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A minority of Zenimax/Bethesda employees are voting to unionize
- Thread starter remember_spinal
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James Sawyer Ford
Member
You'll get worse games, for a higher cost, and they won't come out as soon as you want. Like what they are today, but worse
ChorizoPicozo
Member
I don't think is as easy as this
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Kokoloko85
Member
Warablo
Member
You're right, Microsoft should whip their workers like Sony.
Flutta
Banned
Hendrick's
If only my penis was as big as my GamerScore!
This could be bad for gaming in the long run if it becomes the norm.
It's clear that this is where gaming in USA is heading. You can bet your ass, that more companies will follow and then QA staff (if it remains matter of QA staff) will flock to companies that have unions in place to protect themselves and their job. And because of that other companies will be forced to accept unions just to keep their workforce.
ReBurn
Gold Member
You're actually going to get to do both.
CherryFalls
Banned
Oh man... Just when gaming was getting so good and creative, with no exploitative mechanics.
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Hendrick's
If only my penis was as big as my GamerScore!
Look forward to even longer dev times.
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
300+ is a lot of employees. And if they manage to pull it off their ranks will grow.
I’m rooting for them.
I’m rooting for them.
Ghost of Caelid
Banned
Fuz
Banned
I rather have longer dev times than slave labor, thank you.
Flutta
Banned
This sounds like fear-mongering to me.
Worse games compared to what? the unfinished garabage with a full price tag attached to it that we’ve grown accustomed too? Those games?
I’ll say let it all crash and brun and hopefully something good comes out of it in the end.
BennyBlanco
aka IMurRIVAL69
Smooth brain take. Unions are great for blue collar guys. My brother is in the iron workers union and does really well for himself.
SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
You do realize why the games are so buggy nowadays right? It's because of this ridiculous gaming industry practice of laying off all support staff after a release to reduce costs while they prep the next game. Then by the time they start hiring QA and support devs again, it's too late. All because studio heads wanted bigger profits for themselves.
This will ensure that the QA is involved from the very beginning. Younger devs get more experience instead of job hopping from one studio to another. And who knows studio heads might even have secondary projects lined up to keep everyone occupied. We saw that recently with ND. Neil and Evan Wells had NOTHING fucking lined up after shipping TLOU2 so bored devs started fucking with Sony Bend's Uncharted reboot, VSG studio's TLOU remake eventually taking it over and wasting precious time of talented game developers on a fucking asset flip. Hopefully, this forces studio heads to actually do their job and have multiple projects in the works since they wont be able to just lay off developers and QA staff.
With game dev going remote and global, even if they dont have a secondary project lined up, they can always contract out these support guys a la Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal to other dev studios in need. Make their money back so to speak. Unions arent always the answer, but this industry is in really poor shape with insane burnout which results in talent leaving the industry and quite frankly we are poorer for it. 2022 is by far the worst gaming year since I started gaming regularly in 1999. I know several hardcore gamers who have only finished 3-4 games this year. And half of them shipped in a really poor state.
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
QA don't fix shit. At best they identify issues and inform the appropriate department of said problem's existence. This of course assumes the bugs are appropriately described and categorized which isn't always the case. Furthermore whether a bug is KS'd (known/shipped) isn't even down to the staff able to correct it, that's a senior management decision based on triage and time-scaling. Because its rare to have to time to fix everything and meet ship-date.
Reducing the issue down to simple profit maximization is utter bullshit, as is suggesting that QA and support is some sort of "magic bullet".
Allow me to drop the hottest of hot takes: A lot of QA staff are talentless wannabe's who nontheless graduate into development roles that they have no aptitude for.
It seems to me a lot is based on the ridiculous idea that interest in a thing equates to expertise about the same. Like wrestling marks who think they know how to book promotions they are prime examplars of a culture of entitled mediocrity.
Its worse than arguing that critics make the best creatives... The ability to identify and notarize problems is a minor skill compared to actually understanding the systemic and procedural causes that summon them into existence.
This is a very detailed account of something that I highly doubt you have full knowledge of the relevant particulars for. Moreover its just arrant nonsense when the priority for studio heads is to prevent attrition of KEY TALENT, not the low-level, low-skill, low-impact employees.
And who are they more likely to outsource to, the expensive unionized local group or the cheap but effective outfit out of India or Malaysia? The reality of QA to core dev staff is that they are santa's elves who fill out databases that act as ledgers of work to be done, noone cares where they are located so long as the descriptions are accurate and understandable.
