Activision Blizzard Is Trying to Stop a Union Vote at Its Albany Office

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkgv48/activision-blizzard-is-trying-to-stop-a-union-vote-at-its-albany-office

by hvs • 4 years ago

224 127 4 years ago

vice.com

skyyler2• 4 years ago

existing legal precedent fails to account for the uniquely collaborative nature of game development

This argument is very shaky. Aren't Hollywood films the product of union labour?

xbar• 4 years ago

Yes.

yamtaddle• 4 years ago

Pro sports, too. Talk about collaboration.

[EDIT] Incidentally, I think there's some interesting cross-over here between Hollywood and video games: it's my understanding that part (though only part) of why modern movies lean so heavily on CGI/VFX is that that's one of the only major parts of movie-making that's not very, very unionized, along with that industry's cousin and the topic of this article, video games. I'd expect that when one of those unionizes, the other won't be far behind.

SQueeeeeL• 4 years ago

Obviously, but these arguments are basically just there to give a semblance of authenticity to the illegal union busting. A lot of rhetoric in these spaces just serve to confuse and enable anti-worker ideologes to feel a sense of legitimacy in denying people maternal leave and decent healthcare

pyuser5832• 4 years ago

Aren’t they literally saying the law isn’t on their side?

teawrecks• 4 years ago

It's a hail mary that will result in more than just QA being union.

worik3• 4 years ago

In New Zealand video game workers have no employment rights. Along with workers on film sets

We call it the "Warner Brothers' Law"

dangerboysteve• 4 years ago

I would have thought it would have been called the Peter Jackson Law.

worik3• 4 years ago

Hobbit Law sometimes: https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2018/01/29/78965/the-hobbit-law-t...

The actual law: https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2010/0120/latest/whol...

bovermyer3• 4 years ago

I remember back when I was a level designer for a New Zealand video game company, I was paid $150 NZD per day, and that was my entire compensation. No benefits. That was twenty years ago, though.

worik3• 4 years ago

The dispute that started the process to change the law was (if my memory serves) over a "model maker" making $NZ17 an hour back in 2010. Hardly big money.

https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/bills-and-laws/bills-propose...

thinkmcfly• 4 years ago

Peter Jackson's thumb

FredPret• 4 years ago

Or middle finger

Lev1a• 4 years ago

At this point, it would be better for all those involved [1] if the corporate entity called Activision-Blizzard was burnt to the ground and a new games company was built in its stead, with actually competent managers [2], a unionized labor force and actually enforced zero-tolerance policies on abuse of all kinds among some other nice-to-haves.

[1]: Obviously not Kotick and the rest of the scum, who not only tolerated but even engaged in the "alleged" instances of all manners of abuse for years. I actually wouldn't mind if they provided themselves as kindling on that corporate bonfire after having their golden parachutes cut away to pay damages/"reparations" to their victims.

[2]: ie. with at least a background in games development, not how to best financially screw their workers.

bovermyer3• 4 years ago

Microsoft should buy Activision-Blizzard, fully separate Activision from Blizzard, assign Kotick to work at a one-man game studio in Alaska or something, and completely rebuild senior leadership at Blizzard.

endemic• 4 years ago

Kotick'll get his golden parachute. Don't worry about _him_!

danaris2• 4 years ago

Yes, because what we need is more consolidation...

hilyen• 4 years ago

If only our government wasn't beholden to corporate power, they'd enforce the union busting laws. They know that if enough big companies become unionized, the workers would be able to exert democratic corporate power and influence government.

JTbane• 4 years ago

Agreed, also there were several high-profile reports of retaliation (Starbucks, et al) against union members. While they might have been settled out of court, it is not a good outlook for labor rights.

pyuser5832• 4 years ago

Don’t forget that the interests of unions are often the same interest as the employers.

My daughter has special needs, and we want to send her to a nearby public school. But the school isn’t in our district. So we have to pay for private school.

Teachers unions fought tooth and nail to prevent cross district enrollment using arguments from the 19th century.

JamesBarney2• 4 years ago

I'm not usually pro-union, but if there is any industry that needs to be unionized it's game development.

none_to_remain3• 4 years ago

Feels like the demand to be a Game Developer means they'll end up with one of those setups where the union is big on putting up a barrier to entry

AlexandrB8• 4 years ago

Is that better or worse than an industry that burns through and discards young talent as standard operating procedure?

