Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

United Wizards of the Coast

unitedwizardsofthecoast.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 226 posts

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#61

Post by satvikpendem »

dhosek wrote: post #42
satvikpendem wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It’s because the capitalist class has successfully persuaded the proletariat that they shouldn’t join a union. The US has been very successful at concentrating created wealth into a small number of people.

> 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.

As I said for tech workers it's a different set of reasons.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#62

Post by nonethewiser »

haunter wrote: post #32
ddtaylor wrote: post #30

WOTC has been on a downward trend since the Hasbro acquisition.

That was 27 years ago. They were only founded 9 years before that. The game(s) are more popular than ever, especially D&D

D&D is famously not more popular than ever and is one of the reasons why so many OSR's have exploded in popularity over the past 5-10 years.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#63

Post by hellcow »

haunter wrote: post #32
ddtaylor wrote: post #30

WOTC has been on a downward trend since the Hasbro acquisition.

That was 27 years ago. They were only founded 9 years before that. The game(s) are more popular than ever, especially D&D

D&D had a massive player revolt a while back in response to WOTC (at the requirement of Hasbro) trying to take ownership over everything players create in the D&D universe, breaking their long-standing promise to all of those creators and players.

Several of the top D&D people who were advocating for players resigned around this time.

WOTC/Hasbro since relented under this pressure, but the bridge was already burned. My group hasn't played a D&D campaign since. We switched to Pathfinder 2e and found that it was a better system altogether.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#64

Post by sfink »

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…

I think some of it is that "union" has a different meaning in the US vs (eg) the EU. US unions are explicitly adversarial and tend to use the strategy (usually associated with capitalism!) of optimizing for short-term union benefit above all else, using brinkmanship and value-capturing tactics. EU unions, according to my weak understanding, are significantly more collaborative and more likely to be amenable to compromise if it contributes to the health of the corporations or institutions.

My naive view: in the US, unions are all about creating another set of assholes to counterbalance the existing assholes. In the EU, there's at least some thought towards "hey, maybe we shouldn't all be assholes?" (Or at least, not all of the time.)

That doesn't address your question of why it doesn't happen in the tech sector, but perhaps my anecdotal opinion is widespread enough to be added to your (already good) set of hypotheses?

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#65

Post by matthewkayin »

perrohunter wrote: post #44

I think there are some professions where Unions make sense, like for Pilots and Teachers, as a 30 years of experience teacher can be replaced with a 2 years of experience teacher, so we need unions to protect the experienced Teacher or Pilot, but when it comes to what MTG Arena does, I dont see much value on the union existing, perhaps someone can provide some valuable insight

Well generally the workers who make these games actually care about the game and want to make a good experience for the players. The execs however, only care about how much money they can make off of the product.

Having a union (assuming that the union is run well),

- ensures a better product for customers

- ensures better working conditions for workers

- ensures better pay and benefits from workers (at least in programming roles, the games industry is generally underpaid compared to developers in other industries)

- provides protections against undue firings and layoffs

I would be curious to know why you don't think a union would be good for these people.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#66

Post by satvikpendem »

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]

Not sure about "all." High earners generally do not benefit from unions as they can make more negotiating their own labor value versus participating in collective negotiation which is more likely to drag their compensation down towards the average, even if it's still higher than average.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#67

Post by looneysquash »

perrohunter wrote: post #44

I think there are some professions where Unions make sense, like for Pilots and Teachers, as a 30 years of experience teacher can be replaced with a 2 years of experience teacher, so we need unions to protect the experienced Teacher or Pilot, but when it comes to what MTG Arena does, I dont see much value on the union existing, perhaps someone can provide some valuable insight

The company you work for almost always has more power in negotiations than you do. (For some hypothetical "you".)

The bigger the company is, the more power they have typically.

If you want to make more money or get better benefits or otherwise negotiate a better contract, you need more leverage.

Unionizing is one way to gain more negotiation power by negotiating together with your co-workers instead of individually.

It also makes it easier to address cross cutting concerns like safety and fairness.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#68

Post by margalabargala »

drob518 wrote: post #9
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…

Most employment agreements for tech companies have a clause that says that the employer owns everything you do while you’re working for them. And if you’re on salary, as opposed to working by the hour, there really is no “free time.” In practice no company is going to go after you for anything that is non-competitive, and doubly so if it’s also open source work. But yea, if you’re inventing competitive products in yo…

Most? No. Many, sure.

> have a clause that says that the employer owns everything you do while you’re working for them

Good companies will have a clause that says the employer owns everything you do in the relevant field of the company while working for them, explicitly naming that field.

If you work for a logistics company, you would be able to write your own video editor without any worry. If you work for a not-shitty company.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#69

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

cbarrick wrote: post #24
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…

Google has a similar clause in their employee contracts. I assume most tech companies do. That doesn't mean it is enforceable, though.

In contrast to Google, Microsoft, my former employer, probably has (had?) the best policy amongst big tech: moonlighting wasn't just tolerated, but actively encouraged! (...provided it runs on Windows, of course) ...because it's basically free training/experience if it means exposure to new APIs/platforms/libs/concepts - and definitely helps the morale levels of folks who love to build things but who ended-up with an extremely narrow-scoped job at the company (e.g. PMs who don't get to write code, or SDETs and SREs that only get noticed by management when they don't do their jobs).

During the launch of Windows 8, Msft's moonlighting policy was also part of their Windows App Store strategy: we were all heavily encouraged to make an "Windows Store App-app" so that SteveB could claim MS had N-many apps in its app-store, because that's how Leadership thought they could build credibility vs. Apple's established app store (of course, what actually ended-up happening was hundreds of cr-apps that were just WebView-wrappers over live websites).

In contrast, I understand Apple might have the worst moonlighting policy: I'm told that unless you directly work on WebKit or Darwin then you have to deactivate your GitHub account or else find yourself swiftly dragged onto the proverbial Trash.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#70

Post by red-iron-pine »

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…

every IT and dev gig I've been at / around basically said "anything you create is ours and we have ROFR on any LLCs or companies you found"

in practice that is either unenforceable or else a giant waste of the company's money, but it's CYA in case someone doing engineering or creative work decides to rip it off elsewhere.

like Meta ain't gonna try to steal your local cupcakes at the farmer's market side gig

Post reply on HN