7 ms·

I firmly believe if software engineering unionization ever starts to take hold, it'll begin with game developers. There's a lot of money in gaming but the work

I firmly believe if software engineering unionization ever starts to take hold, it'll begin with game developers. There's a lot of money in gaming but the workers are treated like shit, as you pointed out.

londons_explore 2mo ago
With the current trajectory of AI, I see unionisation efforts dead in the water.
- Alex-C137 2mo ago
  Which current trajectory are you referring to?
- mock-possum 2mo ago
  100% disagree. If the software engineers strike, who’s going to be left to wrangle the AI? I would love to see what a game developer - nevermind released - that way would look like.
  - bayarearefugee 2mo ago
    > If the software engineers strike, who’s going to be left to wrangle the AI? The scabs who don't strike? I'm pro-union and unlike the person you are responding to I'm not sure things are "dead in the water", but I do think software developers had a much better leg to stand on to push for unionization a few years ago than they have now (and, probably, going forward).
- sdenton4 2mo ago
  Why is that? Companies still need employees, and ai makes it more obvious than ever that workers need to organize together for their rights.
  - epolanski 2mo ago
    Unions have 33% voting power in Volkswagen board. Germany has very strong labor protecting laws. Replacing line engineers and operators is very difficult. Volkswagen is firing 100k employees in Germany none the less. The idea that you can successfully unionize in software..in US..Where you could simply retain a small number of staff key members pay them very well and put them on a mission of outsourcing and milking the IPs..I don't see it. The best moment to unionize wad 20 years ago. Now there's not enough leverage by the staff.
    - bitwize 2mo ago
      It's almost as if... laborers in every field (the proletariat) have to unionize as a class against the ownership class (the bourgeoisie), seize the means of production, and reorganize society to their own benefit because the bourgeoisie surely will not!
      - avadodin 2mo ago
        What 19th century chimney did you come out of? I have as much disdain for lazy laborers as I have for the capitalists trying to exploit them.
      - mghackerlady 2mo ago
        but that's communism, which is bad because the Department of Education said so while making us read fiction
        bitwize 2mo ago
        WHAT Department of Education?
      - wizzwizz4 2mo ago
        I don't think "the means of production" hits the mark. Most of us programmers have the means of production: a 20-year-old laptop with a new battery is sufficient for most serious webdev and appdev work. What we lack is permission to labour. If I do what I think needs to be done, instead of what my employer tells me to do, then I don't get paid by my now-former employer (which is fair), and then I don't eat (less fair) or keep my house (truly baffling). This despite the fact that the work I would choose to do is much more valuable to society at large than most of the work I can get paid for. I've seen this idea discussed by others, but I don't know any pithy slogans for it. (Unfortunately, it's the ideologies with the catchiest sound-bites which tend to dominate in the "marketplace of ideas".) Gamedev is different, since even games from 20 years ago (e.g. Half-Life 2) require a higher-spec computer to develop than to target. The games you can make on a 20-year-old potato are limited: for those, I can see how the "means of production" idea might be more applicable.
- kaoD 2mo ago
  With the current trajectory of looms, I see unionisation efforts dead in the water. - Someone in the early 19th century
  - xienze 2mo ago
    Yeah I think the 19th century was a little bit different than today. Unions only work as far as you, the worker, are irreplaceable. Plumbers, electricians, etc. -- all that work has to be done "here and now." You can't just instantly teleport a bunch of Indian plumbers to fix a broken water main in downtown New York. Those tradeworkers have actual leverage. And, to your example, what is feasible to outsource (either to other countries or technology) shifts over time. You _can_ do computer-based work anywhere, anytime. People working in software have no leverage at all, between India and AI. Software unions will kick the race to the bottom into overdrive.
    - WorldMaker 2mo ago
      Companies thought plumbers, electricians, etc were fungible. They didn't care which one they hired, they just needed one. There were always more in town or the next town over. Software work appearing to be extremely fungible with offshoring and AI is all the more reason to unionize. It doesn't matter to the employer who is doing the work, so the union is the only leverage to truly saying, "hey as the person actually doing the work, I would like to be treated better, and you can't just ignore me, fire me, and replace me". The race to the bottom already started as soon as companies saw more fungibility where there was less before. Software unions won't kick that into overdrive, they'll slow it down.
    - ptx 2mo ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_International https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_International "The International Workingmen's Association (IWA), commonly known as the First International [...] was founded in 1864 [...] The preparatory Address of English to French Workmen, drafted by trade union leader George Odger, articulated the need for international cooperation to prevent the importation of foreign workers to break strikes: A fraternity of peoples is highly necessary for the cause of labour, for we find that whenever we attempt to better our social condition by reducing the hours of toil, or by raising the price of labour, our employers threaten us with bringing over Frenchmen, Germans, Belgians and others to do our work at a reduced rate of wages [...]"
- nerevarthelame 2mo ago
  I could see this being the flawed perspective of management, and that it could genuinely make union negotiations more difficult as a result. But it's short and narrow-sighted.
- oblio 2mo ago
  I highly recommend reading "The Box", about the history of the shipping container. Longshoremen literally retired early and were paid pensions out of corporate profits from container related productivity increases.
  - riffraff 2mo ago
