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WarmWash 1 days ago [-]
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?
sonzohan 1 days ago [-]
Game dev here, have worked on AAA and indie.
First off let me get on my high horse and say the engineering in video gaming is generally more complex than the engineering I've done working in big tech. You need a lot more creativity and ingenuity to solve the unusual problems you run into in gaming.
From there, as others have said, it's a simple supply and demand issue. Nowadays I am a university professor, nearly every student who comes in wants to pursue one of the three fields: cybersecurity, video gaming, or recently ML/AI.
This shouldn't come as a surprise, they want to work on the things that influenced them and shaped their experiences so far. There's an absolute over supply of students who want to make video games.
Gaming, like most of entertainment, is a passion-driven industry. You trade good salary for your name in the credits. You trade nights, hobbies, marriages, and your health for this opportunity. That is unless you reach that lofty 1% of developers who are too valuable to be fired.
Not all areas of gaming are like this. Gambling, like working on slot/pachinko machines, pays very well and has pretty realistic work-life balance. However every student I've talked to about this has universally said "no I don't want to make slot machines. I only want to work on GTA/Stardew Valley/Hollow Knight/Fortnite."
There's seriously no shortage of starry-eyed students who are willing to accept minimum wage to solve SDE3 level problems. I was one of them once.
Animats 22 hours ago [-]
> First off let me get on my high horse and say the engineering in video gaming is generally more complex than the engineering I've done working in big tech.
Yes. Having done everything from mainframe OS internals to proof of correctness to autonomous vehicles, video games are the most difficult.
At the beginning, game dev looks easy, because the tools are good and modern hardware is very capable. But as you approach a big, highly detailed, photorealistic world, the easy approaches hit a performance wall. Then the necessary optimizations become insanely complex.
That's the tyranny of the frame rate. That's why I've complained about game engines in Rust.
Everybody writes My First Game Engine, then hits the wall about two years in.
The metaverse problem is even worse. All the problems of game dev, plus the problems of user-created content and large scale. With all the effort and money put into metaverses, none emerged that worked as well and looked as good as an AAA game title from the GTA V era. Roblox, Improbable, and Second Life are as good as it got. You'd think there would be some good examples still around, with small user bases, but there are not. There are a whole range of problems only metaverses have, and some of them are unsolved. For commercial games, much of the work takes place during level building and optimization. Unreal Engine Editor does much of the heavy lifting. Metaverses don't have that option.
The total failure of the metaverse industry comes partly from this. It's hard to do, and the problem was underestimated. Mostly by the people who really just wanted to sell their crap NFTs and coins.
The people and wage problem comes from too many people wanting to make games. It's like Hollywood. If you've spend any time around there, you've met the actress/model/waitress types. The male version has stand up comedy levels of ego.
That pushes wages down.
xg15 21 hours ago [-]
> You'd think there would be some good examples still around, with small users bases, but there are not.
Wouldn't VRChat qualify?
Animats 21 hours ago [-]
VRchat is impressive. It predates the metaverse boom, and it's not a big-world system. The metaverse was supposed to be like Ready Player One, but we didn't get there.
ziofill 18 hours ago [-]
This is very interesting, what makes video game engineering so difficult?
mike_hearn 3 hours ago [-]
It's a highly competitive field in which edge is sometimes obtained by better code, so everyone is constantly outdoing each other with new tricks.
DonHopkins 5 hours ago [-]
The irresistible temptation to add more.
abcde666777 18 hours ago [-]
The amount of things you're trying to simulate within the the performance contraints (games push computers to their absolute limits).
An example - a 3d humanoid character. You need code to manage the mesh, the animation (probably skeletal), the animations themselves, all the blending logic, probably specialised code and data for facial animations, and then you need to make sure all of that can mesh with both input driven locomotion and AI driven locomotion - and that's just one problem domain.
And I'm grossly oversimplifying what's involved even in that particular area.
justinhj 17 hours ago [-]
And many a game developer doesn't have to write any of this because it already is commodity software.
kaibee 14 hours ago [-]
AHahahahah.
Yeah that's other part. What was PhD level computer graphics becomes table stakes a few years later and not only do you have to do that, but you have to top it a few years later.
Oh and all of these systems have to be aware of each other, because the higher fidelity they become, the harder it is to keep the seams hidden, because the seam between them become more jarring.
Sure, you have skeletal bone animation and all that stuff in 2003, but do your characters adapt their footstep placement to the terrain height? Does the run animation blend smoothly between states? Oh it blends smoothly but now player inputs feel unresponsive because you had the clever idea to make it inertial? Oh now do it all over a network at minimum latency because esports are a hundred million dollar industry.
enraged_camel 16 hours ago [-]
>> games push computers to their absolute limits
The overwhelming majority of games actually don’t. Even 5+ year old rigs can run most modern games just fine.
overfeed 13 hours ago [-]
> Even 5+ year old rigs can run most modern games just fine
AI-hardware demand is responsible for slowing down the AAA graphics frame-rate treadmill. Back when Nvidia and AMD were releasing improved mid-range consumer GPUs at a steady clip, there was incessant pressure on AAA games to have ever-increasing frame-rates and "photorealistic" graphic-fidelity. Making a game update at 144Hz at 4k resolution/max graphics quality, with no upscaling shortcuts would be a challenging problem, were it a common target.
In an alternate universe where the LLM boom didn't happen, we probably would have 24GB midrange GPUs (and 32GB/48GB Nvidia 5090 Ti), allowing for humongous textures, and likely games rendering at 8k, which 5+ y.o. rigs would struggle with except at low-quality settings.
lobocinza 6 hours ago [-]
Not on max quality. They can just run the game.
conceptme 5 hours ago [-]
Roblox does not have a small userbase all kids are on it
cmpxchg8b 19 hours ago [-]
Former gamedev here. This matches my experience. However, working in the games industry from 2000-2011 did wonders for my ability to thrive in big tech. It is easy mode compared to games.
trueno 13 hours ago [-]
i spent 2 years learning c by fucking with carmacks idtech3 engine. game dev is incredible. i found myself even in such an old engine in awe of the incredibly creative ways problems are solved to get things drawn on screen, the event journals and everything that marry it together, the client server architectures... bruh game dev is next level.
* this doesnt even include graphics programmers who are also awesome. and are just a different breed than i am, for whatever reason my brain just won't process the world of graphics pipelines
nsagent 20 hours ago [-]
As a former game dev who later got a PhD in CS, I can say I definitely did the equivalent of research as part of my job: I had to solve tough new problems that no one else was and verify they worked better than existing approaches. It's definitely more difficult than anything I worked on in industry and was certainly not paid commensurate with the skill required.