I would argue that the product would only improve if it's harder to enter, but someone can have a 30 year career instead of a 5 year crunchfest. Who knows though.

PuppyTailWags• 4 years ago

Could you explain what you mean by this? How does demand to be a game developer require the union to put up barriers to entry? And also, how does this compare with the demand to be in hollywood vs the actor's union?

kevingadd5• 4 years ago

There's already a big barrier to entry: low wages and even entry-level roles demanding lots of experience

When I started in the industry I couldn't afford a bed on my salary for about a year, and I only got my "in" by having a lot of experience doing indie development during high school and college - many people don't have the free time and resources to build up that portfolio.

guywithahat• 4 years ago

Game developers are paid well above the average income for the country and you work in an office where nobody would possibly get hurt. Why would they need to be unionized over another industry? Especially coming from someone who's not pro-union?

DEADMEAT• 4 years ago

The game industry is notorious for expecting way, way above 40hrs/wk of work, especially as deadlines to release approach. Stories of game devs sleeping under their desks at night are shockingly common.

JamesBarney2• 4 years ago

I know a few non-union construction workers, and a few game developers. And the construction workers seem so much less abused than the game devs. (though the game devs do make more money)

enasterosophes• 4 years ago

Protection from abusive management is always going to be important no matter how much you earn.

Tiktaalik• 4 years ago

The game developers that are trying to unionize here are the QA department, and their pay is not at all similar to programmers and other game developers. Their pay is likely closer to minimum wage than anything.

nitrixion2• 4 years ago

While they may make above average in the overall assessment of income for a country, they make well below average for the type of work they are doing. Many game companies know they can pay below market wages because of demand for the jobs.

Source: When I quit game dev, I got a 60% raise and I was on the higher end of the pay scale at that game dev job. I know lead developers with nearly 10 years of experience making under 70k in games. I frequently offer them roles that would double their salary and they turn it down because they like working in games.

kevingadd5• 4 years ago

"Game developers are paid well above the average income for the country and you work in an office where nobody would possibly get hurt" is a claim that falls apart if you do much research. The industry is full of horror stories of people ending up hospitalized as a result of aggressive schedules (salaried roles with no OT pay or constraints on time! people sleeping in the office, working 6-7 day weeks for months at a time, etc!) and the pay really is NOT that competitive at most studios. There are outliers that pay really well, mostly ones backed by silicon valley investment money, but the median is not that good.

lifthrasiir• 4 years ago

Oh, I joined the union back when I was a gamedev precisely because some employees (of the company's subsidiary, to be clear on this matter) were not granted a paid vacation nor remote work in spite of a heavy flood that almost paralyzed the entire region. When you are not unionized someone will get hurt.

HDThoreaun• 4 years ago

They provide much more value than they are paid meaning there is an imbalance of power between the market participants. This can be fixed via collective bargaining.

dangerwill• 4 years ago

I've actually worked as a game developer (albeit on the online services side, so not touching C++ game code directly). I've done 80-100 hour weeks in the run up to internal milestones, betas, and full launches.

The pay, especially at studios, is very low by software engineering standards (only embedded is worse) and people can and constantly are hurt at the job. Divorces, alcoholism, and burnout are so common in the industry that they are just accepted and joked about. And I've seen real burnout. Like not being able to read properly after a couple all nighters, anxiety disorders from pagerduty, becoming fully despondent. Mental work is still work and overwork is still hurtful.

googlryas2• 4 years ago

Unionization is fine, but I think a better outcome would be these individuals having enough self-respect to move to other areas of the industry where their skills are still relevant, and they are not abused but are actually treated with dignity.

Though, it might be easy for me to say this, because I naturally delineate my passion from my paycheck.

skyyler2• 4 years ago

Are you actually suggesting that abused employees should just get a different job?

I'm trying to figure out how else to interpret "move to other areas of the industry".

kevingadd5• 4 years ago

As it happens, people churn out of the game industry - or at least individual studios - quite frequently due to these bad work environments! But due to the massive numbers of people who want to work in games, they just get replaced and the cycle of abuse continues.

The fix is to fix the workplaces.

