>"“Every game you like is built on the backs of workers,” says Nathan Allen Ortega, 34, who thought he found his dream job when Telltale Games offered him a position as a community and video manager in 2015.
>"“I was working with compromised games made by people killing themselves to get them out the door month after month after month,” he says. Both his doctor and therapist advised him to quit, but he stuck around until Telltale laid off 25 percent of its staff, including Ortega, in 2017."
>"Like the software industry more broadly, the gaming world is known for “crunch,” the period just before a launch when workers are expected to put in 100-hour weeks with no extra pay. In decades past, especially for console games, that crunch period was typically limited to the weeks before a game’s release date. But conditions are worsening in part because the underlying technology powering video games is changing, altering players’ expectations — and the industry more broadly — in the process."
>"A decade ago, a company would release a video game in a box, players would go to the store and buy it, and there wouldn’t be any updates or changes unless there was a sequel. But today, more than 90 percent of video game consoles are connected to the Internet, said Mat Piscatella, a video games industry analyst with research firm NPD Group. That has allowed game studios to constantly update and refresh their existing games, in part through “DLC,” or downloadable content, like new weapons or levels that players can purchase. Gamers now expect and demand such content."
>“I truly believe that if gamers started calling en masse for companies to start changing how they treat their workers, it would have a huge impact,” says Emily Grace Buck, who supports the unionization push. "
Its time to show the cooparate fatcats that they can't fuck with us gamers. Its time to UNIONIZE!
