
metadat wrote: post #2

This makes me sad, R* has made some of my most favorite games, especially Red Dead Redemption 2. They make so much money, why can't they play nice and treat their employees like human beings? I don't recall reports of Valve (Steam, also super profitable) stooping. Is Rockstar a genetic relative of GAFA, because this is more like what I've come to expect from Amazon.

Businesses desire growth, not conservation or charity. And that desire is frequently achieved through illegal means. Wage theft for instance is a far greater sum than the total of robbery in the US. The criminality is rampant! Meta is also in the news today for making 10% of its revenue from scams, as well as for having codified policy that scammers representing at least 0.15% of their revenue must be protected from…

It's almost as if capitalism was a deeply messed up system that brings out and celebrates the very worst in humanity.

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

#29

Post by pixelpoet »

Very brave of them to speak out, but TBH I'm not sure I'd do it if I were worried about anonymity - their written English is flawless, which is very uncommon. Unless they took considerable care to imitate a different writing style, it's probably trivial to identify who wrote it.

In any case, a longtime friend of mine was senior graphics programmer on GTA5, and I was very close to interviewing with Rockstar in Edinburgh at his recommendation. But then I remembered how gamedev burnt me out at age 19 (my first job, at Lionhead), and how I've never been burnt out since, and decided against it. Been in offline rendering since then and never looked back.

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

#30

Post by bak3y »

monospacegames wrote: post #25
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.

Financially Valve exists in an incomparably different space compared to companies like Take Two that actually have to make games to make money.

And they were able to get there because they made good games.
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