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Comments (319)

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  __natty__
  > Together, we are organising around the things we want to change. Starting with: Pay transparency Flexible working An end to crunchThat’s a lot of demands, what next? Competitive salary?! /sarcasmI hope more people will start fighting together for better work conditions. Company owners have money and lawyers so workers must unite to fight them back. I’m saying this as employer.
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  WarmWash
  Can anyone comment on why "big video game" dev pay has lagged "big tech" pay so badly? Ostensibly they are doing remarkably similar engineering problem solving, so why is there such a disparity?
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  ShinyLeftPad
  Who would have thought we'll get programmer unions before GTA 6!
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  ernesto905
  > An end to crunchI was unaware of the crunch concept:"In the video game industry, crunch (or crunch culture) is compulsory overtime during the development of a game. Crunch is common in the industry and can lead to work weeks of 65–80 hours for extended periods of time, often uncompensated beyond the normal working hours" -- wikipediaNeedless to say this seems extremely predatory.
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  HugoTea
  This is great news, unions not only improve working conditions, but also improve the final product by not having underpaid stressed staff with high turn-over. It's a good sign for the future product quality of any company to see workers unionise.
• unselect5917
  I wish we had more (or maybe better yet one) software engineering union in America.The trouble seems to be that it's so easy to scab (outsource) or hire foreign competition (H1b et al) which is a pretty broken program even according to some of the people whom I've talked to who are on it.One multi-team architect I know working for a brand you've definitely heard of was making like $65K and doing a $250K job of it. Brilliant guy. The H1B program hurts everyone except employers' vast bank accounts and their shareholders.
• brap
  This is wonderful news, congratulations to Anthropic, OpenAI and Google!
• insane_dreamer
  The rollout of AI makes unionizing for knowledge workers more important than ever.
• Refreeze5224
  Solidarity forever! Game devs eat a a lot of crap, so I'm glad they are banding together to bargain collectively.
• whywhywhywhy
  Don’t expect any sympathy from the general public or your customers when the 1 year late game devs are complaining about crunch, ultimately they’re gonna get dragged for this and the gaming community will cheer if they manage to remove the union individuals.That’s the industry you’re in unfortunately.
• outlore
  As GTA V before it, 6 probably has 20 years worth of content updates ahead. Might as well be well compensated for it.
• vondur
  I think the easiest way to solve this is to change labor laws to say if you work over 8 hours a day or more than 40 hours a week then you get overtime. Most companies aren't willing to pay overtime and frankly whatever is going on at RockStar is a huge management issue, which making the labor far more expensive would solve.
• rolifromhermes
  Damn we had unionized GTA6 devs before we have GTA6. Wild.
• 5701652400
  maybe Google, Meta, Anthropic, MSFT, and every single tech company should unionise.
• aubanel
  Cheat code to get >5 stars in GTA6 instantly: type "sizes the means of production" in chat
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  harddrivereque
  So the tl;dr of this is that GTA 5 is indeed going to be the last and final GTA ?
• wonkyfruit
  At this point, we get everything before GTA6. Unions, AGI, Life on Mars.
• anon
  undefined
• smcl
  Hell yeah
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  chasd00
  What is the career ladder like for game devs? In a union, the only way up is seniority or, in other words, the amount of money you've paid in dues over the years. A great developer isn't going to get rewarded with higher pay or a better role unless they've spent enough time/money as a union member.
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  ionwake
  Isnt management at Rockstar the same poeple who:A) Allowed a bug in the code make all GTA5 Load times on every single copy on every platform take exponential times longer to load, for YEARS, unchecked or investigated, until some random kid FIXED IT by reverse engineering compiled code?B) The bug was a simple and unneeded look up for SHOP itemsC) The never rewarded the kid, with say a job or something worthwhile for him like 100k ( when they earn billions ). I mean even this decision ALONE is such terrible optics clearly mgmt were AFK.D) They then came onto HN to argue with me in the comments about how " its not nice to say mgmt responsible should have been fired over this"I mean Ive had my share of almost blinding incompetence, but the one that really bothers my crumpet, is when they come on here and start denying things.Im for the union, Rockstar North made one of the greatest games of all time. It will probably result in an inferior product but crunch is unethical and always due to poor management. Ironically it was probably mgmts' own incompetent hiring policies that resulted in a union being formed.PS - I got a bit heated and have edited this comment so its readable apologies.PS - All of this can be verified in previous posts on HN regarding both the bug and repliesPS - And to whoever is downvoting me, feel free to reply and tell me what I am wrong about
• yieldcrv
  I always see the same thing:“employer seen as blocking union effort”I’m wondering if that’s simply a rational thing available to do as opposed to an actual opinion about collective representation whether thats bargaining or something else“hey, here’s this regulatory overhead you can completely avoid by merely being present, unless people interested in the regulatory overhead are more persistent. just don't fire them though”
• anon
  undefined
• bozhark
  30 years late but oh so needed
• dyauspitr
  Seems like a bad time for rockstar for this to happen. Can’t fire everyone now.
• AndrewKemendo
  On Thursday, the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) and Rockstar staff members announced the Rockstar Game Workers Union. This union will be part of the IWGB. The reveal came in the form of an informative video which delves into their motives and what we should be looking out for in the future.
• vortegne
  Any and all discussions about unions on HN sadly just shows how the supposedly smart people can be extremely misinformed and propagandized. Not even really worth engaging in the discussions when it seems like any compassion has been beaten out of the (mostly USA-based, which explains a lot) audience here.Happy for the devs, more power to them! For the sake of workers everywhere, I hope the US also catches up one day in empathy and rational thinking, when it comes to labor laws and rights.
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  standardly
  happy for them but uh.. 2028 release confirmed lol
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  dude250711
  If companies do not like this, paying a percent of profit instead of salaries is always an option.(ah s** here we go again by the way).
• Helloworldboy
  [dead]
• animanoir
  [dead]
• fleroviumna
  [dead]
• seydor
  They should call it a cartel
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  sgarrity
  One of these days I'm going to see an article here about how the sex worker characters in GTA 6 have unionized.