You make the argument that on one hand its all about the bottom-line and then cheerlead for a setup where that same line of logic economically disadvantages them out of the equation entirely! WTF.
Hendrick's
If only my penis was as big as my GamerScore!
James Sawyer Ford
Member
Worse games when the employees receive better benefits?
When there’s no incentive to do better, which unionization promotes, you get less quality products
That’s how these things work. Unionization is like communism. All workers are the same and entitled to the same lockstep promotions and salary increases
Ghost of Caelid
Banned
I think you've been watching too much OAN buddy.
ChuckeRearmed
Member
More due to the games being released in incomplete state due to deadlines and earning reports. Not many companies can affford to delay games for long. Gamedev is more expensive these days and it takes longer to make the games so most of the publishers cannot just delay the game for month or years.
It reminds me of a situation - I guess in real estate or where - where it is more beneficial for the company to release non-finished product and then claim it as "failure" then delaying until it complete.
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Foilz
Banned
I'm currently in a great union but for 15 years I was nonunion. There's benefits to both and those benefits are really on a person by person basis. Alot of people just don't want to be part of a union. I love being in the union now and wish I would have done it years ago.
A few commenters here clearly have no idea wtf they are talking about and get their alternative facts from AntiAmerican news sources.
Being unionized has no bearing on doing more or less work. Just safer and usually the quality of the work is better. The "union workers are lazy" mentality is force fed into the brains of people so rich corporations can stay richer and have all the power over the worker.. I work for a 10billion a yr company who has close to 35000 employees world wide and we are unionized. Nonunion I made 95k last yr, this yr I will make about 200k, have a 401k, and have made 28k for my pension In 1 yr!
A few commenters here clearly have no idea wtf they are talking about and get their alternative facts from AntiAmerican news sources.
Being unionized has no bearing on doing more or less work. Just safer and usually the quality of the work is better. The "union workers are lazy" mentality is force fed into the brains of people so rich corporations can stay richer and have all the power over the worker.. I work for a 10billion a yr company who has close to 35000 employees world wide and we are unionized. Nonunion I made 95k last yr, this yr I will make about 200k, have a 401k, and have made 28k for my pension In 1 yr!
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Ghost of Caelid
Banned
Prior to the advent of unions a lot of blue collar work was literally hell. Alot of non union positions are still very exploitative.
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
Unionization does not promote the elimination of incentives for good work. Good work is still rewarded. You can still be promoted. You can still get raises. As a group, a union can negotiate for even higher rewards for their work instead of the executives taking a disproportionate amount of profit for themselves. The free market forces are at play for the supply and demand of goods and services, and if you really believe in that, you also need to accept that these forces affect the supply and demand of labor as well.
Look up the definitions of unions and communism and see how they've manifested themselves throughout history. They are not "like" each other. At best, they both share a concern for labor, but the approaches of the two are vastly different. Unions in Western capitalist liberal democracies, the context of this story, very much operate under the framework of capitalism and are not remotely close to communism. If your point was that unions are a Trojan Horse for communism, then that is an unfounded and overblown concern.
ChuckeRearmed
Member
Yeah, it worked so great recently in the Netherlands where train workers protested for a a higher pay, causing transportation collapse (leading even the guys like me to switch to a car despite not liking driving). In the end they got a higher pay...But the cost of transportation (ticket price and so on) has increased
Yeah, I kinda agree - though there are a lot of talentless wannabe's everywhere - but in general unionization happens in the most replaceable jobs. After all, the highly paid specialist does not need a union.
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Iced Arcade
Member
Pretty clear a lot don't understand unions here.
Once an area starts unionizing, employees in similar companies will also flock to to that company if the benefits are right.
Once an area starts unionizing, employees in similar companies will also flock to to that company if the benefits are right.
tkscz
Member
I have no issues with unionizing... when its the employees who work on the product. I don't know how I feel about it being QA only so far. If more developers, programmers, artist etc etc hop on it, then I'd take it as a good thing. After what happened with Image comic's union, I'm a bit worried when one sect of workers make demands for everyone that may not meet the requirements for other workers.
Joshmyersbv
Member
If they do we won't see Elder Scrolls until 2030 lol. Imagine being a Union rep for that company though, getting a piece of the $100,000 salaries all those devs are making. You be making that bag
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DeepEnigma
Gold Member
The "Where Are They Now?" game.