Now I've branched off on my own as I've been disillusioned with academia as well. Can't win'em all.
arsenide 18 hours ago [-]
I work in the slot game industry. Plenty of ex-video game devs in this space. Much better work-life balance, but it's very clearly not the same as making video games.
rf15 15 hours ago [-]
There's also the moral factor, but I've definitely considered switching in the past should money ever be a problem for me.
al_borland 1 days ago [-]
Do you tend to see a high drop out rate or general dissatisfaction from graduates when they come to the realization that making a game is a very different experience than playing the games?
sonzohan 24 hours ago [-]
Dissatisfaction yes, although it doesn't manifest how you'd expect.
It comes in the form not so much in dropouts, but in bad course feedback and bad professor reviews.
"The professor made the class unfun."
"The professor said she's made games but clearly has never done that before with how she taught the class"
I'm a woman so, unsurprisingly, I experience a fair amount of misogyny from students in the class who have never made a game nor have they worked in industry but believe they know how it works.
mike_hearn 3 hours ago [-]
Calling your students misogynists is a shamefully harsh attack on them without any evidence to back it up. That feedback is exactly what a male teacher would get if he had the same career history as you.
You say in a post below that your total games industry experience was a single internship at Blizzard and then a second stint where you "quickly realized" you didn't want to be a games dev at all, and went back into academia where you have been ever since. You say you made a game as part of your PhD, but it's actually a speech therapy program you describe as research. There's nothing wrong with that project for what it is, but your students aren't criticizing you because you're a woman, they're saying they wanted a teacher who spent time in the games industry making the sort of games they themselves would play.
I wouldn't bother pointing this contradiction out normally, but it's just so socially destructive to ask students for feedback and then attack them with the nastiest accusation you have access to, just because they requested a more experienced teacher. Poor kids! It's this kind of thing that results in recommendations to just avoid university entirely. Why sign up for being abused by a teacher like that?
Insanity 24 hours ago [-]
I guess because they also learn there’s still plenty of money to be made in other engineering domains.
And to be honest, I think games are a good stepping stone towards a career in software engineering / computer science. Especially back in the day when getting a game to run required you to mess around with the computer haha
jakeydus 23 hours ago [-]
My first real interaction with a computer in any technical way was trying to get Age of Mythology to work after I lost my activation key. I won't say that I miss those experiences, but they were foundational as h*ck for me.
Scaled 1 days ago [-]
My first AAA game industry boss said to me only 10% of people make it 10 years in games. This has been, if anything, optimistic, with there being a sharp drop-off at 2~5 years.
(And in indie it's way worse, it's more like 1% making it one year)
deaddodo 23 hours ago [-]
I mean, when you're getting paid 40-60% for doing more complex work than app/web development...yeah, the drop-off is almost inevitable. Eventually people (unless they just really love making games) just go "f this, my career is more important".
If you wanna do low-level code, you can go into embedded, sponsored OSI-companies, Microsoft, etc and get paid the same to more than gamedev with 10% of the stress and no crunch. If you wanna get paid much more and do more "vibe"/fun coding, you can go into app/web dev. If you want stability, you go into fintech/medtech/onsite/etc.
Gamedev offers the worst of all worlds and then constantly posits "why is there so much turn over?"...because you made the industry suck to work in.
avadodin 17 hours ago [-]
Why write a line of code for a car's fuel injection and go back home at 5pm to your wife and kids when you could stay overnight and be hacking on an ill-designed networking protocol for an AAA game while eating 5% discount cheetos?
maccard 19 hours ago [-]
I taught a “gifted children” university level course that kids between 13 and 17 attenddd. We lost about half of the people on the first few days when they actually had to write code.
usefulcat 13 hours ago [-]
This description absolutely checks out, even from ~30 years ago when I graduated.
I worked on games for several years early on but quit after going through an EA spouse experience.
In some ways it’s too bad, because the great thing about games is that there is such a great variety of different kinds of problems to solve. Even so, I quit cold turkey and never looked back. It is what it is.
RobRivera 1 days ago [-]
What was your route to teaching like? I kinda am considering putting my hat in a similar ring on a part time, evening class type basis if I can get away with it.
sonzohan 1 days ago [-]
I graduated in 2011, went straight to work at Blizzard entertainment. At the same time I had gotten accepted into graduate school so I opted for an internship at Blizzard to try both.
I went back to Blizzard in 2012, but quickly realized I wanted to do my PhD. So I left Blizzard and went full-time as a student.
I didn't have funding so I TAd classes. Eventually my advisor and I scored a big NSF grant, so she used the funds to buy out a course and have me teach it as the instructor.
From there, I wound up at a community college running a bachelor's level degree. They hired me because I was the only candidate with NSF experience. They proceeded to fire their grant manager and have me manage the whole grant without extra pay.
Actually used to hire people for exactly what you want to do: be an adjunct for night classes in tech.
If you want to go that route you need to make friends with the Dean and the head of program. It's rare that we hire someone from the general application process, because most people who work in tech do not make good instructors.
RobRivera 23 hours ago [-]
I'll prospect that way, thank you for the insight. I have a unique background AND teaching experience (military leadership for my first career, and then taught as a full time visiting professor for 2 years) but having spent a decade in industry as a software engineer, yes I concur, teaching is not a common skill among the labor force (anecdotal ofc). I hope after I launch my first indie game I could knock on the doors of say Digipen or similar. Will see tho, thats more a 2027 thing.
What kind of PhD research did you do? I considered going back for a PhD program focusing on simulation as it relates to discoverability within AI research, but kept ruling out it was a bad career decision and should be left as a retirement thing
sonzohan 22 hours ago [-]
> I could knock on the doors of say Digipen or similar.
Seattle based? If so toss me your email or contact and I'll see if I can help you break into teaching if you're interested.
> What kind of PhD research did you do?
Assistive technology. I primarily worked with kids who had cleft lip and palate to improve their at-home speech therapy exercises. Trained some offline ASR models, built a therapy game, and automated metrics. I passed the research onto another student once I got my PhD, but the project lives on as https://spokeitthegame.com/
RobRivera 18 hours ago [-]
I'd love to! I am currently more east coast based (NYC) and rotate into Seattle monthly, hence looking at it being more a 2027/2028 target. I can drop my email here
Robjrivera23 at gmails
I will have to check out that speech therapy game. Before I entered pilot training, I had received new fake teeth implants that introduced a lisp (new airflow) and as a 20yrold, had to go through speech therapy drills with a military doctor for a whole semester to get my qualification back. Jokes on me, cockpit wasnt for me haha.
dylan604 24 hours ago [-]
> They proceeded to fire their grant manager and have me manage the whole grant without extra pay.
