Wizards of the Coast’s Magic: The Gathering Arena development team voted 79 to 16 on June 23 to certify United Wizards of the Coast, the first union in the company’s history.
The union will dig itself in, increase costs, codify corruption, make it nearly impossible to fire underperforming employees, saddle the parent company with increased legal and personnel costs, and will inevitably go on strike for a bigger slice of a shrinking pie at exactly the worst possible time to do so.*
Good I say.
Burn that company down to the foundation, then bulldoze and bury that too because it's cracked, leaking, and built on unstable ground.
*In my city, the local newspaper was on death's door--the perfect time for its union of different unions to strike and sue. Those unions had their day in court/arbitration and they "won". The paper, unable to operate under the new terms, declared bankruptcy, folded, and everyone got fired.
Unions are definitely bad. I remember when the UPS strike basically stopped business way back in the late 90s. They held the country hostage for two weeks. UPS lost untold millions in revenue and people complaining added more pressure that eventually forced management to cave.
After that, any time the phrase "maybe we should strike" came up management was like "No, wait, please tell me what want and we'll fix it!"
Normally, I'd say "F**k Unions" but I feel like there's got to be some way to ensure at least minimal protection. Look at Battlefield 6. It is close to having $2 billion in sales; a remarkable and profitable success. Then EA all but closed the studio down despite record profits from this series.
Most of the protections unions were created for: hours, safety, salary, benefits were won decades ago. Labor fights happened and new, better laws were enacted.
But the unions never went away.
Like any organization created to "solve" a problem, they either need a never ending problem or a never ending source of new problems.
Once they became dues-collecting concentrations of power, it was inevitable that they would become feckless and corrupt. Union bosses just became one more managerial layer, one more siphon on the productivity of the average worker.
The video game industry has some bizarre, self-inflicted pain due to incredibly short-sighted practices. They've spent decades hiring a whole bunch of folks, training them, assimilating them, then firing them once a game ships only to start rehiring sometime later once the next game enters crunch development.
A properly managed pipeline would prevent that and greatly improve output by significantly reducing churn/turnover.
Instead, you often have the best and most capable employees leaving the industry for good to seek more stable pastures.
in a rational market, you wouldn't need government or union intervention to protect these employees. The offending companies would eventually crash from brain drain alone.
Irrationality enters the market in at least two ways: first, too many low-tier employees exist. Their desire to work in video games outweighs their ambition and value to other companies. A self-respecting and capable employee would tell EA to pound sand, and if enough did so, EA would have to reconsider its business practices if it wanted to keep making Battlefields.
The second is the unending money faucet from USAID, Blackrock and their like, and Soros and his ilk. Thanks to all that dark money, there's no penalty for failure. They're so insulated from damaging long term descions, that they're only recently starting to see the shape of the problems.
Sorry, very long winded.
In summation:
RATIONAL: make good AAA game, reward team, next AAA game is wrapping preproduction, transition main team to work on that, preproduction team starts next NEXT AAA game, repeat.
IRRATIONAL: make "an" AAA game, have nothing in pipeline, fire most of the team, skeleton crew kicks around various ideas for 2-5 years, hire a whole bunch of new people, spend time and resources training them, repeat. Also, wonder why it takes 10 years to make a game.
Sorry for all my long replies but this is a subject I am very informed and passionate about.
The brain drain in games is off the charts, especially now. When you are firing 3200 employees you aren't looking at individuals, you are looking at spreadsheets with years (age discrimination) and salary. Or just randomly saying "Rows 500 - 3700 need to go").
In the meantime, finding someone talented at their job who last more than a decade is an extreme rarity. Usually, they're smart enough to see through the dubious honor of working on games, and all its downsides, and go to work on financial software, or medical software and usually command 25% - 50% higher salaries.
