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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

#61

Post by cwillu »

dartharva wrote: post #47
gruez wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Aga…

Valve also hosts and maintains the game files for consumers to download, and the bandwidth/hardware needed to serve hundreds of GBs for each game to millions of customers across the globe is not trivial.

And the minefield of user cloud storage; I'm amazed that they've managed to avoid basically any abuses of the service.

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

#62

Post by umvi »

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.)…

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.

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

#63

Post by blasphemers »

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.

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

#64

Post by gruez »

chacham15 wrote: post #46
gruez wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. First mover advantage is just that strong. How are the competitors to whatsapp or facebook doing? At best you have something like tiktok, which might be technically "social" media but is a totally different segment. You don't catch up with old high school buddies on tiktok, for instance.

- Facebook was not first. Before it was friendster and myspace. - Tiktok was not first. Before it was vine and youtube. - Google was not first. Before it was yahoo and altavista. Plenty of todays big companies were not the first in their area.

All of the examples you gave, the challengers had some revolutionary idea/improvement on top. Tiktok had its recommendation algorithm and short videos. Google had pagerank. That's also the reason why whatsapp hasn't been supplanted. There's no room for innovation (or nobody bothered trying). The same is true for digital distribution. Every steam competitor is basically "steam but [publisher]" or in epic's case, "steam but with steam games".

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

#65

Post by cwillu »

vlovich123 wrote: post #59
vlovich123 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citations? I’m not aware of this strong a conclusion. In fact, my understanding is that generally wages go up.

Doing my own research, ChatGPT summarizes the state as generally unions improve wages and working conditions for employees much more than they pay in premiums. This has gone down since the 1970s but is still a noticeable effect. Indeed the 40 hour work week comes from unions. There is a negative effect on profitability, but that’s subject to interpretation: > The negative effect on profitability from unionization may…

I believe you replied to the wrong comment

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

#66

Post by threetonesun »

acedTrex wrote: post #24
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.

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.

Steam isn't even analogous to that on their own Steam Deck, where they absolutely could have been.

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

#67

Post by worldfoodgood »

umvi wrote: post #62
worldfoodgood wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)…

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.

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

#68

Post by [deleted] »

dartharva wrote: post #47
gruez wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Aga…

Valve also hosts and maintains the game files for consumers to download, and the bandwidth/hardware needed to serve hundreds of GBs for each game to millions of customers across the globe is not trivial.

[deleted]

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

#69

Post by lawlessone »

monospacegames wrote: post #7

Wouldn't have happened under Dan Houser. R* made too much money for its own good. On another note, heard on Bloomberg today that they've been working on GTA 6 for 10 years at this point. Considering the size of their development teams it's possible that more manhours may have gone into this single title than all video games that were made until the PS1 era combined.

Is there a cut off? at some point the stuff they made / wrote when they started working must be becoming dated.

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

#70

Post by Permit »

lingrush4 wrote: post #17

> I am aware of one employee who had a panic attack at this moment, and HR hung up on them during this panic attack not caring at all about their wellbeing. One can only hope this employee survived.

How many people die each year from panic attacks?
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