alt Hacker NewsBlizzard Workers Win Historic Union Contract
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Are there any unionized game studios that continue to produce highly acclaimed games?
Bethesda used to make great games, but the last great game they made was Skyrim in 2011, they unionized in 2022, and just recently they had some big layoffs.
CD Projekt made the highly acclaimed Witcher 3 in 2015, Cyberpunk disappointed on it's release in 2020, although it's reviews are mixed. CD Projekt unionized in 2023.
Blizzard have been in decline for a long time, they mostly focus on maintaining the cash cows games WoW and hearthstone. Although Diablo has is mostly well regarded(ignoring immortal). They haven't made any new ambitious game for a while. Their last attempt at making something ambitious was Titan, a cancelled MMO that they worked on for 6 years and supposedly spent $80 million on, cancelled in 2013.
The decline seems to begin well before the unionization, so I wouldn't say it's causal, it's more of a symptom of the company no longer being a place that can foster high functioning teams, where people feel like they are valued and working on something important.
This is probably the beginning of the end for Blizzard as an identifiable company. MSFT will just absorb WoW, Overwatch, and Diablo and spin up new internal studios to support them rather than have their feet held to the fire by a union. They did it with Halo. Of course, it produced garbage, but that never stopped Microsoft.
Use to be a huge Blizzard fan back in the day. Can't get behind basically anything they are doing today. Time will tell if something like this just reinforces whatever is broken or results in real improvement. I'm cynical on the matter.
About time tbh. I don't work in game dev, in part because of the horrorshow of game dev management.
This is really needed right now. I suspect with studios adopting AI en masse for software development and the creative side of things the studios that unionise and/or treat their real workers well will come out on top. We need studios filled with talented and passionate people who aren't worried about getting laid off next week and not making rent.
Big corporate gaming studios get my full support for unionizing, those people need collective bargaining. I am a skeptic of many unionizing efforts, but not this one.
Spectacular. Many people have been disappointed with moves by Blizz in the last 5-10 years and anything that improves livability for those that make what used to be great games is a huge win
in australia workers seem to have more rights. they have industry awards that specify minimum wage and safety conditions etc, they have the legal right to strike and the legal right for union/collective bargaining if they choose it, aka freedom of association. when i look at employment conditions in the US, it boggles my mind how workers there basically have zero safety net. its an extreme example of giving all the power to the employer.
It's interesting to observe that there seemingly is a very high relationship with groups of people producing garbage and seeking extra protection through other means to "level the playing field" aka force everyone to be on their level.
Might be a better article on this: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/20...
The Gamespot one is really poorly written. Not sure if it's AI bad or human bad. An example:
> Laid-off union members will also get an additional four weeks of pay–regardless of how long they worked at the company–hybrid schedules that allow them to work from home, and formal systems to settle disputes within the workplace.
Laid off workers get to utilize hybrid schedules?