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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

#211

Post by o11c »

worldfoodgood wrote: post #158
xinayder wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They also have an internal culture that's been fairly regularly criticized as being pretty uncomfortable for women and minorities. Source?

A couple sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9aCwCKgkLo https://medium.com/dunia-media/the-nightmare-of-valves-self-...

The second link is paywalled, but from the various sources I looked at, the diversity problems with Valve seem limited to "Valve refuses to spend company time/effort to support my cause". I have not seen any concrete claims of misbehavior, in direct contrast to some other video game companies.

Additionally, when I actually look into the alleged statistics of claims that "Valve is primarily white and male", the numbers ... don't actually look that bad? We shouldn't expect any company to fit national demographics exactly.

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

#212

Post by throwuxiytayq »

kwanbix wrote: post #166
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...

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.

It clearly isn’t easy, given that nobody else is doing it their way. Maintaining the company culture might be the toughest challenge of them all. The other game storefronts simply can’t resist muddying the water for the consumer, making the shopping experience hostile for some stupid ass monetization reasons. Shopping on Steam is a breeze, and it always feels like the store is on your side trying to help, instead of trying to get in the way. The developer-side publishing experience is much similar.

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

#213

Post by worldfoodgood »

galkk wrote: post #193
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…

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

That's a weird structuring of the concern. How about letting all developers enjoy the fruits of their work?

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

#214

Post by dymk »

blasphemers wrote: post #63
joshe wrote: post #22

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.

The thing holding back unions in the U.S is the unions themselves and the laws around them. Once a union forms, they have entirely too much power.

What power do they have too much of?

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

#215

Post by worldfoodgood »

DaSHacka wrote: post #206
worldfoodgood wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Nowadays? Yes

Of course now it does, but it was bootstrapped off the back of commercial success. The parent poster was suggesting Epic could only finance a game store off the commercial success of Fortnite. Which seemed to be the exact same path Valve took, so I was curious to explore why the parent felt they were different.

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

#216

Post by torben-friis »

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…

>I would not be surprised if non-native speakers, on average, have a better handle of the difference between effect/affect, there/their, etc.

That’s from training system rather than age.

You’ll rarely catch me mixing up there and their because I’ve learned those words reading them, and in written form they’re very distinguishable.

I couldn’t write a poem to save my life though, because I can’t tell which words in English rhyme - the written form of an English word isn’t trustable.

An interesting example is natives with different accents making different mistakes - Latino Spanish speakers for example commonly confuse c and s while writing, as it’s a similar sound.

Spain's dialect however pronounces those letters very distinctly (their famous “lisp”) so to Spaniards it’s obvious which one to use.

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

#218

Post by hn_acc1 »

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.

Which unions have you been part of?

I used to work at a university that was NON-union, but basically ensured our benefits/raises were always at LEAST as good as the unionized university across town negotiated. THAT's a way to avoid unionizing efforts.

I have a teacher in the family - it's been an unequivocal necessity for them - otherwise the city / schoolboard would run roughshod over them - like 1% raises over 5 years, while their coffers are full.

And there's always a few (*&@#$ parents who think they're "all that" who would try to have individual teachers fired just because their 1st grader only got a "B" when they're clearly a generational prodigy... Unions really help with that.

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

#219

Post by dmix »

throwuxiytayq wrote: post #212
kwanbix wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It clearly isn’t easy, given that nobody else is doing it their way. Maintaining the company culture might be the toughest challenge of them all. The other game storefronts simply can’t resist muddying the water for the consumer, making the shopping experience hostile for some stupid ass monetization reasons. Shopping on Steam is a breeze, and it always feels like the store is on your side trying to help, instead of…

I use steam for the community as well. Just look at how bad reviews are on Xbox store, they are more like app store reviews... mostly complaining about a version update.

Steam also has a solid update/beta pipeline. Game companies post blog posts about new game updates so you keep up to date with development. They also did an amazing job with SteamOS which feels rock solid.

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

#220

Post by worldfoodgood »

o11c wrote: post #211
worldfoodgood wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9aCwCKgkLo https://medium.com/dunia-media/the-nightmare-of-valves-self-...

The second link is paywalled, but from the various sources I looked at, the diversity problems with Valve seem limited to "Valve refuses to spend company time/effort to support my cause". I have not seen any concrete claims of misbehavior, in direct contrast to some other video game companies. Additionally, when I actually look into the alleged statistics of claims that "Valve is primarily white and male", the number…

Additional allegations of discrimination: https://discriminationandsexualharassmentlawyers.com/valve-c...

Allegations of unpaid labor: https://web.archive.org/web/20160209211205/https://www.reddi...

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