AlexandrB8• 4 years ago

I adored Blizzard's output for ~20 years - I have every collectors edition they released from Warcraft III to Overwatch - but I'm basically done. The scandals, the shitty monetization, and the half-baked products all point to a radically different culture and company than the one that released Starcraft in 1998. No king reigns forever.

w0m• 4 years ago

I'm not sure i 100% grok the OW2 backlash we're seeing at the moment. It's a f2p game and has a middling reward model for the battle pass. That's pitch fork worthy now?

ajkjk2• 4 years ago

The OW2 backlash was "you re-released a game with almost no changes for a bunch of money and you want us to just.. buy it?"

Although to be fair I guess that's what CoD does every year. Hmm.

But Blizzard has been spending its goodwill for years. Ever since, I think, ever WoW expansion was worse and more pay-to-win than the last.

bastardoperator• 4 years ago

I think most people expected more and instead got less is the gist of the situation. I'm pretty surprised they released a game with less features, the same maps, and didn't deliver on many of the promises.

jchw2• 4 years ago

One thing notable about the way Blizzard has been operating lately is that they remove the existing thing when updating the old thing. I've heard you automatically get "upgraded" to Warcraft III reforged if you have it installed and are logged into Battle.net. I hear Overwatch 1 is similarly wiped out and no longer playable.

The thing that's weird is, I don't think this is normal at all. On Nintendo's end, you can still play Splatoon 2 just fine even though Splatoon 3 came out, even on multiplayer. Multiplayer games often have a long life after they're superceded, even if it's a smaller contingent. If you boot up Quake 3 Arena or Unreal Tournament 2004, you can see there are still players online pretty much always, even if it's a small contingent.

The only good reason I can think of for utterly axing old games is so that you don't have to compete with them. Why buy Reforged for $40 when you could get the original better Warcraft III on GoG? (You can't, of course; you can only get Warcraft I and II on GoG, at least now.) In case of Overwatch, they WOULD have to continue to run the servers. But surely, the majority of players would switch to the new game anyway, right?

My opinion should be taken as a grain of salt because Warcraft III is one of the last games I really liked that much from Blizzard, to be honest. But still, something stinks over at Activision Blizzard, and it's somehow not just Bobby Kotick.

gigaflop3• 4 years ago

The original Overwatch would release new heroes for free, and cosmetics for that hero would be available for random drops/purchase just like any other cosmetic item.

In OW2, the new heroes are on tier 55 of the battlepass, if you're a free-to-play user. If you buy the pass, you unlock the hero for play instantly. As far as I know, there is no word on hero availability for those who do neither, for when the pass duration runs out.

Having played the first game, the monetization model of the second feels like a slap in the face. They've added new categories of worthless junk cosmetics to pad things out. It feels like they looked at other battlepass models, and threw a bunch of random shit together to pad it out.

But hey, if you don't want to grind too much, you can always buy the Battlepass +20 package, and knock out the first 20 tiers instantly!

AlexandrB8• 4 years ago

I quit OW when role queue was introduced. It felt like Blizzard was forcing a certain "meta", and while it might have been necessary for high-level play it seemed awfully restrictive at n00b level I played at. It didn't help that Mercy, who I played a lot, was balanced to be "not fun" around the same time.

For me OW2 commits the same major sin that Warcraft 3 Reforged did. Replacing its predecessor with no option to play the older game as it was. I understand not wanting to split the community, but if someone doesn't like OW2's 5v5, or monetization, or whatever, their only option is to quit.

Also, given that OW2 made every cosmetic more expensive to acquire, it's only natural that people would draw comparisons and get mad.

riversflow• 4 years ago

(sorry for the rant, but it's really all I can do at this point, and I really like[d? :( ] OW) in the time since OW released, it has been on a long timescale average my most-played game.

There are some other good points in sibling comments, so I won't address those. The biggest problems I have are(in order):

1) It seems like they have moved from a Skill Based Match Making algorithm to an Engagement Optimized Matchmaker, or at least tipped the balance much farther away from skill based match-ups, and it really shows. Way too many games are a complete route one way or the other, and even in Competitive mode games are now often very uneven, where they used to be fairly balanced, and evidence suggests that they are using a stats based skill adjustment system rather than something like Elo that is based on wins. This would make using a non-skill based matchmaker for "Competitive" possible, and is evidenced by people getting placed in matches that have huge differentials in player rank even in metals ranks during primetime, something that virtually never happened in OW1 as far as I know.

This is really sad, and there is really a lack of awareness about these new systems and how, frankly, predatory the new generation matchmakers are. I've been playing competitive FPS(though often not competitively per se) for half my life and I'm rapidly being driven away from one of my favorite things. It's upsetting. Most people like winning, but when it constant feast or famine it really really really starts to feel like the games you win were just the MM giving you a win, and not earned.

