The United Videogame Workers-CWA (UVW-CWA) is a new industry-wide union operating in North America. Organizers will be on hand at GDC to pass out pamphlets and answer questions.
There’s now an industry-wide union for video game workers in the US and Canada. The United Videogame Workers-CWA (UVW-CWA) has a mission to bring together "artists, writers, designers, QA testers, programmers, freelancers and beyond to build worker power irrespective of studio and current job status."
The union makes its official debut at the "Video Game Labor at a Crossroads: New Pathways to Industry-Wide Organizing" panel at GDC. Workers will be sharing a petition at the event to gain support for the union and to shine a light on the recent glut of industry layoffs. As a matter of fact, the first major issue the union seeks to address is layoffs, given that one in ten developers were shown the door in 2024.
Workers will also be passing around a zine that includes the organization’s mission statement, FAQs and an op-ed. This is a direct-join union, meaning that workers can sign up on their own. This allows folks to bypass traditional unionization processes like elections and employer consent.
We aren’t sure if this will catch on throughout the industry or if major publishers will recognize the union. However, it’s just the latest salvo in the ongoing battle between industry workers and corporate bigwigs. Over 600 QA workers at Activision, which is owned by Microsoft, recently joined the Communications Workers of America (CWA.) ZeniMax Online Studios workers formed their own union at the tail-end of last year and Sega of America workers did something similar.
These unions have also been busy. The CWA has been embroiled in a fight with Microsoft and Activision over unfair labor practices on behalf of workers at Raven Software. Members of ZeniMax Workers United-CWA also went on a one-day strike last year to limit Microsoft’s use of outsourcing.
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> This is a direct-join union, meaning that workers can sign up on their own. This allows folks to bypass traditional unionization processes like elections and employer consent.
Good reminder that the word "union" is overloaded and doesn't always mean what you might assume.
People who join a union like this don't have union representation or union contracts with companies. They rely on individual members to take action in various forms within there own companies. In theory they could call for a strike and ask everyone who is a member to strike from their respective companies, but in practice it's more about raising awareness and making noise in hopes of driving change.
So while technically it's a union, it's not comparable to what most people think of as a union in the United States.
By __MatrixMan__ 2025-03-1920:021 reply Most people in the united states think of unions as some kind of entrenched bureaucratic entity that's not capable of effecting change. Typically we say "the union" as if there can only be one, and once it's corrupt, there's no recourse. Often our laws reflect this, striking as part of a "wildcat" union can be illegal. It leads to this feeling that you have to know the right people to unionize.
It's a problematic perspective. "The" union might be an impotent lost cause, but "A" union can appear suddenly, strike hard, and dissipate once the need for it has gone. This seems more like the latter.
As you correctly point out on a fundamental level unions are just workers of a particular skill organizing to address issues these workers want to see adressed, and by them bekng many they strengthen their bargaining position. Unions can devolve into dysfunctional bureaucratic entities, but so can literally everything else where people come together for a cause — so that is no argument against unions.
Every employee is replaceable, banding together with others that might replace you instead of letting them play you like a fool is a power move.
By __MatrixMan__ 2025-03-2016:16 I feel like focusing on "workers of a particular skill" is a bit too narrow. A strike could be like...
> These people have disabled a critical part of your supply chain and they will restore it if you improve the working conditions for these other people.
...where both groups of people are part of the same union despite having very different jobs. If you can achieve solidarity across sectors, you can strike much more effectively than by merely refusing to work.
By throw9304040 2025-03-1917:015 reply I would be careful with assuming that.
In some countries/industries you have to be a member of an union by the law. Just by working in industry, union is forced upon you by law, and you have to pay their fees. The only way out, is to form your own union, with all paperwork. It really sucks for self employed folks.
The word is extremely overloaded. China has a lot of “unions” that exist to protect companies, avoid strikes, and stifle complaints not represent workers.
That doesn’t have any relevance for American unions, but people seems to think any issue they ever had with a union applies to every union.
America has unions like this, too. Ask anyone that works for an Albertson's.
You might think they are overly cozy with Albertson’s but it’s a categorically different situation.
I’d suggest you read up on “fake unions” it’s 1984 level double talk shit.
No, really, it's a very similar thing.
There are also fake unions in the United States in the cannabis industry. Pretty grim situation.