This is such a bullshit thing to experience. I had a version of this where I took on extra work that I was interested in which became a new revenue stream but was told "let's see how you do and then we'll see about salary bumps". Never saw an extra dime from it. I used the experience learned to land a new job six months later with a salary bump while dumping the other job responsibilities. It's truly the only way to get that bump you deserve.
leovander 18 hours ago [-]
Not to downplay your experience, but from your prior students' comments, they aren't wrong to question your industry credentials? You had maybe less than two years of "gaming" industry experience 14 years ago before going into academics?
Seems like you found an opportunity that you really wanted to pursue, but unfortunately at the same time sort of became a stat of those that can't do, teach.
I had plenty of professors along the way that touted their credentials, but they were so stale in what they were teaching. I know I know, a Computer Science degree doesn't match industry expectations, but so many professors definitely did not keep up with what was going on outside of their bubble.
xenophonf 17 hours ago [-]
> most people who work in tech do not make good instructors
Guilty as charged, despite my best attempts to the contrary. I wish I had time to go back to school for some kind of teaching degree. Is there something else I can do or read or watch or something to make me a better teacher? Knowledge transfer is probably the most important aspect of my job.
steve_adams_86 20 hours ago [-]
> engineering in video gaming is generally more complex
This tracks with my experience. Games present so many unexpected challenges. Or, known and expected challenges that are challenging nonetheless.
The other place I've had my ass handed to me was in robotics. Translating digital models to the physical space is how physics tells you it's actually in control and your ideas are cute and all, but other things are going to happen instead.
The simulator starts out simple and gradually becomes grotesque as it contacts reality.
cheeze 1 days ago [-]
I'm the opposite. BigCorp distributed systems guy.
I'd agree with all of this from what I've seen though. The problems that some of my buddies solved straight out of college, while very different than 'hard problems' at bigcorp, are... hard.
One buddy ended up moving to the worst of both worlds... backend infra for a large video game and ended up getting video game salary for bigcorp distributed systems problems.
miiiiiike 23 hours ago [-]
> engineering in video gaming is generally more complex than the engineering I've done working in big tech.
I always roll my eyes when I hear this from game developers. And my eyes hurt from rolling I've heard it so many times.
I've done game dev, systems, backend, frontend, all of it. It's all the same. Maybe you developed low complexity "big tech" projects but, c'mon, you're really going to argue that games are categorically MORE complex than what Google, Apple, etc develop?
They're not. It's all the same. Same complexity ceiling, same prerequisite levels of creativity.
Most frontends that I develop use the same patterns as games and the backends that I've developed recently look like game servers. Same patterns, same techniques, same level of complexity.
Game development is just development.
nsagent 19 hours ago [-]
It certainly depends on what you're working on in games. Not every game pushes the envelope, but the ones that do are seriously complex. They are essentially realtime embedded systems, which push the hardware to the max.
Sometimes you get similar demands at the big companies like Google and Meta, but often you have the opportunity to throw more compute at the problem. That is rarely possible in games.
Having been a game dev before getting my PhD focused on NLP, I can definitely say some of the challenges I ran into developing a first of its kind MMORTS, was seriously challenging. When I took the mandatory grad classes in distributed systems and low level architecture design, I already had first hand experience and aced those classes without any effort. I was familiar with many of the problems and their solutions because I needed to for my work. In addition to working at the lowest level debugging the memory allocators, full networking stack, database layer, you name it all in C++. Being a lead developer on a project of that scope was much more complicated than any work I did later.
My first semester of my PhD I wrote a Transformer from scratch referencing only the original paper (it was soon after the paper came out, there were few resources then). I was the only person who got an implementation that matched the results from the original Transformer (most got much worse performance). I credit the skills and abilities I gained in the game dev industry.
That isn't me throwing shade at others; as I said there are hard problems in industries other than game dev, but the skills required are not compensated at the level you'd expect given the difficulty of the work.
mickeyp 6 hours ago [-]
No the insight here is that you went _back_ and got your PhD with years of experience building professional software.
Expecting a 20-year old undergrad or a 23-year old postgrad to do as well as someone who left and came back to uni to finish their degree(s) is... uncharitable.
nsagent 5 hours ago [-]
I became lead of that MMORTS within 4yrs of starting my career. I've worked with lots of PhD students who came back after more than 5 years working in big tech; not one had the experience and abilities I did. I've also worked with fresh grads in games who were miles ahead of 99% of the software engineers and PhDs I've encountered in my time.
Again, I've also run into equally talented fresh grads in big tech, but they were much more rare.
Take my anecdotes as you will.
michaelsalim 21 hours ago [-]
Not a game dev but I used to dabble in it. Quite surprised by this take honestly. Sure, each domain has its own complex things to solve. But on average, I think it's quite safe to say that game development consistently demands more creative solutions to problems compared to many other fields.
miiiiiike 20 hours ago [-]
All development requires creativity. Different types of creativity for different types of problems.
Creativity isn’t narrowly defined to exclude everything but art, game mechanisms, and narrative.
You think the creation of GMail didn’t take creativity?
I’m suspicious of anyone who tries to lay a special claim to creativity for their class or type of work. Creates a false creative vs cog narrative that always seems to benefit the speaker.
8n4vidtmkvmk 13 hours ago [-]
I work in big tech but dabbled in games. Games are much harder. Lots of math and you have to process 8 million pixels in 16 milliseconds, in addition to running your physics and NPC AIs. Big tech is 90% CRUD and 90% squabbling over variable names and we somehow think pushing a bit of HTML in 500ms is both hard and acceptable performance.
miiiiiike 13 hours ago [-]
Is it harder because you’re less experienced with games. Your big tech job really requires no creativity?
Modern sites are extremely complex. BASH, Docker, Kubernetes, Python, Varnish, NGINX, Postgres, Cassandra, Elastic, Redis, Celery, CSS/Sass, Typescript. Observability, logging, build systems, testing, backups, CI, and a consistent design system. That’s all just to get to HTTP 200 “hello world”.
oreally 9 hours ago [-]
Sure they're complex but tbh they don't need to be. Sorry to bruise your professional ego but you should understand that there's a lot of decisions in bigtech/corporate that equates to 'buy it don't build it, it'll be cheaper, and (secretly) I can show it off on my resume'. And then when you use it, usually it isn't catered for the business' purposes because the tech is meant to cover a large amount of use cases. At that point they move on and the inefficiencies become the norm.
