I’ll at least hold them accountable, by being that jerk on the internet who reminds people of union busting every time someone mentions Rockstar or one of their games.
Why yes I am still boycotting Sony over that time they booby trapped their CDs. Businesses might not go under when they do amazingly evil stuff, but they’re dead to me.
Gamdevs should get roylties based off contribution like a number so small for indie games its meaningless unless it does well, but for bringingg us longlasting moneymaking games like gta they should be making way more
Absolutely; but you just know that Publishers will just push to outsource development to 3rd party “contractors” so that they won’t be eligible, or some other such bullshit.
I mean they can do that and quality assurance will struggle even more, making indie games look even better in comparison. Let publishers keep shooting themselves in the foot in their endless greed. It will only speed up the destructive cycle.
I pretty much only buy indie games these days, maybe one AAA a year and I used to buy multiple a month. Most stuff doesn’t feel unique enough, like I’m just repeating experiences with slightly different themes and controls.
Uhh, going to need to see some evidence of that. Literally never heard of non indie devs getting royalties or continued payments based off the success of the game.
Actually I’ll correct myself, rockstar is the only company I’ve heard of that does big internal payouts post launch. Most of Rockstars game launches have resulted in new houses for some of their teams.
the problem is that companies will find a way to screw devs with that too. Imagine figuring out a solution to track every single bit of contribution to keep royalties as low as possible based on STATS BYATCH. it will literally turn into “your grass texture will bring you 0.00000000000000000000000001 cent off each sale” kind of fuck around.
Unfortunately for larger games individual devs don’t have that much control nor can have a mensurable impact. For example, I wrote a few lines of code for a large game, those lines will be executed every single time the game runs, but if they weren’t there no user would notice. I was told to write those lines, and it’s not something I personally wanted to add to the game, there was an issue, I was sent to fix it, I did. This is true for the vast majority of the game code, most devs are pointed to issues to fix or features to implement, they have some wiggle room in the how to do stuff, but the what to do has been approved by the boss of the manager of your manager’s manager, and unless there’s a good reason it won’t change.
Think about it this way, have you ever watched the credits from a AAA game? The vast majority (as in there are likely only a couple of persons who didn’t) of the people in that list contributed something to the game, either directly or indirectly, it’s hard to measure how much each contributed, a small but critical fix might be more important than a large but unused feature, how do you measure between the two?. Not to mention past employees who did stuff for a previous game that got re-used.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice idea, one that I would personally benefit from, but I think it’s just not feasible for large games. In short it’s impossible to be fair doing that, and people would get hurt because John from accounting got the same share that he did. And if you do it in any other way that’s not everyone gets the same share, you’re essentially playing favorites with the people whose job is to do the stuff you’ve ranked higher, even though the other person’s job is just as important.
That is true. However, you can still solve it and i have seen it work in practice: allow every employee to buy shares of the company. Fixed limit of shares per year of employment. Shares cannot be sold on the free market, they are bound to employment. Shares are kept after departure. Shares give dividends as usual.
That’s an interesting approach, but eventually you’ll run out of shares to allow employees to buy, and you’ll have to dilute the ones you’ve already sold. You need to think that AAA studios have hundreds of people working there, and certain games have thousands of people working on related stuff that’s not directly the game but contributes, like engine, servers, social, etc.
There is no problem with diluting. It’s not guaranteed amount passive income :) but if more people work there, you would usually also have higher gains to distribute. And old shares eventually disappear, they are not inheritable.
The biggest crime here is that people are actually looking forward to a game that will INEVITABLY be the same GTA slop we’ve been playing since the turn of the goddamn millenium.
Graphics are no longer a selling point, we can make anything look like anything now. Unique gameplay and immersive narratives and interactive mechanics are now the way games stand out. Look how popular far simpler social games are like Repo and the like. look how well a goddamn knockoff of S.T.A.L.K.E.R did (Misery) and it was the most basic survival mechanics and it was made by one person and it looks like it crawled out of a Playstation 2… but it was engaging and addicting because it was trying new ways to do old things.
All that aside, yeah our countries hate unions and hate workers and everyone in power hates you and wants you to die.
Just to address the potential for US defaultism, “our country” in this case should be read as the United Kingdom, where Rockstar is headquartered and the union busting in this instance took place.
Hype around a game is directly related to the marketing budget. If people are looking forward to the next edition in a franchise, it is inevitably because they’ve been bombarded with “NEW THING! NEW THING! NEW THING!” radio/TV/streaming ad reels for months prior.
All that aside, yeah our countries hate unions and hate workers and everyone in power hates you and wants you to die.
We’re going to replace all the working class schlubs with AI, haven’t you heard?
GTA will proceed to break all media sales records because why do the right thing when you can buy a new shiny toy to spend your hard earned capitalism bucks on
why do the right thing when you can buy a new shiny toy
It’s not like they’re plastering “We Busted A Union To Get This Game Out Six Months Late” on the packaging. The overwhelming majority of retail customers have no idea how the sausage is made. Those that are curious enough to ask typically aren’t the ones going in on the “Rape And Loot Simulator” franchise to begin with.