I can see why you might think they are similar on the surface.
However those are paperwork exercises without any leverage that run into legal issues inside the US. “Anyone who signed a labor peace agreement with ProTech Local 33 has 90 days from the ruling to sign a new pact with a legitimate union or risk losing their license”
The Chinese version is stable as they are being actively propped up by the state.
Can you provide some concrete information about this? It's less that I don't believe you and more that I would like to learn more.
By Retric 2025-03-2016:30 This is old (2012) but gives some of the background.
The Lack of Genuine Worker Representation
The All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) is China's only legal trade union, and it is required by the Trade Union Law to "uphold the leadership of the Communist Party." Because one of the ACFTU's priorities is to organize and mobilize "vast numbers of workers to make contributions to the sound and rapid development of the economy," and to foster "harmony in labour relations" so that such development may take place, the vast majority of "trade unions" in enterprises effectively remain under the de facto control of management.
https://www.cecc.gov/publications/commission-analysis/recent...
The All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) is still the only legally recognized trade union.
By Yeul 2025-03-1920:28 "that exist to protect companies, avoid strikes, and stifle complaints not represent workers"
That sounds like the Republican Party.
Could you please point me to which countries/industries those are? Just a link is fine. Googling isn't helping :(
By butshouldyou 2025-03-1919:16 We have a similar thing in Switzerland for the gastronomy (food and drinks) industry. The industry is pretty abusive - here and abroad - so the "union" makes sure there's protections for workers.
Because of this, there's free management training, free skilled training, and holiday and pay minimums. Plus, free advice and legal support for workers.
Just in the US
Screen Actors Guild
Writers Guild of America
Directors Guild of America
NFL Players Association
Now, I'll give you, SAG, WGA, and DGA don't control all film and television production and there are plenty of non-union jobs available. But most of the film and television you consume is union work.
Every player in the NFL is required to be a member of the NFLPA.
> Now, I'll give you, SAG, WGA, and DGA don't control all film and television production and there are plenty of non-union jobs available.
The thing about the "hollywood" unions is that they are very supportive of the others. So when the recent writer's strike was taking place, the actors also supported them as well as the directors by not working without their writers.
If the auto union workers strike, the steel workers aren't stopping work in solidarity. If the stevedores go on strike, the truck drivers don't go on strike in solidarity.
By Animats 2025-03-1920:27 Not any more. That's called a "secondary boycott", and has been illegal in the US since 1959. Before that, it was common for union truckers to refuse to cross a picket line. When a company's workers went on strike, deliveries by Teamsters stopped.
American labor law was written when unions were much stronger. It assumes strong unions and strong employers in conflict, with the NLRB as referee. That hasn't been true in the US for decades now.
By banannaise 2025-03-1918:542 reply The NFLPA functionally only deals with one company (the NFL) so it's not really a great example. Most professional sports leagues have a players' union specific to that league.
The others, though, yes.
By bena 2025-03-1919:33 Coaches and other front office personnel aren't required to enter a union to work for a club.
There is a union for coaches and it's entirely voluntary. Which is why you won't see Belichick in most Madden games as his contract has to be negotiated separately.
By dragonwriter 2025-03-1919:50 The NFL does jot employ players, and is a separate company from the teams, which do, and which are also separate companies from each other.
And just to be clear - there is an actual law forcing you to join these unions and pay their membership fees? (Not in the US, maybe this law is actually common knowledge that went completely over my head so far!)
My understanding is that it's not so much a law as it is a contract between the union and the employer that prohibits the employer from hiring people who don't join the union.
By drakonka 2025-03-206:48 Ah ok, but that seems very different from the comment I was replying to, which said "In some countries/industries you have to be a member of an union by the law. Just by working in industry, union is forced upon you by law, and you have to pay their fees." - that seems pretty drastic, so I was specifically curious about examples of law-mandated union membership/fee payment.
By rascul 2025-03-2012:22 > Every player in the NFL is required to be a member of the NFLPA.
No they're not. It's optional.
The terms you want to look for are "closed shop" and "union shop" (the difference between the two is that a union shop allows non-union members to be hired, but they have to join the union after being hired).
By Animats 2025-03-1920:17 Basic labor terms:
- Closed shop - must be member of union to be hired.
- Union shop - must join union when hired.