And these require none of the deep math that the lower levels of gamedev stack require. It's tedious, not hard to string all of these web components.
tester756 5 hours ago [-]
>Modern sites are extremely complex. BASH, Docker, Kubernetes, Python, Varnish, NGINX, Postgres, Cassandra, Elastic, Redis, Celery, CSS/Sass, Typescript. Observability, logging, build systems, testing, backups, CI, and a consistent design system. That’s all just to get to HTTP 200 “hello world”.
A lot of fancy keywords, but
1) It's the stack that you decided to put your services on, your HTTP 200 could be also served by nginx + 1 html file
2) You can make empty video multiplayer game which will sound as fancy as that HTTP 200 hello world
baobabKoodaa 11 hours ago [-]
Games often have inherent technical complexity. Big tech has mountains of unnecessary complexity just to get to "hello world", as you said. These are different things in nature.
kelnos 11 hours ago [-]
Complex in the way you're using it (a sea of technologies that looks daunting) doesn't automatically mean "hard". I've worked in big tech on distributed systems, with most of the things in your list, and worked on some difficult problems, but I could absolutely believe that cutting-edge game dev is harder, even significantly so.
chrystalkey 12 hours ago [-]
Well yes sure, but those infrastructure questions come with games as well on top of the whole inherent complexity described in this comment family
selfhoster1312 11 hours ago [-]
> You think the creation of GMail didn’t take creativity?
Disclaimer: i've barely ever programmed video games
Not the same kind of creativity, for sure. Gmail has no performance constraints (and its performance is horrible), has no UX constraint (and its UX is horrible). It pushed the free tier some time ago and was arguably a decent webmail at the time, but nothing about it was revolutionary.
The hacks required to get a game to react and push pixels in real time on specific hardware are very interesting. That's closer to proper software engineering than many things we find in startups. That said, more and more games use Unity and other all-in-one engines and are not engineering anymore… and as a player, i can certainly feel the difference in the constant stuttering which mostly was not there when playing console games >10 years ago.
Thaxll 17 hours ago [-]
In web dev there is little creativity because everything has been done and there is a library / service to solve every problems, none of that exists in major games. Try Claude in your frontend/backend service, then try that in a game client.
miiiiiike 13 hours ago [-]
Games have engines that provide so much. Unreal, Gadot, Unity.
Have you tried doing modern frontend work? Creativity is required.
I played with Claude recently. It wasn’t able to refactor a CSS one liner into simple sass mixin.
oreally 14 hours ago [-]
I think the differentiator is the amount of deep Math that goes into it.
A simple card game is on par with standard app development.
But if you're working at lower levels of a world simulation engine that require linear algebra, computer graphics knowledge? Camera and joint manipulation? Animation? Navmeshes? Physics? That's a notch harder than a REST app and microservices infrastructure. Some robotics, ML areas touch on this too.
The only tough topics at these adtechs that might match would be graph manipulation, or currently ML knowledge. I suspect leetcode isn't very applicable in everyday usage.
Thaxll 17 hours ago [-]
[dead]
tayo42 23 hours ago [-]
It probably depends on the level in the stack your at.
At a high level the engines and frameworks don't feel any different.
Work with graphics and models feels more difficult though then most networked application work I've done.
neonstatic 9 hours ago [-]
> There's an absolute over supply of students who want to make video games.
To be fair, you don't have to be a teacher / lecturer to notice this. One trip to an AI reddit thread asking what people are working on will reveal that it's either porn, role-play, or game development.
forgetfreeman 23 hours ago [-]
"You trade good salary for your name in the credits"
When did that become a thing? When Gears of War bonus checks started hitting Epic's parking lot went from a random collection of reasonable vehicles to looking like an exotic car show. I'm fairly certain every dev that worked on Gears or Unreal could have retired off the bonus payouts.
Sharlin 22 hours ago [-]
That’s a tiny and decidedly nonrepresentative sample of gamedevs.
forgetfreeman 21 hours ago [-]
Fair enough. That community is a hell of a lot larger now than it used to be.
bananaboy 21 hours ago [-]
If you’re working for one of the big studios making blockbusters the bonuses can still be pretty good.
dzonga 21 hours ago [-]
another thing - games are more like a lottery - you've more misses than hits.
so economics takes over.
whereas your typical saas, adtech - once the business is proven u print money unless u r doing stupid shit n being driven by ego such as having the biggest org or pursuing passion projects such as "a.i"
vitaflo 20 hours ago [-]
Also for every game dev working on GTA6, there's another working on Barbie's Horse Adventure. When positions are limited, you take what you can get and most of them are making games that are not at all interesting.
varispeed 1 days ago [-]
I'd say it has nothing to do with supply and demand, but more to do with captive labour market (e.g. in the UK ability to quit and run own business are limited) and C-suite greed levels and classism.
Working class person being exceptional at low latency game development, will unlikely get a chance in finance and earning 10x for very much the same level of competence, because their accent might not be good enough and parents don't frequent members' clubs.
hnlmorg 24 hours ago [-]
I’ve worked in pretty much every domain of IT in the UK (FinTech, gaming, broadcasting, Hollywood, public sector, etc) and I’ve not experienced any class bias in FinTech.
I will say that different industries have different formalities (generally speaking). But that just means you have to interview with smarter attire in FinTech vs interviewing for a job in gambling.
As a hiring manager, I can say that companies will recruit for as little as they think candidates will accept. Fintech gets a bit of a pass on this one but only because they rake in so much money that they can generally afford to attract higher salaries. But it does also mean that gaming can get away with paying people peanuts in comparison and that is literally due to supply and demand.
In places where the C-suite have set unrealistic thresholds on tech salaries, I’ve had to get creative to attract candidates. And that often meant contributing back to open source and basically using that as advertising.
Anyway, this is already a verbose reply but the crux of it is:
1. you shouldn’t underestimate the power of supply and demand in the work space
2. The profitability of a sector also plays heavily into the equation
3. You don’t need to be posh to get a job in FinTech.
varispeed 21 hours ago [-]
It didn't affect me, therefore it doesn't exist.
Come on.
hnlmorg 12 hours ago [-]
I obviously cannot speak for every company that has ever existed in the FinTech industry. And you haven’t given any more details beyond vague comments which makes it hard to comment on your specific claims. So I can only talk about my experiences hiring and beyond hired in the industry.
But who’s to say your experiences aren’t the anomaly? Or that other factors weren’t to play that lead those hiring managers offering to other candidates?
I also tried researching your point online (just in case I was an anomaly) and the results I got suggested that FinTech scored lower in benchmarks for bias during hiring.
So at this point in time, given what I’ve experienced, read online and the information you’ve shared, there simply isn’t enough data to support your claim. Anecdotal nor otherwise.
