[ntock]

How many new studios and jobs created? A Unity study from earlier this year looked at over a thousand studios and almost 50% of the studios were less than 2 years old. Sounds like an industry with high turnover and fluidity, which makes sense given the nature of games.

[giobox]

Anecdotally the number of incidences of zero severance pay on being made redundant in the game industry seems way above the software industry norm to me. You read so many accounts of young people who love games building relatively risky careers fuelled by their passion being really pretty badly screwed over.

Just this week Telltale games announces a major studio closure, assured fans that one of their popular product lines will see further instalments all the while again paying zero severance to the humans who formerly made the game in question. It’s not a good look.

Another pretty bad example is the whole “will I actually get paid this month?” fiasco that dogged Crytek for years, repeatedly failing to meet payroll on time over and over again.

This wouldn’t be half as bad if the working conditions were reasonable, but it seems like working in games dev almost inevitably leads to constant crunch time to hit shipping deadlines.

[chongli]

Yes. I think of the triple-A game industry as a mirror image of the film industry. Many of those who work on games tend to be hired on a per-project basis. When viewed this way, the lack of unions to represent game developers is a glaring issue.