- Agency shop - don't have to join union, but have to pay a fee to it.
- Open shop - don't have to join union, but can.
- Yellow-dog contract - not allowed to join union.[1]
The two extremes are mostly illegal in the US.
By drakonka 2025-03-206:50 I was specifically looking for examples of the original commenter's referenced law-mandated unions: "In some countries/industries you have to be a member of an union by the law. Just by working in industry, union is forced upon you by law, and you have to pay their fees."
Closed shops and union shops just seem like an arrangement between employers and unions, not something forced upon you "by law"?
By philistine 2025-03-204:161 reply If you want to work construction in Québec.
By bsimpson 2025-03-205:51 In Nevada (and I'm sure others), unions get to set the "prevailing wage," which is the legal minimum wage for work they bid on.
So if your shop is more efficient than the union shop, you don't get to compete on that price savings. It tilts the market towards the unions.
By julienEar 2025-03-2010:59 It’s crazy how the definition of a union varies so much across contexts, contries/indus. Some prioritize bargaining power, while others focus more on advocacy and awareness.
By gamblor956 2025-03-2019:51 Just by working in industry, union is forced upon you by law, and you have to pay their fees. The only way out, is to form your own union, with all paperwork. It really sucks for self employed folks.
The first statement is true in a few industries, but the second statements are false in any industry in which the first statement applies. If union membership is mandated, you don't get a choice in the union you join.
And for the last bit about self-employed folks: the only industries which mandate union membership in which it is also possible to be self-employed are the Hollywood guilds, which set compensation minimums. Hollywood union members are free to negotiate higher compensation, and many do.
The worst thing about all the anti-union FUD that gets spread on HN is that they assume that tech workers would be in the same kind of union as janitors, when the most similar structure would be the Hollywood guilds.
There's a great video of a longshoreman union rep bragging about crushing America so 'his guys' could get by, all the while with totaly lost irony he said this on TV while wearing a gold chain, Rolex, and living in an absolutely lavish mansion.
By therouwboat 2025-03-1918:062 reply So what? If workers don't get the money, it goes to company owners. I wonder what kinda mansions they have.
By company owners, did you mean my 401k? Or is it more that it causes higher prices, and everyday consumers pay for it?
By ty6853 2025-03-1918:18 Given that particular strike was against in part automation it was that they wanted their port to become less competitive and eventually be destroyed by ports employing automation and not even jobs left for their kids to fix or engineer the machines.
By banannaise 2025-03-1918:58 A small amount of it does go to your 401(k), yes. A much larger amount goes to executives, largely through stock-based compensation, and much wealthier investors.
By ThrowawayR2 2025-03-1919:45 You are on a site for venture capitalists (i.e. company owners), tech startup founders (i.e. company owners), and tech startup / FAANG employees whose TC has a large component of stock (i.e. company owners). Just a wild guess but they probably don't see a problem with money going to the company owners.
By lalaithion 2025-03-1917:032 reply How do you think unions start? Yes, an entire workplace can just up and decide some day to unionize but more often unions start as non-bargaining unions and then at some point get enough support to bargain with the companies.
By JumpCrisscross 2025-03-1921:38 > more often unions start as non-bargaining unions
Source? I'd guess most unions start as collective-bargaining unions because if they can't colletively bargain I'm struggling to see their point over, like, a conference or subreddit.
By 3acctforcom 2025-03-1920:54 uhhh you should really look into how that works. The union playbook is to organize in secret because retaliation is in the HR playbook. All sorts of fun and completely (not)illegal retaliation like firing organizers.
Not quite, this is what themselves say about the structure:
> A direct-join union means that UVW-CWA does not represent a single workplace, but rather, anyone in the video game industry. This differs from other union models, which organize workers in a single company or even a specific department or office. This means UVW-CWA seeks to make change directly through worker power and public leverage against the companies of our industry without the limitations of traditional labor law and collective bargaining rights.
> Historically, workers in the U.S. and Canada organized their unions this way until their efforts resulted in the codified labor law we know today in the United States. Other countries also utilize direct-join unionism! [...] By being direct-join, UVW-CWA is able to grow more easily, have a wider base of membership, and is not limited to the constraints of the certification process.