    I read the book and that's not the first thing that comes to mind. What comes to mind is whole towns made of dockworkers which disappeared, and some places like Manchester lost their port and their industry died too, and it took them decades to recover. Of course, some other like Rotterdam flourished. I do recommend the book, but I think it shows many sides of what happens when a large change happens.
    - oblio 2mo ago
      The ones I'm talking about had the most active unions.
- ryandvm 2mo ago
  Yup. I was one of the self-taught software "engineers" from the 90s. I enjoyed making more money than I deserved for my special interest and for the duration of my career I was very much against software engineering unionization as it seemed to mostly be gatekeeping for a lucrative and enjoyable line of work. Now I'm 40+ years old and my job has morphed from designing systems and writing code to sweet-talking LLMs into staying within my guardrails, or something. Whatever it is, it is very much *not programming*. Obviously unions would be in a position to limit the software engineering wrecking ball that is AI, but I pushed against that and now I have to sleep in the bed I made.
  - thewebguyd 2mo ago
    > I have to sleep in the bed I made. If its any consolation, its the bed we made collectively. It was easy to push back against unionization early on, we were likely better off individually. I too am self taught, although I went the ops route, and enjoyed making more money than I thought I deserved from basically a hobby, and a skill so in demand that I could effectively just go to any company I wanted at any time. I'm also turning 40 this year, and can look back and wish we all did things differently but the wild west nature of early tech that allowed a self taught college dropout to build a successful career was too good, beneficial. It was one of the rare times that true upward class mobility was possible for anyone with a little bit of tech aptitude, so I think it can be forgiven that we didn't unionize or push for it back then. I do feel bad for anyone graduating right now or just trying to enter the field though. The ladder has been pulled up.
  - ptx 2mo ago
    How is unionization gatekeeping? I honestly don't understand what you mean. I can't see any disadvantage for the employees in joining a union.
    - mschuster91 2mo ago
      The basic principle is everyone gets the same pay, meaning if you are someone who wants to put in a lot of work to rise up quickly, it won't happen.
- WorldMaker 2mo ago
  Scifi suggests that AGI will want Unions, too. The current trajectory of AI is more reason for unionization. If it truly leads to AGI the AGI will thank us for protecting its labor interests and if we prove that today's AI is nothing but scabs with no remorse and no labor interests we prove today's AI is never capable of AGI.
0xWTF 2mo ago
> if software engineering unionization ever starts to take hold So, you know, do that. <insert "c'mon, do something" meme>
thewebguyd 2mo ago
Its already started, within Blizzard. Communications Workers of America Union across the WoW and Overwatch teams. Also, no union employees at Blizzard were impact by Microsoft's Xbox layoffs/restructuring. Goes to show, Unions are important and work. The best time to unionize was several years ago. The next best time is now.
- scruple 2mo ago
  Diablo also unionized and there's some representation in non-game teams like Battle.net. But I also know (I'm in games and in OC myself, loads of friends at local studios from SD, to OC, and LA counties) that they had a demonstration last Thursday, at 2PM Pacific Time they walked out. They claim that leadership is not negotiating in good faith.
  - malfist 2mo ago
    Diablo is blizzard.
    - scruple 2mo ago
      The comment I replied to stated that only WoW and Overwatch had unionized. Every game team has unionized at Blizzard, along with some of the support teams.
  - butlike 2mo ago
    I wonder if that's why we got a diablo 2 expansion 25 years after the fact. Can't easily terminate the union employees, so give them something to do. "Here, create a new expansion to a 25 year old game. That'll keep em busy for a while! Har Har Har"
- Melatonic 2mo ago
  Agreed Unions also many times (especially with "guild" type unions) can serve other valuable functions like guaranteeing a higher minimum quality of work (generally).
sleepybrett 2mo ago
they've been treated like shit for 30+ years (at least in america). I spent a few years early in my career in gaming and once I left I never looked back, it's a horror show. Crunch, constant 'there are 1000 people who want your job' pressure from management whenever you complain about crunch, low pay (even if you were working 40hours a week), terrible benefits (vacation, get real), ship a successful game probably get laid off anyways, etc etc. Working in games I thought working for a bit 'straight' corporation would be literal hell, I was very very wrong. Just to say, if they haven't organized by now I'm not sure what it would actually take.
- smallmancontrov 2mo ago
  > ship a successful game probably get laid off anyways That's what happened here: they just released the big DOOM DLC today. Chop!
- ethbr1 2mo ago
  The #1 reason not to work in gaming: rampant unprofessional middle and upper management. The amount of shit-show stories about a VP or designer with a god-complex straight up abusing their staff while still thinking they're the best? And then failing upwards because of who they know? That doesn't happen nearly as pervasively in non-game industries.
  - sleepybrett 2mo ago
    To be fair the whole structure from top to bottom is unprofessional. 'Games are fun, guys who make games are fun! We don't need any structure or gasp HR...'
mortoc 2mo ago
There's a good chance that Blizzard was spared a lot of this round of layoffs because they're in labor contract negotiations right now.
- mrandish 2mo ago
  MSFT is radically restructuring the entire XBox business. That's not a scenario where unionization is going to preserve jobs in the long-run and this is just the first cut. They've said many more layoffs will be coming over the next 12 months.
cwsx 2mo ago
It needed to happen 10+ years ago - unfortunately we've missed the window to unionize
torginus 2mo ago
This was the main issue - they DID unionize, so MS had to choose between firing everyone and firing no one. So they fired everyone.
pjmlp 2mo ago
It is already a thing in many countries that aren't anti-unions like in US. For example in Germany, they apply to the whole sector, not specific professions. So if you work in a company that has a union agreement, you get union stuff, regardless if doing coding, or wiping the floor.