13 hours ago [-]
ryandrake 1 days ago [-]
Is it as simple as supply/demand? People love games and game-loving developers are willing to take lower compensation to be in the industry? As a former obsessed gamer, I remember in my 20s I almost would have been willing to work at iD Software without pay if they let me.
javier123454321 1 days ago [-]
It is actually quite a common occurrence in the arts and other creative fields, where there is a level of idealization for the work in itself outside of the remuneration. Musicians, architects, illustrators, cinematographers are all dealing with the same thing the more the work resembles their ideal type of artistic work, the less to pay usually.
JadoJodo 1 days ago [-]
I would guess a big part of this is because the art _itself_ is a form of compensation: Artists have a passion for the end result in a way that organizations (e.g., corporations, collectives, movements, etc.) harness and take advantage of in lieu of financial compensation.
mikepurvis 1 days ago [-]
This is usually framed in terms of greedy corporations cynically exploiting young workers, but having interviewed for a Sony studio myself a few years ago (and ultimately going back to my native robotics field for almost exactly double the pay), I think there is something tangible about the compensation that is working on something normal people encounter, especially in the leisure spaces of their lives.
It may not pay the rent or put food on the table, but seeing your name in the credits of a movie your friends watched or a game they played is a perk that has real value. Writing a technical book rarely pays the bills either but it's the same story of getting to see your name on the shelf, and maaaybe it leads to getting on a conference panel or something at some point but really you're doing a lot of labour for far below minimum wage just to be able to say you did (as I did for Apress when I was 20 years old... and it landed me an internship at Google, so there you go).
strobe 12 hours ago [-]
> friends watched or a game they played is a perk that has real value
in most cases it don't unless this game become really legendary which often not the case. So young person easily can spent 10y in attempt to do that but as result non of those games will be remembered in 2y after release.
jakeydus 22 hours ago [-]
I've always said that being an engineer is a classic choose two out of three options situation. You can:
- be well compensated
- work on something interesting
- work on something ethical
Obviously there's the rare unicorn out there where you get all three, but those are the exception, not the rule.
qazxcvbnmlp 21 hours ago [-]
The sneaky thing you don't realize when you’re 20 is that you come to be interested in what you work on. So if you just try and do what you do well, it will become interesting!
strobe 12 hours ago [-]
right and it's also additional hidden kind of exploitation happen with that. That artistic passion coming from desire to do better "art" and grow as "artist" (what ever creative field person is chasing) and also to connect with peoples of similar goals.
But in reality that environment helping only to grow in technical aspects of the job ( maybe also learning some market forces) but it leads to severe degradation in artistic practice of which person original desire cultivate even not realizing that just because is no business need for anything like that. Bus sines can be fine by just coping that everyone else doing or implementing some one else vision.
abhaynayar 21 hours ago [-]
Reminds me of this [1] article, quoting Seinfeld, "In the seventies, this is the tragic turn of American culture. And this was explained to me by Mario Joiner who cracked this puzzle that I could not figure out what the hell happened. That money became everything. What happened because it was not like that in the seventies. In the seventies, it’s how cool is your job? How cool is what you’re doing? If your job’s cooler than my job, you beat me."
I too wanna work on cooler stuff. Sooner rather than later.
To a lesser extent the same has been said about Apple's low pay relative to peer (far less profitable) companies -- the mere honor of working at Apple is an implied part of the compensation package.
agentgt 1 days ago [-]
I think it is mostly just margins. Sure there are lots of people willing to work for no very little money for game dev but I would say there are tons of people willing to work for very little money for FAANG companies because they want that on their resume.
In fact since we are on hackernews that is kind of thing people wanting to be entrepreneurs do. Work at recognizable big tech company for a few years. Leave to be a founder of a startup. Investors ... well that guy came from google they must know what they are doing etc (the irony is they probably have less of the skills to start a company going that path).
yCombLinks 1 days ago [-]
They want it on their resume primarily to make more money and have a better career in terms of getting hired, etc. Very different motivation. They'd only work at a FAANG for free long enough to get that bump. Game devs however would work for many years underpaid because they like what they're creating.
agentgt 1 days ago [-]
~~Perhaps now especially since these companies are predominately hiring oversees contractors but circa 2009-2015 when I was around entrepreneurs and startups this was discussed.~~
~~Ultimately the goal is the same: make more money. So I disagree the motivation is "very different" its just a lot harder now to do a startup.~~
You kept editing your comment so disregard the above. I misread it the first time and then it changed. I left my response thats makes no sense now.
yCombLinks 1 days ago [-]
Sorry, I didn't make the point I was aiming for initially
agentgt 1 days ago [-]
Your new point is excellent btw. I should have considered that.
I also hope it doesn't sound like I don't care for these developers who are being taken advantage of. They should be compensated fairly for their work.
EDIT I should add why I think it is a great point especially since I make recruiting software. The greatest increases in salary for most people is done by switching companies or jobs. If you don't want to leave the company because you really like what you do it would skew it so that salaries are lower.
tcfhgj 1 days ago [-]
sounds very much like open source maintainers too
deanCommie 1 days ago [-]
You're not wrong, but it's also so sad.
FAANG used to be the _dream_. Change the world. Work on groundbreaking tech. Solve harder problems than anywhere else. Get Paid incredibly well.
Then I guess a generation focused exclusively on that last part flooded the zone. I still believe that The Great Resignation of 2021 did more harm to our industry than COVID or any interest rate or VC changes.
It polluted the brains of most of the people in our industry from a missionary mindset to a mercenary, and it decimated big company's established cultural memory all to prop up a bunch of unicorns who will probably all slowly die over the next decade.
So now half of the people can't get a job, and the half that can are miserable. This was true BEFORE AI.
smsm42 1 days ago [-]
It's just a natural progression. When the company is a startup working on a new exciting tech it's chasing the dream and changing the world. When it's a behemoth employing 200k people, it's impossible for all of them to be chasing the dream. Probably like 90% of them would be doing extremely boring "keeping the lights on" tasks and ensuring this gargantuan machine does not go to pieces under it's own weight. It still can pay incredibly well, but it won't be exciting frontier work anymore. It just can't be, 200k people company can't move with the agility of 200 people company.
wahnfrieden 1 days ago [-]
Interesting choice to blame FAANG demise on its workers
nixon_why69 16 hours ago [-]
Its not like the CEOs unilaterally said "we want to suck now". It's the cumulative effect of many people optimizing for the promotion process within the company and then coaching their mentees to do the same.
zem 1 days ago [-]
I was going to post a more extended rant but really yeah, this says it all
Negitivefrags 1 days ago [-]
People haven’t responded to your very first point, and I want to really stress it because I don’t think most people really get it.