So while it's true it doesn't have the typical benefits of another form of union, it doesn't seem useless at all. Biggest benefit is that exploited people get used to organizing together for a common cause, this will have a far wider impact than just in the video game industry.
Because nothing terrifies corporate executives more than a loosely organized group of scattered workers with no legal standing, no collective bargaining rights, and no strike protections. Truly, the next great labor revolution will be built on the unshakable foundation of good vibes and a mailing list. In practice, I don’t think things will be that easy.
By int_19h 2025-03-1923:50 The very first unions were exactly like that, and they terrified corporate executives enough to attempt to violently suppress them.
And then, despite said suppression, they still managed to win legal standing, collective bargaining rights, strike protections etc.
You are offering undiscerning nihilism. It’s both false and unhelpful.
Maybe you just needed to vent, I get that. But I must say, HN comments aren’t the always the best place for venting.
By crooked-v 2025-03-1917:47 Collective lobbying and PR has plenty of power, which is why companies do it so much.
This is fantastic news and something we need very much!
When my studio was closed and 36 of us fired without notice 7 months ago, I poked around at union options and was shocked to find they were only inside individual studios, not even across whole companies, much less across the industry.
The games industry is 100 years behind film and music in standardizing contracts, roles, and rights (including IP rights for failed projects). This initiative gives us a chance to fix it!
By Joel_Mckay 2025-03-1916:56 The churn rate in the gaming studios is usually abnormally high. Most key talent often breaks off into their own indie studios, and while budgets wont be spectacular AAA level... the content usually offers better quality fun, and the artists aren't burned out in 6 months.
The film and TV production situation is nothing to aspire toward... especially if you are a contractor. It never lead to more stable work for the crews, and became a feast or famine type seasonal working arrangement for many.
Unions are better than none, as at least your crew actually gets paid by some rat-fink production manager that often disappeared on wrap.
Best of luck, and some of the best talent I've met was shafted by a AAA studio at least once in their career (often for some really bizarre reasons.) =3
By Ferret7446 2025-03-205:503 reply How is this fantastic news in an industry that is on fire and collapsing?
The US (and more generally Western) gaming industry is getting obliterated by Asian studios. I doubt a union (pre-supposing this is a union, which it is not) would help US studios be more competitive.
A union doesn't help you if your company, or entire industry, goes bankrupt.
By johnnyanmac 2025-03-2012:33 The big studios aren't suffering in the same way the laid off employees are. Their numbers aren't rising at pandemic level and they decide to panic. They aren't shuttering anytime soon.
Asia isn't really booming either. At least if you compare to western studios. Japan had decades of a stangant economy and are coming out of a recession. Any kind of growth is a gold mine for them. China is a minefield as well economically.
> I doubt a union (pre-supposing this is a union, which it is not) would help US studios be more competitive.
It's not about competition, it's about protecting your livliehood so you don't get sacked to make an earnings call look a smidgen better.
By PeterStuer 2025-03-207:221 reply The US game industry seems to be collapsing because they do not offer the customers what they want.
Treating employees in the industry fair might not change this, but should be beneficial to them regardless, unless it would make the misalignment of the product offer even worse which is entirely possible.
it doesn’t give consumers what they want—it just targets a small subset willing to spend the most money.
By johnnyanmac 2025-03-2012:35 unions aren't directly about consumers. Why argue this angle? Consumers don't get games if devs don't exist.
>it just targets a small subset willing to spend the most money.
people with money aren't worried about getting laid off. Quite the contrary.
By schnitzelstoat 2025-03-2114:17 Europe seems to be doing alright with the likes of Warhorse, CDPR, Rockstar North, Paradox Interactive etc.
The salaries here are far lower than in the USA which probably helps a bit, that's not good for the workers though of course.
By dreadlordbone 2025-03-1918:453 reply I don't understand. If a company closes, how is a union supposed to help?
By banannaise 2025-03-1919:01 Ideally the union wants to deal with the larger entity that controls the studio. Presumably, the studio did not go out of business; rather, it was shut down by its parent company.
By gopher_space 2025-03-1919:06 One of the benefits to having a labor representative in top-level planning is as a sanity check. Harder to tank your own company if you have feedback loops in place.
By alexathrowawa9 2025-03-1918:522 reply Can a union force a company to continue a project if the company decides to cancel it?