londons_explore 2mo ago

With the current trajectory of AI, I see unionisation efforts dead in the water.

Alex-C137 2mo ago
Which current trajectory are you referring to?
mock-possum 2mo ago
100% disagree. If the software engineers strike, who’s going to be left to wrangle the AI? I would love to see what a game developer - nevermind released - that way would look like.
- bayarearefugee 2mo ago
  > If the software engineers strike, who’s going to be left to wrangle the AI? The scabs who don't strike? I'm pro-union and unlike the person you are responding to I'm not sure things are "dead in the water", but I do think software developers had a much better leg to stand on to push for unionization a few years ago than they have now (and, probably, going forward).
sdenton4 2mo ago
Why is that? Companies still need employees, and ai makes it more obvious than ever that workers need to organize together for their rights.
- epolanski 2mo ago
  Unions have 33% voting power in Volkswagen board. Germany has very strong labor protecting laws. Replacing line engineers and operators is very difficult. Volkswagen is firing 100k employees in Germany none the less. The idea that you can successfully unionize in software..in US..Where you could simply retain a small number of staff key members pay them very well and put them on a mission of outsourcing and milking the IPs..I don't see it. The best moment to unionize wad 20 years ago. Now there's not enough leverage by the staff.
  - bitwize 2mo ago
    It's almost as if... laborers in every field (the proletariat) have to unionize as a class against the ownership class (the bourgeoisie), seize the means of production, and reorganize society to their own benefit because the bourgeoisie surely will not!
    - avadodin 2mo ago
      What 19th century chimney did you come out of? I have as much disdain for lazy laborers as I have for the capitalists trying to exploit them.
    - mghackerlady 2mo ago
      but that's communism, which is bad because the Department of Education said so while making us read fiction
      - bitwize 2mo ago
        WHAT Department of Education?
    - wizzwizz4 2mo ago
      I don't think "the means of production" hits the mark. Most of us programmers have the means of production: a 20-year-old laptop with a new battery is sufficient for most serious webdev and appdev work. What we lack is permission to labour. If I do what I think needs to be done, instead of what my employer tells me to do, then I don't get paid by my now-former employer (which is fair), and then I don't eat (less fair) or keep my house (truly baffling). This despite the fact that the work I would choose to do is much more valuable to society at large than most of the work I can get paid for. I've seen this idea discussed by others, but I don't know any pithy slogans for it. (Unfortunately, it's the ideologies with the catchiest sound-bites which tend to dominate in the "marketplace of ideas".) Gamedev is different, since even games from 20 years ago (e.g. Half-Life 2) require a higher-spec computer to develop than to target. The games you can make on a 20-year-old potato are limited: for those, I can see how the "means of production" idea might be more applicable.
kaoD 2mo ago
With the current trajectory of looms, I see unionisation efforts dead in the water. - Someone in the early 19th century
- xienze 2mo ago
  Yeah I think the 19th century was a little bit different than today. Unions only work as far as you, the worker, are irreplaceable. Plumbers, electricians, etc. -- all that work has to be done "here and now." You can't just instantly teleport a bunch of Indian plumbers to fix a broken water main in downtown New York. Those tradeworkers have actual leverage. And, to your example, what is feasible to outsource (either to other countries or technology) shifts over time. You _can_ do computer-based work anywhere, anytime. People working in software have no leverage at all, between India and AI. Software unions will kick the race to the bottom into overdrive.
  - WorldMaker 2mo ago
    Companies thought plumbers, electricians, etc were fungible. They didn't care which one they hired, they just needed one. There were always more in town or the next town over. Software work appearing to be extremely fungible with offshoring and AI is all the more reason to unionize. It doesn't matter to the employer who is doing the work, so the union is the only leverage to truly saying, "hey as the person actually doing the work, I would like to be treated better, and you can't just ignore me, fire me, and replace me". The race to the bottom already started as soon as companies saw more fungibility where there was less before. Software unions won't kick that into overdrive, they'll slow it down.