2) They deleted a AAA, critically acclaimed, Game of the year winning game that everyone paid for, and replaced it with a buggy, janky F2P one. They removed a fair amount of content, and have had to disable 10% of the roster in the first 6 weeks because it's so buggy. They did add some content, 3 new heros and a handful of new maps, but it just barely balances out what they removed. And that speaks nothing to all of the other stuff that they removed from the UI, like Group finder. It also launched with some of the worst netcode I've seen in a non-indy game, players would briefly jump around the map before snapping back, extremely distracting in a game that is heavily based on tracking. OW1 never came close to this level of ineptness. Even today they announced a last minute delay to a balance patch that they have been promising for over a month, that was additionally supposed to re-enable a hero that has been part of the game since launch of OW1. Supposedly this is because the changes to a live service style, where they can easily adjust the game from the server side, which were-I guess-going to be a part of OW2, either weren't ready at launch or shipped in an unusable state.

But like, they could have launched OW2 as a F2P beta, and kept OW1 around until they had worked out the kinks, and then announced a sunset for OW1, or something they had already made it clear that OW1 was going to be replaced. Deleting a game that had an active playerbase of people who bought it and replacing it with a shittier, obviously half baked version, was a straight up dick move. Imagine if they did that to StarCraft when SC2 came out.

3) Meanwhile they removed one of the core features that got me to love Overwatch in the first place; it eschewed the "play to unlock" model that I have so learned to loathe as an adult, all heros and new ones were just part of the game. In OW2 new heros will be locked behind a battlepass. I have other problems with the F2P model, like it encouraging cheaters and low-investment players who don't know or care to learn to play a game that has significant depth around the cast of heroes(this is greatly magnified by the new Matchmaking which means that even someone who has >1000 hours will get in matches with them).

And to really rub the salt in the wound, they have been able to keep the new player shop filled with (shockingly expensive to this millennial) content. It absolutely feels like a cash grab at this point, especially considering today's patch delay(the second for this patch). It's also grimly foreshadowing that the hero that is currently disabled was only disabled because of an interaction with the hero that is currently locked behind the battlepass that let the new, locked hero get out of the play area and wreak havoc. Previously they would have handled it in reverse, especially considering the nature of the interaction (the new hero can teleport behind teammates).

jimbob45• 4 years ago

It's not just that the old guard are gone, it's that they've been gone for a very long time. Here's a chart from 2011 showing where everyone went.

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HZGjc0LkXXw/UYwB9YaXFRI/AAAAAAAAA...

Sakos5• 4 years ago

Guild Wars is the only game made by an "ex-Blizzard" staffed studio that I feel has had any significant amount of success. Just goes to show how much these things are collaborative efforts that rely on a particular environment to come together.

willis9362• 4 years ago

That chart must be from before 2011 because the wikipedia entry for Flagship Studios (the single largest receiver of Blizzard talent in the chart) says it went belly up in 2008.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagship_Studios

gonzo41• 4 years ago

Power, money, and glory corrupt. This is generally what happens with a lack of effective competition in the market.

autoexec• 4 years ago

Is there really a problem with lack of competition in video games? There may not be a ton of companies able to pull off the highest budgets, but there seems to be a lot of companies making good games and successful independent projects

lakomen• 4 years ago

90€ for WoW Dragonflight Epic Edition.

Holly "Windstalker" Lonsdale is Vice President and Executive Producer of World of Warcraft now. That woman knows how to milk it. She oversaw Everquest 1 and 2. Expansion prices of 150€ were common. WoW just isn't quite there yet, but it will be eventually.

I'm not a WoW fan. I blame it for many things, but I'm bored and saw Dragonflight being in Pre-order advertising and checked out the prices. 50€ bare minimum. No thanks. I'm no longer playing that game, I moved back to piracy. Paying a subscription fee to play a game who's main design is to keep you playing so you spend more money in the in game shop is not my kind of entertainment.

kneebonian• 4 years ago

Blizzard brought me some of the greatest joys of my childhood. I remember playing warcraft 1 in all it's 8-bit glory, I loved W3, I am playing my way through Diablo 2 again right now. But it just feels like right around the time of WoW they started to change and it became a priority on revenue over producing good games.