Margins.
Game development doesn’t pay more because game development companies can’t afford to pay more.
Sure, an individual game dev company may make a lot due to the hit driven nature of the field, but the totality of the market simply makes less money per developer than big tech does.
In order for that to change, the market has to increase in size by appealing to a more casual audience, or existing gamers have to pay more. Not something I think most gamers would like. And these are the people who the workforce of game developers form from.
tpmoney 1 days ago [-]
> In order for that to change, the market has to increase in size by appealing to a more casual audience, or existing gamers have to pay more. Not something I think most gamers would like.
To really drive this point home, the gaming community recently lost their minds when it became clear that this generation of video games were going to retail for ~$90 per game. Never mind that even in the early 90’s an average game might retail for $40 and what we would call a AAA game could reach as high as $70. In 2025 gamers declared that $90 was highway robbery. But go look at the credits for an early 90s video game. That $40-90 per unit in the early 90s might need to cover the salaries of 23 people (the size of the credits list for Super Mario World on the SNES). Now $90 has to cover 435 people (the credit list for Super Mario Wonder on the switch). Sure we’re selling a lot more copies now, and (some of) the manufacturing costs are lower. But that’s a nearly 20x increase in personnel for a mere 2x increase in (non inflation adjusted) price.
It's also amortized over a much longer period of time too. Those 23 people would scratch build that $40 game in 2 years. These days it's more like 8 years, and you're rarely building from scratch.
dns_snek 24 hours ago [-]
Now factor in number of copies sold, distribution costs, additional revenue sources...
23 hours ago [-]
appreciatorBus 1 days ago [-]
> In order for that to change, the market has to increase in size by appealing to a more casual audience, or existing gamers have to pay more.
The fun part of all this is that when union demands start forcing the industry in the opposite direction - higher cost, higher prices, smaller market. In a sane world, we would connect this, but in this world, we will just blame management. The union will forever have an invincible PR shield no matter how crazy the demand.
Scaled 1 days ago [-]
While I fundamentally agree with the concern about unions raising costs in a market where most titles cannot absorb them, GTA/Rockstar definitely can. Especially since the union is fighting for basic quality of life like no crunch instead of (for now at least) increased pay. I am generally not prounion but crunch -- especially at studios that are guaranteed to be profitable (GTA) -- needs to be curbed.
andybak 1 days ago [-]
In what world are unions never criticised? I'm in the UK and they are often reviled in the press and among people who don't work in a unionised sector. America has an even stronger tradition of anti-union feeling (maybe partly due to historic links between unions and organised crime but also because the US has often had a stronger collectivisation than most European countries - consider that the political centre in the US would be considered into right wing in most Western countries on most issues)
kellogah 1 days ago [-]
Also games are for leisure. The same thing is true in Hollywood—hundreds of crew members getting paid small wages relative to their long hours and a few stars getting millions.
zipy124 1 days ago [-]
Margins are high. The video game market makes twice the combined revenue of all film/music markets combined.
netcoyote 1 days ago [-]
revenue != margins
There are 20,000 games released per year that split all that revenue, minus the cost of building those games.
zipy124 1 days ago [-]
My point was we know those are decent margin industries and video games aren't any more expensive, but anyway you usually look at 20% margin in the industry give or take 10% depending on the scale and particularly advertising costs at large scales.
antiframe 1 days ago [-]
What does revenue have to do with margins. You didn't mention costs anywhere in your statement.
zipy124 24 hours ago [-]
See my further reply, margin of 20% give or take 10% depending on scale (on average, some products obviously have incredibly high or low margins as is typical in the creative industry).
My point about revenue was that games are pulling in more money than film and TV and we all know they cost less to make, and film and TV has good pay so therefore the games industry can afford similar rates, if not more.
vanuatu 24 hours ago [-]
now compare that margin / growth to big tech or hft...
zipy124 24 hours ago [-]
That wasn't the question though was it. Compared to most businesses those are good margins.
There isn't any business on earth that compares to the margins of HFT firms. Regardless they aren't asking for big tech or HFT level salaries.
vanuatu 23 hours ago [-]
Hmm compared to film/entertainment yes, but from the perspective of an individual developer worker, your alternatives are not just in film/entertainment
duckmysick 1 days ago [-]
Does that mean the companies that develop games with heavy microtransactions pay their developers more?
fny 1 days ago [-]
You have the causality inverted. People want big tech on their resume because it makes them look qualified. People with top qualifications work at big tech because of pay. If low quality engineers worked in big tech, it wouldn't be a coveted qualification.
agentgt 1 days ago [-]
The causality of what? I'm probably missing something obvious here. The cause of people getting paid less in game development I said has to do with margins (although I now think there is more to it than that).
> People want big tech on their resume because it makes them look qualified.
I think I said that?
> People with top qualifications work at big tech because of pay.
Actually I am not sure if that is true. I think top qualification people work at these places because of other reasons than just money. I'm talking Carmack working at Facebook for example is because of more possibilities and less the pay. Like FB is we have this really smart team for you and this tech for you and you can make your own products etc.
After all there is academia and that mostly pays shit and plenty of qualified people there.
> If low quality engineers worked in big tech, it wouldn't be a coveted qualification.
And I think that is probably happening more now. The 10x developer was kind of a myth. More people for less money these days particularly with AI is becoming more of the norm.
cloverich 1 days ago [-]
Carmack level folks are the exception. the vast majority of faang interest is money. In fact if youve been in dev long enough, youd see even the makeup of the tyipical eng has changed, there are quite a few normies in the field these days, many of whom im not sure even like coding at all. Its seen as a reliably high paying field worth steering towards regardless of interest. It has lately reminded me of the kinds of people id see in medicine. smart, capable, not particularly interested in the field as such.
cloverich 1 days ago [-]
begs the question why there is a good supply of eng on low margin business though, given the skills transfer cleanly to higher margin businesses.
slg 1 days ago [-]
All else being equal, the cooler a job is, the less it will pay. It's why unions have been so successful in other "cool jobs" like professional athlete and working on movies and TV. There are some people who would do those jobs for free which completely destroys the market power of most individuals requiring collective action to prevent exploitation.
charcircuit 1 days ago [-]
Working for the amount of money one agrees to is not exploitation.
antiframe 1 days ago [-]
That would be true if there weren't a power and information imbalance.
simondotau 19 hours ago [-]
What would be the downside of all salaries in all corporations being pseudonymously public?
wat10000 1 days ago [-]
"Agrees" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Agreeing to $100/hour because you think it's fair and agreeing to $1/hour because you're starving may both qualify, but they're quite different.
vouwfietsman 1 days ago [-]
It would be prudent if you would dig a bit deeper into how unions came to be. Long story short, capitalism can easily create situations where you agree to be exploited to some degree, to avoid being exploited to another, worse, degree.