Auto Industry
Steel Industry
Manufacturing Industry
Games Industry (TBD)
Auto Industry
Steel Industry
Manufacturing Industry
Games Industry (TBD)
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6502
Member
Do only the most regularly whipped and malnurished programmers produce quality software?
If wages go up, won't the attraction of talent increase, peoples quality of life go up, help retention and thus improve gaming?
If not, then surely the finest cuisine would be made by kids in Mcdonalds and the best tech made by guys on minimum wage spending half their life doing second jobs...
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ResilientBanana
Member
Not to mention, they're not very good at their jobs.
6502
Member
Union representation is bad as others are not represented? Surely the answer is not to ensure nobody is represented but to get MORE people unionised and represented.
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tkscz
Member
I didn't say no union at all if all are not represented. I said it wouldn't be a good thing if QA made all the demands of the union without any other employee input.
QA could end up making demands that make their job easier but puts a burden on everyone else.
6502
Member
It is for management to manage and unions to represent workers. Unions can demand certain conditions but not redesign production to make their lives easy at the cost of everyone else. I am sure no business would wear it if they tried.
A union will usually accept new members from anywhere in their sector and certainly from businesses they already have recognition. I wouldnt be suprised to find them organising the rest of the workforce once they get a foot in the door.
Cheezewizz
Banned
Iron workers union is the exception though. 3 of my neighbors who's land adjoins mine are all retired iron workers who retired within the last 10 years. I've worked with a couple of them a few times on sites as a non-union worker when I was between jobs. I could go make more money than them elsewhere, but they had the luxury of basically deciding when they wanted to work or not between jobs.
I once went to work with them installing window wall on skyscrapers. While my 2 neighbors were iron union guys, many of the guys we worked with were in the window glazers union. Shortly after that job finished, every single one of those glazer union guys lost their entire pension due to mismanagement. Many were less than 5 from retiring. It was bad. I really felt for those guys.
Unions aren't all bad, but the vast majority really don't accomplish anything outside of increasing costs.
Eddie-Griffin
Banned
MS knows they can stall until the deal goes through (or gets denied) and then bust the union attempt. There's no way that's going to end up making enough tractions for the union to gain a platform fast enough to avoid this scenario.
Unless, Microsoft sees a benefit of allowing one union through for personal advantage.
The gaming industry dislikes unions as a whole, but when you have multi-industry companies involved that also don't like unions it looks bleak. Now some may say I might be too pessimistic here but given the historical progress of unions so far in the industry you can't blame me.
Unless, Microsoft sees a benefit of allowing one union through for personal advantage.
The gaming industry dislikes unions as a whole, but when you have multi-industry companies involved that also don't like unions it looks bleak. Now some may say I might be too pessimistic here but given the historical progress of unions so far in the industry you can't blame me.
Iced Arcade
Member
That's not how it works. Those $100,000 salaries are management, they won't be the employees unionized.If they do we won't see Elder Scrolls until 2030 lol. Imagine being a Union rep for that company though, getting a piece of the $100,000 salaries all those devs are making. You be making that bag
DonkeyPunchJr
World’s Biggest Weeb
? Pretty sure most of their devs are making 6 figures or close to it. If not, maybe they should unionize lol
Iced Arcade
Member
Gamers think everyone working on games are rolling lol.
For sure there is employees that make that but vast majority don't.
Bethesda Softworks Salaries | How Much Does Bethesda Softworks Pay in the USA | CareerBliss
Bethesda Softworks employees earn $50,000 annually on average, or $24 per hour. Visit CareerBliss to research Bethesda Softworks salaries, reviews and benefits. Explore Bethesda Softworks salaries by top job title or location.
www.careerbliss.com
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Topher
Identifies as young
Gamers think everyone working on games are rolling lol.
Bethesda Softworks Salaries | How Much Does Bethesda Softworks Pay in the USA | CareerBliss
Bethesda Softworks employees earn $50,000 annually on average, or $24 per hour. Visit CareerBliss to research Bethesda Softworks salaries, reviews and benefits. Explore Bethesda Softworks salaries by top job title or location.
Programmers are not typically "rolling" but on the average they do pretty well.
Top percentile makes nearly $150k. That's not a bad living. But no, not "rolling".
Iced Arcade
Member
Like I said. Definitely high paying jobs but that isn't the majority of employment.
Anyway carry on lol
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