By munk-a 2025-03-1919:14 Unions are a bargaining tool that can theoretically advocate for anything - it's more useful generally to talk about what they usually do. Generally unions focus on employee rights and will only organize for specific business policies if it is causing obvious harm to the company and employees. I'd only expect a union to force a project to be continued if it was being canceled for silly reasons (internal company politics and similar) but usually simply moving the workforce to another project would be sufficient.
By wickedsickeune 2025-03-1919:03 Yes. But it can more reasonably force the company to retain the employees of said project, and move them to other projects instead of firing them.
By dontlaugh 2025-03-1916:25 That does depend on laws in your particular country.
In the UK, you can be join the national union even if you are the only one in your workplace. Typically union recognition within a particular workplace comes later after sufficient numbers join.
companies with unions are a hundred years behind companies that run efficiently and do what they are supposed to instead of acting as a playing piece in the game of politics and union corruption. nobody ever talks about the fact that unions in america are corrupt… unions in germany aren't corrupt and germans can build bridges still. we can barely manage it without hiring foreign firms… stop worshiping unions its part of the problem
By officeplant 2025-03-1917:222 reply Unions and the labor laws they helped create save American lives. Unfortunately American companies have been upset about this for decades and fight it at every level. Including lobbying laws into places preventing industry strikes. Thus leaving us far behind countries with properly working unions like Germany as you mentioned.
By AngryData 2025-03-1921:40 Most of the problems with US unions can be traced back to anti-union legislation that used the promises of entrenching current unions as a carrot to get the laws passed to suppress new unions. New unions are much harder to create today, even more so if there is an existing union that covers similiar employees to your own. And old established unions are hard to get rid of even if the majority of employees are unhappy with it and would rather it was either gone or replaced with a different union with different rules and leaders. And an old entrenched bureaucratic political position is an easy target for corruption.
Yes, unions at video game studios are bound to save so many lives.
In other words your comment is hyperbolic and does not apply to the topic at hand.
By crooked-v 2025-03-1918:38 Given the pattern of video game studios unceremoniously laying off people the second a game is complete and how health care in the US is overwhelmingly tied to employment, it's extremely plausible that somebody somewhere has died from lack of collective bargaining power. If it hasn't happened, that's most likely because people just leave the video game industry before they actually need those health care benefits.
By officeplant 2025-03-1918:391 reply >Yes, unions at video game studios are bound to save so many lives.
Stress & constant overtime crunch culture will absolutely be a detriment on the health and wellbeing of workers in any industry.
Again, labor laws saved lives in the past, they can save and/or benefit lives today.
>In other words your comment is hyperbolic and does not apply to the topic at hand.
Welcome to the topic at hand.
By FirmwareBurner 2025-03-1919:501 reply >Again, labor laws saved lives in the past, they can save and/or benefit lives today.
They can, but game dev is not a critical national industry that politicians are gonna fight for with laws to protect labor. Otherwise we could have had unionized clothes making union but what saw instead was the entire textile industry shipped oversees. Game dev will follow a similar fate.
You can unionize if you want, but unless you're guarantee to have a blockbuster IP on your hands capable of raking in billions, you won't be able to compete with game devs from lower CoL countries.
In a globalized free market with no tariffs, high CoL labor can't compete with low CoL labor making commodity goods, which a a lot of games are nowadays. Unions won't fix this, but accelerate offshoring at the expense of the local industry.
By Apocryphon 2025-03-1921:221 reply > you won't be able to compete with game devs from lower CoL countries.
I mean, those devs might unionize as well. Certainly would've helped both the ZA/UM and CD Projekt Red devs, for different reasons.
By FirmwareBurner 2025-03-2012:101 reply >I mean, those devs might unionize as well.
The word "might" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. If unionization in Asia was so easy we would have seen it happen a long time ago, but what we saw instead was suicide nets on buildings.
By Apocryphon 2025-03-2016:021 reply That caricature was so long ago a new caricature (from seven years ago) has emerged to lampoon it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpB9Aeq8lUA
Granted, I have no doubt that the work culture is much tougher than in North America. But even the Chinese government has recognized 996 and taken steps to address it.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/china-neijuan-invo...
Also, Foxconn manufacturing isn't exactly the same thing as NetEase video game development, even if they both exist within the same labor environment.
