United Wizards of the Coast • Hacker News Board

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#51

Post by tjwebbnorfolk » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 7:40 PM UTC

sabedevops wrote: post #41

spullara wrote: post #36

I am skeptical there is any customer benefit from unionization and it makes me concerned that MTG Arena might not be around for long term. As a big customer, I am worried about my investment in the platform with this announcement. MTGO still exists, I wish it had a better client.

Stability of development, features etc is to the customer's benefit.

Have Magic customers been clamoring for Magic's employees to unionize for the past 30 years? This benefit you purport strikes me as purely hypothetical and possibly wrong: if they can't downsize when they need to, they could go out of business completely.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#52

Post by margalabargala » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 7:40 PM UTC

DelaneyM wrote: post #20

iwhalen wrote: post #4

From the full letter[1]: > Our Free Time is Our Own: Currently, if an employee makes anything creative in their free time, with their own resources, Hasbro may claim ownership. What we do in our free time should not be dictated by the company; neither should what we make in our free time be owned by the company. How common is this in creative fields? From my perspective this seems outlandish. Imagine doing FOSS work…

It's not at all uncommon, and important. When someone is empowered to work remotely, and is salaried and not held to specific hours, then it's very hard to identify what work is "theirs" and what work is "the company's" in a legally consistent way. Yes, it's usually obvious from context, but context doesn't always carry to a court of law. It can be particularly messy because the kinds of open source projects one cont…

No, it's really only companies that don't care about being shitty that do this. It's a callous lack of regard for employees that leads to the situation you describe, though you're right that it's not uncommon.

Any halfway decent company will restrict in the contract to IP that's related to the company's area of business. If you write logistics software, the company will say "we own all logistics software you write". You can't create a competitor. But if you work for a logistics software company and decide to go write a video editor on your own time, the company wouldn't own that.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#53

Post by awesome_dude » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 7:40 PM UTC

spullara wrote: post #36

I am skeptical there is any customer benefit from unionization and it makes me concerned that MTG Arena might not be around for long term. As a big customer, I am worried about my investment in the platform with this announcement. MTGO still exists, I wish it had a better client.

Unions rarely form because everyone is being treated well (humanely) and/or paid appropriately.

The extreme is, are you only happy when your products are created in sweatshops, or, worse, by slaves?

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#54

Post by tjwebbnorfolk » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 7:41 PM UTC

glance9835 wrote: post #50

spullara wrote: post #36

I am skeptical there is any customer benefit from unionization and it makes me concerned that MTG Arena might not be around for long term. As a big customer, I am worried about my investment in the platform with this announcement. MTGO still exists, I wish it had a better client.

[flagged]

It's likewise confusing when people think unions are always A Good Thing no matter what in all circumstances.

I'm glad the employees are exercising their rights to organize. Whether this turns out to be good for the business and for customers remains to be seen over time.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#55

Post by deanputney » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 7:42 PM UTC

junon wrote: post #43

Bratmon wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finding one that doesn't would be very hard.

All of my employers have let me specify my personal projects are mine. Maybe I've been lucky but I wouldn't work at a place that doesn't allow me my own life.

I’ve seen this done as a carve-out or exception that has to be explicitly documented. Trouble is that documentation is not presented as simple.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#56

Post by lazzlazzlazz » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 7:42 PM UTC

Awful news and a sign that WOTC has lost control of the company. The writing has been on the wall for WOTC for a while now, and this will exacerbate their decline. Amazing how unionists seize the body of their host when it is weakest.

EDIT: it is incredible how hostile HN is now to ant-union sentiment. None of the would-be founders here would support unionization at their companies. :)

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#57

Post by Imnimo » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 7:42 PM UTC

Back when Arena was first announced, there was an interesting line in their write-up:

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/everything-you-nee...

>We've created an all-new Games Rules Engine (GRE) that uses sophisticated machine learning that can read any card we can dream up for Magic. That means the shackles are off for our industry-leading designers to build and create cards and in-depth gameplay around new mechanics and unexpected but widly fun concepts, all of which can be adapted for MTG Arena thanks to the new GRE under the hood.

At the time, this claim of using "sophisticated machine learning" to (apparently?) translate natural language card text into code that a rules engine could enforce struck me as obviously fake. Now nearly ten years later, AI is starting to reach a level where this is plausible.

In their letter, the union writes:

>Over the past few years, pressure has ramped up from leadership to adopt LLMs and Gen AI tools in various aspects of our work at WOTC, often over the explicit concerns of impacted employees

I'm curious if this would include fighting against turning WotC's old fanciful claim into a reality as the technology matures?

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#58

Post by nonethewiser » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 7:42 PM UTC

glance9835 wrote: post #50

spullara wrote: post #36

I am skeptical there is any customer benefit from unionization and it makes me concerned that MTG Arena might not be around for long term. As a big customer, I am worried about my investment in the platform with this announcement. MTGO still exists, I wish it had a better client.

[flagged]

You say he's a bot because he's suspicious of unions, yet you acknowledge plenty of tech people are suspicious of unions. Seems like you dont think he's a bot at all and you're just trying to delegitimize his viewpoint without actually confronting it.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#59

Post by glance9835 » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 7:43 PM UTC

satvikpendem wrote: post #22

glasss wrote: post #2

Great to see! I think unions should be the default for most situations.

I wonder why in America it doesn't happen in the tech sector for devs specifically (as there is Alphabet Workers Union), beyond the typical reasons of American anti union sentiment like corporatism, bootstrap mentality etc, despite which there are many unions in the US like UAW, police and teachers unions etc. For tech, it's largely a different set of reasons, like high wages, no real grievances per se, and the ease…

Yea it is odd. Bc then tech workers get fired on mass just to get a little boost in stock price. And yet many don't think we need a union...

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#60

Post by stirfish » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 7:43 PM UTC

tiagod wrote: post #38

nonethewiser wrote: post #28

What is the Arena team? Looks like the team that makes the Magic The Gathering video game?

There are several MTG video-games. In this case, it's "Magic: The Gathering Arena" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic%3A_The_Gathering_Arena

I had one that came on a cd. I played that for ages.