[ahelwer]

Software engineer unions are coming, and it will start with the games industry. Attitudes within our field are changing! Used to be you couldn't mention the U-word without a dozen engineers jumping down your throat bellowing about "efficiency" (for whom and what?) but engineers are smart and you can only fool them with the same old anti-union propaganda for so long.

[brandonmenc]

> Software engineer unions are coming, and it will start with the games industry.

And it will end there.

Video games are more like movies than they are like other kinds of software, and the labor to produce them should resemble the movie business - not the software business.

That means a bunch of union members get hired for the production itself, for the duration of the production - not "indefinitely" for the distributor like they are now - and when the game is done, the production company for that individual game and all its labor is disbanded, and then everyone finds another production - possibly from a completely different distributor - to work on.

Except they'll all know this upfront and they'll be unionized, which mitigates the downside (ex: they'll get their health insurance from the union, not from Sony or EA or whoever.)

[MAGZine]

Except that's not how software works anymore. Everything is moving to long-term SaaS and subscription. Production never ends until the lights turn off.

[will_pseudonym]

I think that if unions actually do make inroads into the software development world, the gaming industry will likely be the last to unionize. The reason that the gaming industry is worse off for developers is not because the game development shops are inherently greedy. They have horrible conditions for those workers because they can. So many people want to develop games rather than do any other kind of software development, and so the game dev shops know that most/all inhumane treatment will be accepted by the next person who will gladly endure it to be working in the industry.

Fields that have cachet like show business and gaming will always be the last to have workplace issues of all sorts.

[egypturnash]

Uh, you are aware that game developers are actively talking about unionizing, while most software developers aren’t? The shitty conditions are what’s making them decide to start talking about banding together to demand a bigger piece of the profits.

Every discussion of game unions I see here tends to have a lot of people talking about how they are quite happy with their financial compensation at their non-game job, and how they don’t want to unionize because what if it was a shitty union?!?

Also, Hollywood is kind of one of the major bastions of strong unions in the US. There’s a lot of entertainment unions in show business.

(My favorite example: compare the conditions of folks at union 3d animation gigs with the condition of folks in the non-unionized VFX world; better pay and more stable jobs for pretty much the exact same skills.)

[forrestthewoods]

> you are aware that game developers are actively talking about unionizing

Not as much as you’d think. PolyTaku and r/games want the games industry to unionize. People actually in the industry not so much.

[will_pseudonym]

At the end of the day, I'd love for any solution to game development working conditions, which will likely be unionization. I will certainly be surprised when it happens, though.

[will_pseudonym]

Note, when I brought up Hollywood, I wasn't referring to unionization, I was talking about workplace issues. There's a lot of workplace issues in show business despite a lot of entertainment unions.

[zemo]

except there's VO and mocap talent that are already unionized, so games engineers have wider exposure to unionized peers. For example, I would assume that Norman Reedus is in SAG-AFTRA since Scott Wilson (his costar on Walking Dead) was on the board of SAG-AFTRA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016%E2%80%9317_video_game_voi... <-- there's no equivalent in the startup/web industry.

[_delirium]

Besides working conditions and pay, one symbolic issue that's come up from game devs being exposed to these unionized parts of the industry (especially voice talent) is that the unionized people seem to have fairer rules around credits. For example, if you do a voiceover for a game that ends up in the shipped game, you're going to end up in the credits, full stop. For programmers, by contrast, companies have done shady things like leaving people out of credits as some kind of "punishment". For example, if you leave before the game ships, you sometimes get retroactively taken out of the credits even if you objectively contributed large amounts to the final shipped product, because there are no binding rules around credits, except for the actors.

[hangonhn]

"so the game dev shops know that most/all inhumane treatment will be accepted by the next person who will gladly endure it to be working in the industry."

This is precisely the environment where unions emerged. If individual workers had a lot of leverage, there would never be a need for unions.

[will_pseudonym]

Yes, but the workers in those original unionization events didn't have as many options as the workers who are doing game development. People weren't working in factories and coal mines because they loved it, turning down other, less inhumane and more lucrative positions to do so. The options were the horrible companies or unionization.

