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this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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As someone who always thought about getting into gaming as a career, i'm so glad i didn't... it's a shame that game developers are having to suffer through such a toxic industry, and that there aren't more protections in place for these people that create the amazing experiences that we all love so much.
I hope that they are able to find new and better places of employment.
Unions. If we want to stop the suffering of exploited game developers while the gaming industry rakes in more money than the movie- and music industry combined, we should push hard for unions to protect the well being on creative potential of these workers. Idgaf if EA loses 10-25 million a year to additional wages. That money belongs to the workers in the first place.
It's probably significantly more than 10-25 million a year in additional wages given the quality of employees, but it's still likely pocket change next to things like the marketing budget. I work in a more capital intensive industry (tooling, hard parts, etc), but we still spend a few billion on engineering. Know what else we spend a few billion on? Marketing, amoung many other things. Job cuts always make me chuckle because they're a, "we're doing something" but we spend orders of magnitude more on material, facilities, etc.
According to a quick search engine query, EA had 13500 employees as of 2023. He's proposing a $50-150 monthly pay rise, which is... not much of an upgrade.
Making games is expensive, you guys.
And what was the board's compensation in comparison? No, making games costs what it costs. What is expensive is the marketing stupidity and the corruption and self serving in upper management.
Both of those things can be true at once. I don't know how much the marketing is "stupidity", ideally marketing makes you money. Execs being overpaid is absoutely a thing.
But even if you took those out games would be very expensive to make. When you have hundreds of people working on something for years numbers start to get very high. Scale is a bitch.
Found the MBA guys!
You absolutely did not, but keep guessing.
I don't think that unions will help the game industry to the same degree that they help others.
There's an endless supply of young people who are excited to make games. Oversupply means that the demand-side (employers) have the power advantage.
It's a "seasonal" gig. Like a call center. They only hire how ever many people they need at a given time.
Edit. Yes, disagree with the comment for explaining how these companies work.
Sorry you're getting downvoted for being correct. I went to school for game design and decided to change career paths when I found out everything is contract work. Once a game is finished, you're out of a job and need to search for another studio to work for.
Exactly. When they don't need X amount of people they clear the seats.
Production ramps up for a new game, and they fill those seats again.
Unless you "breakthrough" or prove yourself invaluable to the company your always going to be looking for a new gig.
If it was all contract work it'd be better, probably. Devs would have representation, like actors or film directors, and they'd sign up for a project at a premium in the understanding that they're getting paid for the downtime after the project ends.
The kinda shitty part is that everybody is a full time employee but you still get frequent layoffs after projects end. That's the worst of both worlds, especially in the US where there are basically zero mandatory protections. In places with actual labor regulations it's... kinda expensive and self-defeating.
It is true that the layoffs get reported but the hires do not, so a lot of devs get rehired fairly quickly or start new projects and studios, so it always seems like there are devs getting kicked to the curb when there's a baseline of churn and cycling. That said, 2023 has been a very, very, very shitty year for the games industry for a number of reasons. Which sucks, because it's been a great year for games themselves.
Something like 60% of EA employees live outside the U.S.A.
Yes.
My point stands.
It’s not as much. GaaS is the predominant model, and you make more on the LiveOps side than the launch recoup period.
Source: Developer of 10 years, x-Director at 200 person company.
That's simply not true, projects are usually done in stages. You got pre-production, production, testing, launch, post-production, ...
So take an employee who mainly works in pre-production. Based on what you said they'd be laid off after everything is done and production starts, right? But that's not how it works. Those people immediately start with the pre-production work of either the next project, or the DLCs for the current one.
There's always more to do, after launch of a game you can't have your developers sit around idle, you need the next project already prepared and ready to go. That's why game DLCs sometimes release only months after launch, they have been worked on for a while.
Interesting. Tell that to everyone that's been laid off the past six months.
What has that to do with this argument? The lay-offs in the last six months were mostly due to massive overhiring while money lending was cheap. Now interest rates are up and those companies are trying to keep their profits up (or become profitable in the first place).
And the thing is: They hired so many people, even with the lay-offs the headcount is still higher than it was a few years ago.
So what you're saying is they laid off people when they didn't need them.
I left the game industry in 2010 (after 18 years) and it was the best career decision I've ever made.
I still get to work with amazing people on interesting problems AND I work sustainable hours and am compensated better.
Wanted to be a game dev my whole life, got a bs in cs applied to a few jobs, and realized it was brutal work and went sde instead.