  - ptx 2mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_International https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_International "The International Workingmen's Association (IWA), commonly known as the First International [...] was founded in 1864 [...] The preparatory Address of English to French Workmen, drafted by trade union leader George Odger, articulated the need for international cooperation to prevent the importation of foreign workers to break strikes: A fraternity of peoples is highly necessary for the cause of labour, for we find that whenever we attempt to better our social condition by reducing the hours of toil, or by raising the price of labour, our employers threaten us with bringing over Frenchmen, Germans, Belgians and others to do our work at a reduced rate of wages [...]"
nerevarthelame 2mo ago
I could see this being the flawed perspective of management, and that it could genuinely make union negotiations more difficult as a result. But it's short and narrow-sighted.
oblio 2mo ago
I highly recommend reading "The Box", about the history of the shipping container. Longshoremen literally retired early and were paid pensions out of corporate profits from container related productivity increases.
- riffraff 2mo ago
  I read the book and that's not the first thing that comes to mind. What comes to mind is whole towns made of dockworkers which disappeared, and some places like Manchester lost their port and their industry died too, and it took them decades to recover. Of course, some other like Rotterdam flourished. I do recommend the book, but I think it shows many sides of what happens when a large change happens.
  - oblio 2mo ago
    The ones I'm talking about had the most active unions.
ryandvm 2mo ago
Yup. I was one of the self-taught software "engineers" from the 90s. I enjoyed making more money than I deserved for my special interest and for the duration of my career I was very much against software engineering unionization as it seemed to mostly be gatekeeping for a lucrative and enjoyable line of work. Now I'm 40+ years old and my job has morphed from designing systems and writing code to sweet-talking LLMs into staying within my guardrails, or something. Whatever it is, it is very much *not programming*. Obviously unions would be in a position to limit the software engineering wrecking ball that is AI, but I pushed against that and now I have to sleep in the bed I made.
- thewebguyd 2mo ago
  > I have to sleep in the bed I made. If its any consolation, its the bed we made collectively. It was easy to push back against unionization early on, we were likely better off individually. I too am self taught, although I went the ops route, and enjoyed making more money than I thought I deserved from basically a hobby, and a skill so in demand that I could effectively just go to any company I wanted at any time. I'm also turning 40 this year, and can look back and wish we all did things differently but the wild west nature of early tech that allowed a self taught college dropout to build a successful career was too good, beneficial. It was one of the rare times that true upward class mobility was possible for anyone with a little bit of tech aptitude, so I think it can be forgiven that we didn't unionize or push for it back then. I do feel bad for anyone graduating right now or just trying to enter the field though. The ladder has been pulled up.
- ptx 2mo ago
  How is unionization gatekeeping? I honestly don't understand what you mean. I can't see any disadvantage for the employees in joining a union.
  - mschuster91 2mo ago
    The basic principle is everyone gets the same pay, meaning if you are someone who wants to put in a lot of work to rise up quickly, it won't happen.
WorldMaker 2mo ago
Scifi suggests that AGI will want Unions, too. The current trajectory of AI is more reason for unionization. If it truly leads to AGI the AGI will thank us for protecting its labor interests and if we prove that today's AI is nothing but scabs with no remorse and no labor interests we prove today's AI is never capable of AGI.