By FirmwareBurner 2025-03-2019:381 reply >That caricature
Foxconn workers killing themselves by jumping off their office budling is a caricature to you? How out of touch can you be?
By Apocryphon 2025-03-2019:45 Those tragedies largely ended after 2011. One would assume things have changed since then.
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012...
https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/apple-foxconn-factory-c...
By matthewmacleod 2025-03-1918:26 America talks often about union corruption. In fact, it does this to the point of crowding out any productive discussion - because Americans are often quite resistant to looking at other countries and understanding what approaches they take to certain social issues.
Just my opinion. I have no experience working in the industry _for someone else_. I am, however, working on my own game (3+ years). I'm not a believer in poor work environments, as I don't think that environment maximizes creative output. I know what it's like working with less than 7 hours of sleep, or sitting in front of a screen hours on end. It dulls the mind. It's like being half alive.
All that said: A hit based industry is not one that provides stability. I cant think of how slapping a union on top of an unstable foundation is going to solve anything. I've heard a couple people who crossed over from the film industry say it's just going to turn most roles into contracts (just like the film industry), and will quickly filter out the unskilled and less driven people.
There isn't really a solution to this. Market pressure keep the prices of games down. Funding gets a better bang for buck by investing in up and coming countries (e.g. Poland). Most qualified[1] games don't even break a million. Hitting [just!] $150,000 in revenue is when Steam starts seriously promoting your game[2]. $150K is not even enough to live in a coastal city (after dev. costs), never mind hiring people.
[1] The dev had the intent to market _and_ sell a legitimate product, which is the minority of games on steam.
[2] howtomarketagame.com
> I cant think of how slapping a union on top of an already unstable foundation is going to solve anything
You mean like the entire television and film industry? Any production over a certain (small) size is completely unionized. It's so massively successful the American cultural exports dominate in almost every corner of the world.
I'm not sure where the idea that unions can't work for the games industry comes from since it's almost identical to the film and TV industry. Unions exist so workers don't get exploited and to provide stability.
What about Nintendo? They famously have very limited layoffs. They see value in providing stability and maintaing culture and institutional memory.
If anything, it's short-term profit-seeking that destroys industries. You see this in the world of original content production for streamers. They cut the size of writers rooms. They tried to no longer have writers on set. There's a push for "mini writing rooms". Why? Because it cuts costs on a very short term basis.
In doing so, Netflix (etc) are intentionally throwing away the model that created billion dollar properties like Friends, Seinfeld, ER, MASH, Cheers, etc that, to this day, generate massive profits. Seinfeld was known for getting over a million viewers when it was running in syndication.
Long-term it creates problems. Future products and showrunners are writers who need to get experience on set. Shortsighted cost-reudction is literally killing the future of the industry.
As for the price of video games, there are several aspects to this:
1. AAA publishers like to complain that games still cost $60 after years. That's true but also the distribution is significantly higher than it was 20 years ago. You're selling way more games;
2. The marginal cost of producing a game via download is essentially zero; and
3. Games eventaully get much cheaper on Steam. That's a good thing. Early experiments with this showed that selling a game cheap on Steam could generate significantly more revenue than the original release. And because the marginal cost is zero, it's all profit.
The entertainment industry isn't doing well right now. Nor gaming. US film+TV grew by 5x thanks to streaming money in last 20 years. Gaming sector also exploded. But everyone is competing for attention with each other and decades of backlog. Netflix has milked the game to the point where they're competing against sleep - there's only so demand for the occasional hit properties. IMO it's not the same supply/demand enviroment anymore that can support unions everywhere. Very few companies are Nintendos who has a few golden goose franchise and an entire hardware ecosystem to support long term vision. And of course if most of the industry doesn't unionize, the few that could likely won't, even if the should.
By SpicyLemonZest 2025-03-203:431 reply Video game voice actors at the intersection of entertainment and gaming, but they're unionized and have maintained a strike for about 8 months now, forcing multiple major companies to start releasing content without English voicelines. It's very doable if employees want to.
>forcing multiple major companies to start releasing content without English voicelines.