And lets not let founders off the hook. They get bribed with SO MUCH MONEY for MS, EA, T2, and so on to buy their company they eventually give in. Good for them, bad for the employees. Some aren't in as great a shape. I bet MS got Double Fine for a steal. Granted, they then spend millions more mill moving them out of their old crappy warehouse digs and into an incredible office in San Fran. And considering only a couple hundred people played their last game on Steam, I doubt the studio has much of a future. They are likely, at least, moving back to the warehouse. But TIM... he probably made more than enough to retire on that deal. Not the rest, they just got all but laid off.
Look at the mess with Subnautica 2. The owners took the lions share of the $250 million milestone bonus. Sure the rank and file got some nice fat bonuses, but not enough they could retire.
Many studios now use "points" instead of royalty or shares in the company to try and make up for the typical low game salary. IF the company makes enough profit above and beyond operating costs AND the execs get their bonuses an there is enough left over AND you've been there long enough you can trade in your points for $30k each or something.
But points are awarded in fractions during yearly reviews. And with such long dev cycles it means your $70k salary, even if you have 2 points by the time the company crosses the arbitrary profit threshold, you could have made substantially more that over 5 years in almost any other industry doing the same thing.
Yeah, because if the company is forced into insolvency because of the lost revenue from a strike the fat cat union bosses lose their dues. And (in some cases) won't be able to legally embezzle money for all the extra perks they give themselves.
I mean, the union paying for a Porche for "official business" when a Toyota Yaris is just as good is just one example that comes to mind. Paying to jet around in private jets. Using Towncar services for everything when the Porche is in the shop. Lavish means for *everyone* (including family and guests unrelated to union business) expensed to the union.
It turns my stomach. But so does:
Make a bad game: get laid off; fair
Make a profitable game: get laid off; ehhh, on the border
Make a blockbuster which generates billions and billions: get laid off. Without sounding like a socialist or communist, this result is patently absurd.
I'm waiting to hear that Rockstar has cut some of its staff loose (besides the ones they fired for trying to organize a Union in the UK) once GTA6 ships, even though it is projected to pay for its development costs in the first week, break $10 billion in the first year, and god knows how many more billions in lifetime sales.
Also, expect the rank and file at Rockstar to share in very little of that windfall. All because "You work in games, that should be reward enough!"
Most unions are just leeches and scummy. They make it way harder to do business and, in some cases, like Airlines or FedEx/UPS, can bring the country to a standstill and hold it hostage till the company complies. Let's tack on the SIEU and pretty much every union that covers government employees. They get enough perks as it is without a union, and rarely had any job risks until Trump started swinging the axe. They don't need a union.
Then you've got the teachers unions which protect and continues to employ pedos in ways that make the Catholic Church jealous. They also make rules that prevent removal of under-performing teachers. The case against public schooling and those union teachers is clear when compared to the results of charter Schools. But the union is very powerful.
The steps and rules they put in place for Covid were so draconian I was continually flabbergasted by the tactics they used when it came to how they treated children. Now we have a whole generation who might have done well, but because the Teacher's Union put in place so many rules, these kids are almost guaranteed to fail.
My own experience with unions was awful. The UFCW took my dues, which was a significant cost to someone making minimum wage, and didn't do a damn thing when my hours started being filtered to a new nepo hire.
To say I'm been a staunch anti-union person is an understatement.
BUT: Once I got into games and rode so many up and down waves of hiring/layoff I began to support unions again. Games NEEDS unions to prevent big companies from cutting massive amounts of people with no recourse and, in the case of "At Will" employment areas, absolutely no notice. Somehow production companies in Hollywood manage to keep people even with boom and bust periods between films. I expect unions are a big part of that job retention.
Either that or we need employment protection legislation like many countries in the EU. For example, in France Microsoft can't close Arcane Lyon until they jump through months worth of legal hoops. In the UK it can take several months to wind down many businesses.
Unions will kill WotC along with the rest of the entertainment industry. Hence budgets in games and film/tv have skyrocketed and they are all losing their jobs.
I'm actually glad to see this happen.