It seems like that is the inevitable result of any successful creator(s) they labor out of love and a joy for what they make and then once they get big enough MBA, managerial types, that are focused on metrics and numbers come in and like a parasite feed on the success of those who labored for love before eventually leaving it an unrecognizable bloated rotting carcass of it's former self.

Is there anyway to build something successfully that contributes to the world without it being subsumed by management culture?

andruc• 4 years ago

Look to companies that never go public

hayst4ck2• 4 years ago

Unionization is the 2nd amendment of labor law.

The 2nd amendment exists because every human has a right to sacrifice themselves meaningfully to fight tyranny. Guns are a proxy for power, and the 2nd amendment says that citizens have a right to some power. Since citizens have a right to some power, our government cannot get too tyrannical because there would be consequences.

The right to unionize is the right to use the threat of force (collective bargaining) against tyrants (CEOs), exactly like the 2nd amendment is the right to use threat of force (use of guns) against tyrants (people who rule as kings).

Unions are the representation of the idea that employees should be able to exercise meaningful power over their CEOs, in particular to demand better wages and conditions.

Without collective bargaining, why would a CEO ever have to compromise or negotiate except with other CEOs? If multiple companies acted like a cartel, how would employees be able to fight that without collective bargaining?

Why are wages generally proportional to the job, and not proportional to a companies profits?

Just like in software, the structure can be sound, while the implementation is poor. I think a lot of the problems people have with unions are implementation detail problems rather than structural flaws.

throwaway7422• 4 years ago

"Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempts to disarm the people must be stopped, by force if necessary"

dudus2• 4 years ago

Not sure why you are doing mental gymnastics to justify unionizing is a constitution right by conflating it with the 2nd amendment when the 1st amendment already guarantees the freedom of assembly which is widely understood to support unions.

kevingadd5• 4 years ago

I interpreted it more as them explaining the societal value of unions via equating it with the 2nd amendment, i.e. 'they do these valuable things for us'. Not 'this is why we have that right'

chmod600• 4 years ago

An interesting analogy.

It's hard to follow though, because the Second Amendment has been held as an individual right (with some dissenting perspectives, of course), while unionization is inherently collective.

karpierz• 4 years ago

I think the analogy is:

- you can have a gun, such that you'd be able to form a militia and fight government tyranny.

- you can advocate for collective bargaining, such that you'd be able to form a union and fight corporate tyranny.

VancouverMan• 4 years ago

What do you propose should be done when unions themselves acquire enough power and influence to begin to act in a tyrannical manner?

We've seen this happen with public sector unions in various places, for example.

Despite the employees having quite safe and comfortable working conditions, despite them being quite well compensated, and despite them even being able to have some input (via voting) over who their bosses are, it's not uncommon for these sorts of unions to impose varying degrees of disruption just to try to get even more money or benefits out of already over-taxed societies.

These sorts of unions and their members never seem to care much about the negative effects that public transit, public education, and other artificial work disruptions/shutdowns may have on society at large.

tryptophan• 4 years ago

Anti monopoly laws apply to corporations, why not apply them to unions as well?

Why does 1 union represent port workers on the entire eastern seaboard? Its a little absurd(USA has some of the least efficient ports in the world too...coincidence?).

bdowling• 4 years ago

The CEO isn't the one who is ultimately in charge, because the CEO is appointed by the board of directors, who are elected by the shareholders.

Ultimately it is the shareholders who decide whether they want to stay invested in a business with a unionized labor force.

krainboltgreene• 4 years ago

Since citizens have a right to some power, our government cannot get too tyrannical because there would be consequences.

This is such a hilarious idea. Any amount of citizens that unite together armed to inhibit the government's "tyrannical behavior" (read: against white people, the government has already been tyrannical for many decades to an absurd degree without retribution) will find out three facts:

  1. We spend almost $2T a year on defense so much so that a small fraction of that defense given to a minor nation was able to completely and totally repel a world power.
  2. We spend almost $220B a year on police, a portion of which is spent on cheap outdated parts manufactured with the above money.
  3. Every adult american buying an AR-15 comes out to $400B.

Each of these forces is designed with the sole goal of protecting capital and private property.

VoodooJuJu• 4 years ago

Goodbye Blizzard. No king rules forever.

olliej• 4 years ago

Are they trying to stop the vote by addressing the issues making people want to unionize, or just trying to illegally stop legally protected unionization?

Activision Blizzard Is Trying to Stop a Union Vote at Its Albany Office

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