Gotta get off this hobby horse of blaming the anonymous gooner gamer at the bottom of the food chain for decisions made in a smoke-filled board room long beforehand.
The “anonymous gooner gamers” or uninformed consumers are why the companies get away with shit like this. Because they keep throwing money to buy the next best thing
No they aren’t. Games flop all the time and the companies don’t quit this bullshit. No business executive has ever walked out of a tense call with their investors and re-committed themselves to being nicer to the staff. You’re delusional if you think people not buying a game results in the quality of life of that game’s staff improving.
What improves the lives of game developers is going indie and doing well. What improves the odds of doing well as an indie developer is producing games that can compete with the GTAs absent the absurd marketing budgets. That requires a symbiosis between indie games media, indie developers, and early adopters. But the gooner gamer is at the end of the line in any event. They don’t even know the game exists until it gets a splash ad on the Steam Store.
Your retail consumer market is a consequence of industry practices, not a cause.
I mean I know “Alleged” has to be there for legal purposes, but what are the chances Rockstar ISNT guilty of union busting?
I’ve watched UNION’s union bust when their staff unionizes, no way a for profit capitalist nightmare like rockstar isn’t busting as hard as they can, especially with the NLRB currently muzzled by a felonious rapist who steals from children with cancer.
Exactly, bringing in all the feces and dirt and gravel and everything else from outside in the streets. So nasty. Like okay, if you live your life in your shoes and you take them off only to shower and sleep, even that is… workable, if that suits you. I don’t understand it, but fine. But laying your shoes on your bed? 🤮
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I’ll at least hold them accountable, by being that jerk on the internet who reminds people of union busting every time someone mentions Rockstar or one of their games.
Why yes I am still boycotting Sony over that time they booby trapped their CDs. Businesses might not go under when they do amazingly evil stuff, but they’re dead to me.
Me too!
Likewise. I also passed around the message between my union guys; “don’t you dare buy GTA 6”.
Related news article: Union files legal claims against Rockstar Games following alleged union busting
Im sure the legal system will show them justice. Until someone pays off Trump and the lawsuit disappears.
Isn’t it in the UK?
Exactly…
It’d be cool if it were true, but I’m pressing X to doubt.
A bit off topic but, ew they are wearing shoes in bed.
Want me to make it worse?
spoiler
He’s not even wearing socks
It’s a good way to show us that they’re hardened criminals.
Hardened criminals? They are monsters!
You don’t wear socks with sandals or moccasins, right? Right?
i mean there has been alot of shagging going on, your bound to pick an std sooner or later.
std::in?
Gamdevs should get roylties based off contribution like a number so small for indie games its meaningless unless it does well, but for bringingg us longlasting moneymaking games like gta they should be making way more
Absolutely; but you just know that Publishers will just push to outsource development to 3rd party “contractors” so that they won’t be eligible, or some other such bullshit.
I mean they can do that and quality assurance will struggle even more, making indie games look even better in comparison. Let publishers keep shooting themselves in the foot in their endless greed. It will only speed up the destructive cycle.
I pretty much only buy indie games these days, maybe one AAA a year and I used to buy multiple a month. Most stuff doesn’t feel unique enough, like I’m just repeating experiences with slightly different themes and controls.
That is already very very common
Uhh, going to need to see some evidence of that. Literally never heard of non indie devs getting royalties or continued payments based off the success of the game.
Actually I’ll correct myself, rockstar is the only company I’ve heard of that does big internal payouts post launch. Most of Rockstars game launches have resulted in new houses for some of their teams.
Got any other examples to share?
The person you were replying to was saying it’s already common to contract out devs, not that it’s common to pay royalties.
Oops my mistake Thanks for the correction
the problem is that companies will find a way to screw devs with that too. Imagine figuring out a solution to track every single bit of contribution to keep royalties as low as possible based on STATS BYATCH. it will literally turn into “your grass texture will bring you 0.00000000000000000000000001 cent off each sale” kind of fuck around.
Unfortunately for larger games individual devs don’t have that much control nor can have a mensurable impact. For example, I wrote a few lines of code for a large game, those lines will be executed every single time the game runs, but if they weren’t there no user would notice. I was told to write those lines, and it’s not something I personally wanted to add to the game, there was an issue, I was sent to fix it, I did. This is true for the vast majority of the game code, most devs are pointed to issues to fix or features to implement, they have some wiggle room in the how to do stuff, but the what to do has been approved by the boss of the manager of your manager’s manager, and unless there’s a good reason it won’t change.
Think about it this way, have you ever watched the credits from a AAA game? The vast majority (as in there are likely only a couple of persons who didn’t) of the people in that list contributed something to the game, either directly or indirectly, it’s hard to measure how much each contributed, a small but critical fix might be more important than a large but unused feature, how do you measure between the two?. Not to mention past employees who did stuff for a previous game that got re-used.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice idea, one that I would personally benefit from, but I think it’s just not feasible for large games. In short it’s impossible to be fair doing that, and people would get hurt because John from accounting got the same share that he did. And if you do it in any other way that’s not everyone gets the same share, you’re essentially playing favorites with the people whose job is to do the stuff you’ve ranked higher, even though the other person’s job is just as important.
