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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

#81

Post by appreciatorBus »

saubeidl wrote: post #28
wahnfrieden wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You think the administrators of a socialist, communist or other collectivist society would not face the same temptation and respond similarly?

At least under liberal capitalism I have the option of not buying games and of making my own.

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

#82

Post by rwmj »

sonu27 wrote: post #6

Definitely one for the courts

(Employment Tribunal, but yes.) If even half the stuff in the posting is true, it should be an easy win. Unfortunately Legal Aid for Employment Tribunals has been cut to the bone, but their union should be able to help here by taking the case up on their behalf.

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

#83

Post by pixelpoet »

bowmessage wrote: post #79
pixelpoet wrote: post #29

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 Edinbur…

If they were careful, which I'm sure they were, the flawless English is the result of a round of LLM proofreading.

Yeah I was thinking about that, these days you just run whatever text you want to anonymise through an LLM with some instructions for style.

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

#84

Post by appreciatorBus »

stego-tech wrote: post #45
rayiner wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That’s not a Union thing, that’s a system thing. Anyone fiercely on either extreme of the spectrum is missing the forest for the trees and proudly waving their willful ignorance of the dynamics of power. In an ideal scenario, Unions and Shareholders would cooperate to achieve suitable outcomes for both parties; in reality, the amount of power needed to even get a Union off the ground and keep it sustained against the…

Those power dynamics are part of the human psyche. The will persist and be present under any alternative you care to impose.

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

#85

Post by saintfire »

neilv wrote: post #78

* I want to keep liking GTA, and to keep giving Rockstar more money, for each new chapter and new console/device. If it turns out that Rockstar was union-busting and defaming, then I really hope that they soon have a we-messed-up moment, and genuine corrective action for whatever went wrong. * Has anyone heard of game-buying consumers voting en masse with their pocketbooks over ethical/social concerns about a game/pu…

There was a big deal made over Blizzard's policy and behaviour.

Also, I may be misremembering, but there was something pertaining to esports supressing the hong Kong riots.

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

#86

Post by liquid_thyme »

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #48

[flagged]

A rational person would agree that unions, like anything else, have pros and cons. They can do good, but also can do harm. It's the commenters here seem to fly off on emotional rants that derail the conversations. The thinking is capital takes less risk than labor; and that model of thinking makes it easy to ascribe faults to capital, but not to labor. You can't argue your way out of that. When you have to manage a bunch of employees and run payroll, bonuses, benefits, increments, that is when you'll know who takes more risk.

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

#87

Post by shadowgovt »

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 never sold out because they became the "out" other companies sell out to. They successfully built a revenue-capturing money-printer in the form of the Steam store and service and now they don't have to make games at all to keep their bottom line strong. Not to imply they shouldn't have; get that gold ring and all.

(But I may also argue the point they never sold out in terms of being a game studio as opposed to a publisher.... "So when's Half Life 3 releasing?")

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

#88

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#89

Post by mjr00 »

gruez wrote: post #64
chacham15 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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, "stea…

That's what the person who started this comment chain said, though. Every Steam competitor has been "does the same thing as Steam, but worse" so why would anyone switch over?

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

#90

Post by appreciatorBus »

tclancy wrote: post #77
appreciatorBus wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also true if humans in general, at all stations in life, including union members and union leaders. Is there any offer a union would refuse on the grounds that’s too much?

Is that true? Feels like you are begging a huge question and also assuming everyone has to exist in a capitalist society forever.

It will still be true under not-capitalism. Perhaps it won’t be measured with money but it will exist.
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