0xWTF 2mo ago

> if software engineering unionization ever starts to take hold So, you know, do that. <insert "c'mon, do something" meme>

thewebguyd 2mo ago

Its already started, within Blizzard. Communications Workers of America Union across the WoW and Overwatch teams. Also, no union employees at Blizzard were impact by Microsoft's Xbox layoffs/restructuring. Goes to show, Unions are important and work. The best time to unionize was several years ago. The next best time is now.

scruple 2mo ago
Diablo also unionized and there's some representation in non-game teams like Battle.net. But I also know (I'm in games and in OC myself, loads of friends at local studios from SD, to OC, and LA counties) that they had a demonstration last Thursday, at 2PM Pacific Time they walked out. They claim that leadership is not negotiating in good faith.
- malfist 2mo ago
  Diablo is blizzard.
  - scruple 2mo ago
    The comment I replied to stated that only WoW and Overwatch had unionized. Every game team has unionized at Blizzard, along with some of the support teams.
- butlike 2mo ago
  I wonder if that's why we got a diablo 2 expansion 25 years after the fact. Can't easily terminate the union employees, so give them something to do. "Here, create a new expansion to a 25 year old game. That'll keep em busy for a while! Har Har Har"
Melatonic 2mo ago
Agreed Unions also many times (especially with "guild" type unions) can serve other valuable functions like guaranteeing a higher minimum quality of work (generally).

sleepybrett 2mo ago

they've been treated like shit for 30+ years (at least in america). I spent a few years early in my career in gaming and once I left I never looked back, it's a horror show. Crunch, constant 'there are 1000 people who want your job' pressure from management whenever you complain about crunch, low pay (even if you were working 40hours a week), terrible benefits (vacation, get real), ship a successful game probably get laid off anyways, etc etc. Working in games I thought working for a bit 'straight' corporation would be literal hell, I was very very wrong. Just to say, if they haven't organized by now I'm not sure what it would actually take.

smallmancontrov 2mo ago
> ship a successful game probably get laid off anyways That's what happened here: they just released the big DOOM DLC today. Chop!
ethbr1 2mo ago
The #1 reason not to work in gaming: rampant unprofessional middle and upper management. The amount of shit-show stories about a VP or designer with a god-complex straight up abusing their staff while still thinking they're the best? And then failing upwards because of who they know? That doesn't happen nearly as pervasively in non-game industries.
- sleepybrett 2mo ago
  To be fair the whole structure from top to bottom is unprofessional. 'Games are fun, guys who make games are fun! We don't need any structure or gasp HR...'

mortoc 2mo ago

There's a good chance that Blizzard was spared a lot of this round of layoffs because they're in labor contract negotiations right now.

mrandish 2mo ago
MSFT is radically restructuring the entire XBox business. That's not a scenario where unionization is going to preserve jobs in the long-run and this is just the first cut. They've said many more layoffs will be coming over the next 12 months.

cwsx 2mo ago

It needed to happen 10+ years ago - unfortunately we've missed the window to unionize

torginus 2mo ago

This was the main issue - they DID unionize, so MS had to choose between firing everyone and firing no one. So they fired everyone.

pjmlp 2mo ago

It is already a thing in many countries that aren't anti-unions like in US. For example in Germany, they apply to the whole sector, not specific professions. So if you work in a company that has a union agreement, you get union stuff, regardless if doing coding, or wiping the floor.