That is true. However, you can still solve it and i have seen it work in practice: allow every employee to buy shares of the company. Fixed limit of shares per year of employment. Shares cannot be sold on the free market, they are bound to employment. Shares are kept after departure. Shares give dividends as usual.
So it is a partially worker owned company.
That’s an interesting approach, but eventually you’ll run out of shares to allow employees to buy, and you’ll have to dilute the ones you’ve already sold. You need to think that AAA studios have hundreds of people working there, and certain games have thousands of people working on related stuff that’s not directly the game but contributes, like engine, servers, social, etc.
There is no problem with diluting. It’s not guaranteed amount passive income :) but if more people work there, you would usually also have higher gains to distribute. And old shares eventually disappear, they are not inheritable.
exactly - it is borderline impossible to manage on large scale projects with any semblance of coherence.
But then how will they be able to afford the cut for Voice Actors!
The biggest crime here is that people are actually looking forward to a game that will INEVITABLY be the same GTA slop we’ve been playing since the turn of the goddamn millenium.
Graphics are no longer a selling point, we can make anything look like anything now. Unique gameplay and immersive narratives and interactive mechanics are now the way games stand out. Look how popular far simpler social games are like Repo and the like. look how well a goddamn knockoff of S.T.A.L.K.E.R did (Misery) and it was the most basic survival mechanics and it was made by one person and it looks like it crawled out of a Playstation 2… but it was engaging and addicting because it was trying new ways to do old things.
All that aside, yeah our countries hate unions and hate workers and everyone in power hates you and wants you to die.
Just to address the potential for US defaultism, “our country” in this case should be read as the United Kingdom, where Rockstar is headquartered and the union busting in this instance took place.
Gotcha, fixed.
Hype around a game is directly related to the marketing budget. If people are looking forward to the next edition in a franchise, it is inevitably because they’ve been bombarded with “NEW THING! NEW THING! NEW THING!” radio/TV/streaming ad reels for months prior.
We’re going to replace all the working class schlubs with AI, haven’t you heard?
GTA will proceed to break all media sales records because why do the right thing when you can buy a new shiny toy to spend your hard earned capitalism bucks on
gta is just a mass appeal game. people who dont care or know how shitty they are, or dont even play video games will pick this up.
It’s not like they’re plastering “We Busted A Union To Get This Game Out Six Months Late” on the packaging. The overwhelming majority of retail customers have no idea how the sausage is made. Those that are curious enough to ask typically aren’t the ones going in on the “Rape And Loot Simulator” franchise to begin with.
Gotta get off this hobby horse of blaming the anonymous gooner gamer at the bottom of the food chain for decisions made in a smoke-filled board room long beforehand.
The “anonymous gooner gamers” or uninformed consumers are why the companies get away with shit like this. Because they keep throwing money to buy the next best thing
No they aren’t. Games flop all the time and the companies don’t quit this bullshit. No business executive has ever walked out of a tense call with their investors and re-committed themselves to being nicer to the staff. You’re delusional if you think people not buying a game results in the quality of life of that game’s staff improving.
What improves the lives of game developers is going indie and doing well. What improves the odds of doing well as an indie developer is producing games that can compete with the GTAs absent the absurd marketing budgets. That requires a symbiosis between indie games media, indie developers, and early adopters. But the gooner gamer is at the end of the line in any event. They don’t even know the game exists until it gets a splash ad on the Steam Store.
Your retail consumer market is a consequence of industry practices, not a cause.
No.
I mean I know “Alleged” has to be there for legal purposes, but what are the chances Rockstar ISNT guilty of union busting?
I’ve watched UNION’s union bust when their staff unionizes, no way a for profit capitalist nightmare like rockstar isn’t busting as hard as they can, especially with the NLRB currently muzzled by a felonious rapist who steals from children with cancer.
Oh right so the delay was caused by them firing devs for wanting a pay rise. “Quality” fuck off
Tangentially related: who tf gets up in their bed WITH THEIR SHOES ON bruh that’s so freaking disgusting
Who walks around the house with their shoes on?
Exactly, bringing in all the feces and dirt and gravel and everything else from outside in the streets. So nasty. Like okay, if you live your life in your shoes and you take them off only to shower and sleep, even that is… workable, if that suits you. I don’t understand it, but fine. But laying your shoes on your bed? 🤮
…Isn’t this a bit ironic, considering GTA’s/RDR’s writing of (loosely) “plain folk’s plights?”
It’d be like CDPR going all in on DRM/corpo surveillance tech. And NO, CDPR Bot, that was not a suggestion!
Delaying the game another six months cost the company a full 3% on their market cap and god knows how much in long term costs.
Employers seem ready to slit their wrists if it’ll get blood on a union organizer.
Well I for one am looking forward to both not buying and not playing GTA6.
Remember mindseye ?? Yeah I know it bombed, but that company might wanna look for recruits