The union will dig itself in, increase costs, codify corruption, make it nearly impossible to fire underperforming employees, saddle the parent company with increased legal and personnel costs, and will inevitably go on strike for a bigger slice of a shrinking pie at exactly the worst possible time to do so.*
Good I say.
Burn that company down to the foundation, then bulldoze and bury that too because it's cracked, leaking, and built on unstable ground.
*In my city, the local newspaper was on death's door--the perfect time for its union of different unions to strike and sue. Those unions had their day in court/arbitration and they "won". The paper, unable to operate under the new terms, declared bankruptcy, folded, and everyone got fired.
Everyone got fired. Perfect.
Unions are definitely bad. I remember when the UPS strike basically stopped business way back in the late 90s. They held the country hostage for two weeks. UPS lost untold millions in revenue and people complaining added more pressure that eventually forced management to cave.
After that, any time the phrase "maybe we should strike" came up management was like "No, wait, please tell me what want and we'll fix it!"
Normally, I'd say "F**k Unions" but I feel like there's got to be some way to ensure at least minimal protection. Look at Battlefield 6. It is close to having $2 billion in sales; a remarkable and profitable success. Then EA all but closed the studio down despite record profits from this series.
Most of the protections unions were created for: hours, safety, salary, benefits were won decades ago. Labor fights happened and new, better laws were enacted.
But the unions never went away.
Like any organization created to "solve" a problem, they either need a never ending problem or a never ending source of new problems.
Once they became dues-collecting concentrations of power, it was inevitable that they would become feckless and corrupt. Union bosses just became one more managerial layer, one more siphon on the productivity of the average worker.
The video game industry has some bizarre, self-inflicted pain due to incredibly short-sighted practices. They've spent decades hiring a whole bunch of folks, training them, assimilating them, then firing them once a game ships only to start rehiring sometime later once the next game enters crunch development.
A properly managed pipeline would prevent that and greatly improve output by significantly reducing churn/turnover.
Instead, you often have the best and most capable employees leaving the industry for good to seek more stable pastures.
in a rational market, you wouldn't need government or union intervention to protect these employees. The offending companies would eventually crash from brain drain alone.
Irrationality enters the market in at least two ways: first, too many low-tier employees exist. Their desire to work in video games outweighs their ambition and value to other companies. A self-respecting and capable employee would tell EA to pound sand, and if enough did so, EA would have to reconsider its business practices if it wanted to keep making Battlefields.
The second is the unending money faucet from USAID, Blackrock and their like, and Soros and his ilk. Thanks to all that dark money, there's no penalty for failure. They're so insulated from damaging long term descions, that they're only recently starting to see the shape of the problems.
Sorry, very long winded.
In summation:
RATIONAL: make good AAA game, reward team, next AAA game is wrapping preproduction, transition main team to work on that, preproduction team starts next NEXT AAA game, repeat.
IRRATIONAL: make "an" AAA game, have nothing in pipeline, fire most of the team, skeleton crew kicks around various ideas for 2-5 years, hire a whole bunch of new people, spend time and resources training them, repeat. Also, wonder why it takes 10 years to make a game.
Sorry for all my long replies but this is a subject I am very informed and passionate about.
The brain drain in games is off the charts, especially now. When you are firing 3200 employees you aren't looking at individuals, you are looking at spreadsheets with years (age discrimination) and salary. Or just randomly saying "Rows 500 - 3700 need to go").
In the meantime, finding someone talented at their job who last more than a decade is an extreme rarity. Usually, they're smart enough to see through the dubious honor of working on games, and all its downsides, and go to work on financial software, or medical software and usually command 25% - 50% higher salaries.
And lets not let founders off the hook. They get bribed with SO MUCH MONEY for MS, EA, T2, and so on to buy their company they eventually give in. Good for them, bad for the employees. Some aren't in as great a shape. I bet MS got Double Fine for a steal. Granted, they then spend millions more mill moving them out of their old crappy warehouse digs and into an incredible office in San Fran. And considering only a couple hundred people played their last game on Steam, I doubt the studio has much of a future. They are likely, at least, moving back to the warehouse. But TIM... he probably made more than enough to retire on that deal. Not the rest, they just got all but laid off.
