[dahart]

> Once the law showed up and made them play by the rules, they closed.

I happen to know for a fact that’s not true in either case of the two studios I worked for.

I also don’t particularly appreciate your presumptuous and uninformed conclusion about them being bad studios. Both I worked for were quite good studios, one of them being PDI which made the Shrek & Madagascar movies. No idea to what degree the studios were involved at all, only the parent companies were named. (Edit: actually I’m certain the other studio was not participating in any way, but was still part of the class, being Disney owned. I’ve edited my upper comment to clarify.)

The truth of the CG & VFX industry is that it was always bad margins in the US. Pretty much the whole industry imploded in the US some time after this lawsuit. Not in response to the lawsuit, just because the business is hard to sustain, and subsidies in Canada, Europe, India, and China, has made outsourcing a much bigger part of the picture. The CG film industry hasn’t died exactly, but in the US it’s definitely still on life support.

And I’m not entirely sure, but I don’t feel like the lawsuit really changed salaries either. It was then and is now still true that working in digital entertainment doesn’t pay on average and for entry level employees as well as working in other areas of tech.

[egypturnash]

I don’t feel like the lawsuit really changed salaries either

A couple years ago I talked to a few of my friends in the 2d animation industry and they were like "all the studios are constantly trying to stretch the job descriptions to get more work out of what's already a punishing workload". It's a brutal business all around, even in their side of things where they actually have a union. There's a lot of people willing to work for peanuts because they get to be part of the magic, including me twenty years ago.

I look from outside and I really dunno if I feel like the broad cg/vfx/animation industry's sustainable. Everything costs so damn much and the field's increasingly crowded, despite it all slowly turning into divisions of Disney competing with itself.

[trangus_1985]

> your presumptuous and uninformed conclusion about them being bad studios

they were abusing their workers rights in a surreptitious manner - not sure how that's a "good studio"

[dahart]

> they were abusing their workers rights

No they weren’t. The C-level staff of the parent companies named as defendants in the lawsuit were, and the parent companies are all still in business. The studios that closed were pawns, just like the employees.

[b112]

Your logic doesn't seem sound here.

One corp owning another isn't some arbitrary thing, they control that subcorp, are liable for its action, and so forth.

The inverse is true. They're one thing. The separation is only legal, not moral.

[dahart]

Where on earth did you get that idea? Corps aren’t always (or even usually) liable for subcorps, and subcorps are never liable for the actions of parent corps. The whole reason there are two separate legal entities is to establish separate liabilities & finances.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiary

[b112]

Yes, using the term liable was a mistake. I meant "responsible".

I also should have put my last sentence in its own paragraph.

I stand by this, and consider...

You are a CFO of a subsidiary. You have certain legal requirements. Only certain people may speak for your org, be it CxO level, or the board.

If you discover a board member speaking as if it has CxO level authority, or worse, some non-board, or CxO actor running around, claiming to represent your company on financial matters, you must seek and act on that malfeasance. You cannot simply allow someone, with your knowledge, to speak for your corp, without approval.

The board / directors appoint top execs, giving them executive power. No one else may claim it.

So, someone running around, negotiating salary deals, speaking for a subcorp? Very shady, hard to believe it would not get back to the board or that the board or executive branch did not know.

[dahart]

What value are you hoping to contribute to this discussion? You are speaking in generalities and platitudes and making so many assumptions it’s hard to respond. Your description of the corporate subsidiary relationship is still incorrect.

This isn’t logic, it’s history. If you’re interested in commenting on it, why not read something about the actual lawsuit? In this case, specific people were caught making certain agreements that are against the law. The executives did know, because they were the ones making the agreement, and they were caught. People directly involved included Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) and Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google).

[tobyjsullivan]

The bad studios comment wasn't meant to be a judgement of the product or your work. I had meant bad businesses (costs exceed revenues). Take even that with a grain of salt - I was taking all my facts from the comment I responded to and the link. I'm not familiar with this particular saga.

[dahart]

I realize the way I wrote my first comment led you to believe the studios were knowingly involved in the collusion, but that’s not what I intended to say, which is why I clarified. It’s just best not to make assumptions or try to make strong statements about something you’re not familiar with. The narrative summary you left is entirely backwards, because good studios closed while the suits’ defendants are still here and still operating. The studios I was in weren’t bad business either. Revenues exceeded costs. These closures happened for other reasons, despite the fact that CG as a whole isn’t very profitable for most players.