Agentlien 12 hours ago [-]
This is why, after spending my whole youth learning programming to become a game developer I had a crisis of faith and spent a few years working on something else (surgical training simulations) after graduating. I had done summer jobs at a game studio and all I saw was the leadership treating people like shit, paying almost nothing, and then laughing about how easy it was to got away with - they even did so towards me in one breath then offered me a full time contract in the next.
However, I joined EA in 2015 and have been in game development since. They offered really good pay and now at my current job I even get great pay and no overtime.
petterroea 1 days ago [-]
I think this is part of it. I have heard some people turn to prostitution to afford working for the mickey mouse company in Tokyo. Second hand accounts. People go to insane lengths just to work at their dream place.
Sharlin 22 hours ago [-]
That’s exactly what supply and demand is. They didn’t let you work for them because they had a huge pool of candidates to pick from. It doesn’t matter what the cause of the s/d imbalance is.
spike021 24 hours ago [-]
as a student back in 2012, the CS program i was in was mostly people who wanted to make games. that's just one person's POV but most people i knew at the time weren't really into anything else in software.
paulddraper 1 days ago [-]
This is the answer to all price questions, including this one.
There are a large number of people that are passionate about games. Moreso than say, ERP software.
And this holds true relative to demand (gaming is ~$300B/year globally).
---
Additionally, most software engineering is not FAANG. That is the upper end of it.
bwestergard 1 days ago [-]
I am a unionized software developer in media, not games. I helped the game workers at Blizzard unionize and they all spoke of the "passion tax". One reason the "passion tax" is possible for employers is that there seems to be a degree of labor monopsony for the kind of development done by AAA game studios. In this respect it's quite a bit like Hollywood film production in its heyday.
savanaly 1 days ago [-]
>One reason the "passion tax" is possible for employers is that there seems to be a degree of labor monopsony for the kind of development done by AAA game studios.
How is the existence of a monopsony necessary or even related to a passion tax existing? Suppose the market were a fully free market with tons of software companies on one side and tons of developers on the other. It would fly in the face of reason, and fairness in my eyes, if all developers were paid the same but some got to work on fun stuff like games and others worked on the scheduling software for the scheduling software for the warehouse robot repairs. So a passion tax seems like something that should exist and not really be decried.
avidiax 1 days ago [-]
> So a passion tax seems like something that should exist and not really be decried.
To put it the other way, work that is distasteful in some way, should also pay more, but this is missing the point.
I think the point of the unionization is that the monopsony of a small number of AAA game studios gives them excessive market power to reduce compensation and especially to reduce working conditions.
A union can acquiesce to the passion tax and say that top developers at a AAA should make $150k/year (a bit low), while simultaneously saying that that developer should be able to see their children on nights and weekends. The project management that leads to "perma-crunch" is something that ought to be resolved on the employer's side, not by the employees.
gopher_space 21 hours ago [-]
From my perspective the main difference between "crunch time" and sadism is the existence of a retrospective you don't need to pay to view.
bko 1 days ago [-]
Suppose you double their pay, make them more in line with other tech workers. How should you allocate these highly coveted game dev jobs? The supply of jobs won't magically increase (it would likely decrease with higher wages), and the number of people interested in working there would grow as well. Do you just have a lottery?
Now rather than being a relatively underpaid worker in an industry you're passionate about, you don't have the opportunity to work there.
bwestergard 1 days ago [-]
Your hypothetical is interesting, but it doesn't accord with the reasons these workers organized. They did not conceive of the issue as primarily about multiplying all worker compensation by some large factor (e.g. 2x). While they were certainly fighting for higher pay, it was as much about the arbitrariness of career paths as anything. Sexual harassment, crunch time, and layoff cycles were all problems they sought to address.
Regarding your hypothetical, two points. First, Hollywood unions did essentially go down the path you imagine. The solution there was to create a less arbitrary system that allowed actors to work their way into the union and get a degree of income stability and protection from (previously horrendous) employer abuse.
"The supply of jobs won't magically increase (it would likely decrease with higher wages)"
You should look into the economics of these game studios a bit more. The unit economics are not like those of producing bricks which an essentially linear (capital, labor) -> bricks production function. The distributive effects between the employers, workers, and consumers would be very difficult to model. You can't really figure out the marginal contribution of the factors of production. To use a Hollywood analogy: Do we know how much less one of George Clooney's films would net if a different actor were cast instead of him? If we can't be sure, can we know what his marginal contribution was?
bko 1 days ago [-]
Regardless of whether it's pay or conditions, the changes would make it a more desirable place to work, which would increase the amount of people that want to work in that field.
> The solution there was to create a less arbitrary system that allowed actors to work their way into the union and get a degree of income stability and protection from (previously horrendous) employer abuse
Less arbitrary sounds good, but you need discretion. A lot of unionized jobs rely or pretty arbitrary rules, like how long the person had worked there. Why should someone doing the same job as me get paid more just because he was there longer? That seems more arbitrary to me than my manager's opinion of my work. You end up having an underclass of younger employees and all the benefits accruing to people that have been there longer. This could sink an entire industry or company as they would be stuck with more expensive labor they can't get rid of while a new company can just hire younger people at the bottom of the scale for the same work
> You should look into the economics of these game studios a bit more. The unit economics are not like those of producing bricks which an essentially linear (capital, labor) -> bricks production function. The distributive effects between the employers, workers, and consumers would be very difficult to model. You can't really figure out the marginal contribution of the factors of production. To use a Hollywood analogy: Do we know how much less one of George Clooney's films would net if a different actor were cast instead of him? If we can't be sure, can we know what his marginal contribution was?
I agree, but that's exactly why you don't want some union to do it that doesn't have the insights. The Hollywood analogy is exactly right, how much would George Clooney films net if they used a different actor. Movie studios have a direct incentive to find out. They can pay someone a lot less and if its comparable, they would. But the idea that a union can have a matrix that can capture George Clooney's worth and pay (how long have you been an actor for?) is unrealistic.
EliRivers 1 days ago [-]
How should you allocate these highly coveted game dev jobs?
Would the company not conduct interviews and pick out whoever seems like the best candidates?
tredre3 1 days ago [-]
We have the same problem in the rest of tech, though? Being unable to get into a AAA studio is as unfair as being unable to get into FAANG.