But not forcing suits to concede. Premature to assume voice actors will win in the end. On the continuum of "indispensible", "rainmaker" talent to easily replacable, screen talent has leverage to unionize because their faces sell tickets/subscriptions. My understanding is voice actors are bluntly not valued as much, hence the long strike, they don't have comparable leverage, especially with AI on horizon. Least valuable / most fungible are production, which is why the situation is increasingly shit for even existing unionized talent in entertainment and extra worse for non unionized sectors like vfx, or most of video games - they're replacable by neverending supply of talent willing to work for less, not just in US but abroad.
By johnnyanmac 2025-03-2012:241 reply if companies would rather release worse content than pay labor, that's a cost in and of itself. The writer's guild had similar impact in the 2010's.
I don't know who will win, but it's not like these choices are not without consequence. These moves definitely slow down their plans.
By maxglute 2025-03-2017:28 IMO with voice talent it's pretty obvious the AI will eventually win, especially when it pertains to video games where projects can contain 1,000s hours of dialogue. There's disruption right now because studios are being nice / have talent locked into existing projects that's hard to recast/pivot from. IIRC the voice acting drama also has a transnational dimension, something about blacklisting international talent from union projects if they don't join/pay dues to a US guild, which sits wrong with me. Either way the consequences of ceding to unions is bad for consumers, at least in video games. I don't want smaller projects to pick between either having all union voice acting and no AI which may be prohibitively expensive / not possible depending on scope. I want amateur RPG makers able to make projects with accessible AI generated voices, especially with how fast they're improving etc.
By YesBox 2025-03-2019:06 It's not identical. Film and TV has one city where the vast majority of shows are produced: LA. Much easier to organize when everyone is located in the same place. Game studios are spread all over the US[0]
Nintendo isn't an American company, and Japanese have different cultural values (with tradeoffs)
> If anything, it's short-term profit-seeking that destroys industries
Im not so confident about that. For most games, you launch it once, and you get the vast majority of the revenue within one year of release. Then the next game has to be better (and cost more) than the last. I think it has less to do with short term profits (games take years to develop).
> AAA publishers like to complain that games still cost $60 after years. That's true but also the distribution is significantly higher than it was 20 years ago. You're selling way more games;
> The marginal cost of producing a game via download is essentially zero;
You lose 30% of that to the storefront, 30% on marketing, 10% on server, 5% on engine. (fun fact: the profit margin of games were higher in the 90s) [1]
> Games eventaully get much cheaper on Steam. That's a good thing. Early experiments with this showed that selling a game cheap on Steam could generate significantly more revenue than the original release. And because the marginal cost is zero, it's all profit.
No it isn't. Not when people's expectations continue to rise.
[0] https://www.gamedevmap.com
[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/19_NC1ZskeN47LHaYJziotbA0sqL...
By johnnyanmac 2025-03-2012:28 Not sure I Agree about the price of video games. It very much had adverse effects to devaluing games, not dissimilar to the streaming wars. It's really hard to bring up prices again once people are used to something costing a certain amount.
And as you expect it hurts indies the most. People spending years on a decent product and they are locked to selling at $10 because the market is so used to deep sales. At some point the next generation will scoff at the idea of paying for any game.
By johnnyanmac 2025-03-2012:221 reply If a studio dies, it dies. Unions don't nor are trying to fix that. it happens.
But that's not the situation right now. It's companies making record revenue but choosing to do mass layoffs to make numbers look good. That's what unions fix. These companies aren't going broke from retaining existing talent. Those west coast studios are making hundreds of billions to compensate, so I'm not worried about them neither.
>I've heard a couple people who crossed over from the film industry say it's just going to turn most roles into contracts (just like the film industry), and will quickly filter out the unskilled and less driven people.
sure, they can, have, and will try to. Issue is that games are much harder to plan than film (or perhaps the executives simply can't plan as well). So a lot of those principles that "worked" in film go out the door. In addition, with service games on the rise you can't just rush something out to make day 1 revenue and tear everything down.
By YesBox 2025-03-2018:50 "Record Revenue"
While there are some success, there are also some failures--all across the cost scale. WB games were making $XXX,XXX,XXX games, and just had to shut down 3 studios and cancel a game.
Lots of other examples (Anthem, Concord, Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin to name a few)
That record revenue is used to fund the next game, which is almost always more expensive than the last.
By nitwit005 2025-03-1920:28 Being a contractor isn't inherently bad. If you work at a company that is contracted to work on games or films, you're more insulated from the financial risks. You will normally get paid either way.