For a game developer, the options are horrible companies, unionization, or a development job in any other field.

[vvanders]

Eh, I would disagree based on what you see within the various entertainment unions/guilds in movies and TV. I think there's a path there.

I know back when I was in the industry I would have killed for a organization like what was available in film.

[will_pseudonym]

For actors/staffers of the entertainment industry, that's the largest and nearly only outlet for those workers to have gainful employment. For people working in the games industry, they have other options and choose to go in those positions despite known horrible conditions.

On the topic of unions in the entertainment industry, is there a union for computer graphics engineers in the entertainment industry? I couldn't find one, but I'm genuinely curious.

[vvanders]

If you work in code, sure.

If you're on the Art side you have the movie/animation space(even more of a meatgrider).

If you're on the design side, the options are pretty slim.

If you're on QA, it isn't the straightest path to other QA domains(with much of gamedev being manual testing).

Having gamedev on the resume usually isn't seen as a large plus, aside from shops that are already filled with ex-gamedev people.

[bit_logic]

Hollywood is not an example supporting your point (SAG - Screen Actors Guild).

[will_pseudonym]

There's certainly a union there, yes. Though, what are the working conditions in the entertainment industry, exactly?

[zemo]

"please jump through these assorted hoops while I move the goalpost and ignore your points"

[Swizec]

isn’t all of hollywood unionized tho? They’re freelancers and they all belong to a guild/union that sets the wages from what I’ve heard

[ocdtrekkie]

Yes, though I think the key word that was keeping people from realizing software developers needed unions was "meritocracy". Developers were sold on the idea that people wanting union protection were replaceable, and that they, being the fantastic coders they were, were not.

[bit_logic]

Developers are finally realizing the following have nothing to do with "meritocracy":

- Non-compete agreements

- Forced arbitration

- Wage fixing (such as Google, Apple, etc. used to do)

- IP ownership agreements (even when not using company equipment or time)

- H1B visa abuse

- And many more

Maybe it's also a marketing problem, don't call it a union, call it a guild or association.

[decebalus1]

> I think the key word that was keeping people from realizing software developers needed unions was "meritocracy"

Anyone who spent a couple of years in a corporation will know that meritocracy does not dictate career advancement or compensation. I think the tide has turned in the past years and the 'veterans' are starting to feel the ageism and the new fantastic coders aren't as thirsty drinking the kool-aid.

[stale2002]

No, the bigger reason why unions are never going to happen in the tech industry (thankfully), is that many unions and guilds intentionally create huge barriers to entry, in order to keep out people from non-traditional backgrounds, in order to reduce competition.

IE, to keep out immigrants, newbies, and people without degrees.

But over the last 10 years or so, there has been a huge influx of new people into the tech industry, and we are starting to outnumber those from traditional backgrounds who would have tried to prevent us from getting a job in the industry.

A bootcamper isn't going to join a union that would have outlawed their ability to get a job. An immigrant isn't going to join a union that would have them deported.

Instead, we will defect and sabotage those efforts, every step of the way. And there really are quite a lot of us in the tech industry, from non-traditional backgrounds these days. And we are smart enough to fight efforts that would have us fired, or that would pull up the ladder behind us.

[plainOldText]

Another thing you can't fool is the market. And the market will adapt, as it always does, and unlike say, the labor performed by employees of movie studios, software development doesn't necessarily require physical presence to successfully complete the tasks, and thus I suspect plenty of jobs will be outsourced to other places with cheaper and more flexible labor forces. Perhaps we will see new game studios popping up in other countries.

And although still considerable, the U.S. doesn't have the same competitive advantage in software anymore. The market is now global - e.g. in 2018 38.5% of StackOverflow traffic for top 30 countries came from Asia-Pacific, while only 32.9% from North America.

[Thaxll]

Union will never come, how do you unionize different studios in different countries ( different law ).

[microcolonel]

> Software engineer unions are coming

I will absolutely and unequivocally reject them, in almost any form. I would not be here today if software jobs were broadly unionized, and I will not allow myself to become that hypocritical.

The pay is pretty good, use it to buy insurance and investments. If your part of the industry is seasonal or project-oriented, line up other work in advance.