Look at the mess with Subnautica 2. The owners took the lions share of the $250 million milestone bonus. Sure the rank and file got some nice fat bonuses, but not enough they could retire.
Many studios now use "points" instead of royalty or shares in the company to try and make up for the typical low game salary. IF the company makes enough profit above and beyond operating costs AND the execs get their bonuses an there is enough left over AND you've been there long enough you can trade in your points for $30k each or something.
But points are awarded in fractions during yearly reviews. And with such long dev cycles it means your $70k salary, even if you have 2 points by the time the company crosses the arbitrary profit threshold, you could have made substantially more that over 5 years in almost any other industry doing the same thing.
The problem with most unions is that they are only interested in union dues, and eventually side with management instead of the workers.
If you have a non-binding union, one that cares about the workers, they'd also care about the company, and work as a stand-between for both.
But then, a council would do the same thing.
Yeah, because if the company is forced into insolvency because of the lost revenue from a strike the fat cat union bosses lose their dues. And (in some cases) won't be able to legally embezzle money for all the extra perks they give themselves.
I mean, the union paying for a Porche for "official business" when a Toyota Yaris is just as good is just one example that comes to mind. Paying to jet around in private jets. Using Towncar services for everything when the Porche is in the shop. Lavish means for *everyone* (including family and guests unrelated to union business) expensed to the union.
It turns my stomach. But so does:
Make a bad game: get laid off; fair
Make a profitable game: get laid off; ehhh, on the border
Make a blockbuster which generates billions and billions: get laid off. Without sounding like a socialist or communist, this result is patently absurd.
I'm waiting to hear that Rockstar has cut some of its staff loose (besides the ones they fired for trying to organize a Union in the UK) once GTA6 ships, even though it is projected to pay for its development costs in the first week, break $10 billion in the first year, and god knows how many more billions in lifetime sales.
Also, expect the rank and file at Rockstar to share in very little of that windfall. All because "You work in games, that should be reward enough!"
Most unions are just leeches and scummy. They make it way harder to do business and, in some cases, like Airlines or FedEx/UPS, can bring the country to a standstill and hold it hostage till the company complies. Let's tack on the SIEU and pretty much every union that covers government employees. They get enough perks as it is without a union, and rarely had any job risks until Trump started swinging the axe. They don't need a union.
Then you've got the teachers unions which protect and continues to employ pedos in ways that make the Catholic Church jealous. They also make rules that prevent removal of under-performing teachers. The case against public schooling and those union teachers is clear when compared to the results of charter Schools. But the union is very powerful.
The steps and rules they put in place for Covid were so draconian I was continually flabbergasted by the tactics they used when it came to how they treated children. Now we have a whole generation who might have done well, but because the Teacher's Union put in place so many rules, these kids are almost guaranteed to fail.
My own experience with unions was awful. The UFCW took my dues, which was a significant cost to someone making minimum wage, and didn't do a damn thing when my hours started being filtered to a new nepo hire.
To say I'm been a staunch anti-union person is an understatement.
BUT: Once I got into games and rode so many up and down waves of hiring/layoff I began to support unions again. Games NEEDS unions to prevent big companies from cutting massive amounts of people with no recourse and, in the case of "At Will" employment areas, absolutely no notice. Somehow production companies in Hollywood manage to keep people even with boom and bust periods between films. I expect unions are a big part of that job retention.
Either that or we need employment protection legislation like many countries in the EU. For example, in France Microsoft can't close Arcane Lyon until they jump through months worth of legal hoops. In the UK it can take several months to wind down many businesses.
Unions will kill WotC along with the rest of the entertainment industry. Hence budgets in games and film/tv have skyrocketed and they are all losing their jobs.