This just brings game development in line with other code monkeys. Top studios will pay top dollars, Indie studios will pay what they can, often almost nothing.
And I see nothing wrong with that, do you?
bko 1 days ago [-]
Why are so many engineers unable to get into FAANG? Their hiring seems pretty straight forward. Cram leetcode. Most people can't get into it because they don't want to dedicate 100+ hours cramming these tests. But if you do and you're reasonably smart, you'll get in. Much better chance than something like banking/consulting (hire right out of school) or lawyers (must go through lots of schools). Out of the high paid jobs, it's extremely open and transparent.
briandear 23 hours ago [-]
Apple doesn’t use Leetcode. It’s often an 8 hour whiteboard interview during with you write pseudo code for the most part. You can’t “cram” for an Apple interview typically.
joe_mamba 22 hours ago [-]
>Why are so many engineers unable to get into FAANG? Their hiring seems pretty straight forward. Cram leetcode.
First you gotta get passed the resume screening before you get to leetcode. Average resumes with no-name companies don't get past FANG recruiters to get to the leetcode stage.
smsm42 1 days ago [-]
I was under impression there were quite a number of independent game studios, is that no longer a case? What is the cause of a monopsony here - the barrier to entry, at least for making a game, doesn't seem too high. Marketing one successfully is probably harder, but that is a common problem not unique to gaming.
Sevii 1 days ago [-]
There are more indie games than ever before. The issue is AAA games have become billion dollar projects. They are funded and structured far more like AAA movies than other software. Making games is easy. Getting the money together to spend $500 million on development and $500 million on marketing isn't easy.
smsm42 21 hours ago [-]
Yes, but I am not sure I understand how all this gives us monopsony. If there are so many indie projects, how doesn't it contradict the claim of monopsony?
ygouzerh 1 days ago [-]
Thanks, you taught me a new concept, monopsony today, I didn't knew it got a name!
darknavi 1 days ago [-]
> monopsony
I had to look it up as well. I assumed it was a play on words about Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony (the three big video game console players).
lesuorac 1 days ago [-]
For future people to look it up.
Monopoly is a single seller.
Monopsony is a single buyer.
lesuorac 23 hours ago [-]
Given how popular this has gotten I guess I should point out that it's wrong.
There isn't a single seller so the proper ones are
Oligopoly - Market with few sellers
Oligopsony - Market with few buyers
"few" really meaning that they have pricing power as opposed to 3 companies.
kubrickslair 1 days ago [-]
Why do you think passion tax is not applicable in AI research? As that too is a very passion heavy industry at least recently.
antiframe 1 days ago [-]
How do we know it's not? Those positions might have paid higher were it not for employees passions.
Aurornis 1 days ago [-]
I've done some coaching work with college-age computer science majors. The answer is pretty obvious when you talk to enough of them: Most of them got into computers via video games. Many of them had phases where they worked on video game related code, like modding or trying to make their own games.
Not many people get into computers because they dream about staring at a console to figure out why the kubernetes cluster is misbehaving again (though some do).
Like another commenter said, it's the "passion tax": The more interesting a job, the more people seek it. The more people competing for a job, the lower the pay.
diath 1 days ago [-]
It has not lagged behind depending on how you look at it, video game development can be split into engine programming and gameplay programming. For engine programming, you only need a handful of senior engineers specializing in low level details of a video game engine, and these will get paid high appropriate wages that match industry standard salaries. For the gameplay programmers, they just seek the cheapest labor that can do "quantity over quality" type of work to pump out content and there's a large pool of juniors/interns that will accept these low wages just because they want to be a part of something popular.
coffeebeqn 12 hours ago [-]
That’s not really true at studios - maybe at Unreal and Unity they get paid normal wages. I know some people working on the in house engine and rendering of AAA studios and they make like 60% of what I make in general big-ish tech backend
bananaboy 21 hours ago [-]
It’s more nuanced than that. Programmers generally will be paid decently. Gameplay programmers aren’t really the bottom of the pecking order. That dubious honour usually falls to UI engineers. Other folks involved in development who often don’t get paid well and are usually involved in unions are QA, junior programmers, and junior artists. There are a lot more roles than just engine and gameplay programmer.
dijit 6 hours ago [-]
Artists in my experience earn a lot less than programmers in gamdev; unless you're a technical artist... which is another type of programming.
throwatdem12311 24 hours ago [-]
Or, just buy Unreal Engine so you can focus on being able to just plug in interchangeable cogs for gameplay programmers. You don’t have to pay them much because you can teach a child how to use Blueprints. Then yes, just crank out slop content for the lowest common denominator and charge $80 for the AAA experience and call it day while laughing all the way to the bank. Churn out battle passes and $30 cosmetic skins for pennies on the dollar and gamers will justify it with “it’s just cosmetic you don’t have to buy it” - while these corporations have behavioural psychologists on staff figuring out the most effective way to exploit FOMO to get you addicted and needing to spend more money on useless shit you don’t need.
Suckers.
Is it any wonder the quality bar for modern AAA games is under the floor? How many $400 million dollar flops do we need before these people take a hint?
I would bet money that the story for GTA6 is gonna be horrendous, based on what we’ve seen so far, but this game will make a trillion dollars or whatever because “it’s GTA6”. Bbuut they modelled individual bubbles in the pint of beer with real physics! Does the game even need to be fun anymore? Does it need to innovate or push the medium forward in any way? Or is it just a way to juice up another GTA online putting out mid content with horrible writing just to keep buying up shark cards for another decade, because people will buy it no matter what. Game journalists would never dare give the game a bad review, because they can’t risk losing access to Take Two published games. So what are we left with? A game with completely unjustified amounts of hype and “brand loyalty” that can absolutely get away with phoneing it in and make record breaking amounts of profit. But if you criticize it in any way, you’re just a hater or you’re not “media literate” or something.
rowanG077 1 days ago [-]
But don't bad gameplay programmers implement gameplay badly? If that is truly the state of the industry that explains all the modern games with extremely mushy controls.
IshKebab 1 days ago [-]
I assume by gameplay he means stuff like in game scripting - when you walk here it triggers this. Mushy controls would be down to the engine developers.
charcircuit 1 days ago [-]
Customers don't care about the code. They just care that the gameplay is fun.
rowanG077 1 days ago [-]
Are you implying the only differentiator between good and bad developers is the aesthetic of the code itself? And not the actual computation the code does? Wild take honestly.
well_ackshually 1 days ago [-]
Nope. Rendering, tooling, audio, core engine... None of these pay particularly well. More than just gameplay programmer, sure, but because many engines have moved to a visual node style of programming, it's also less and less programming in the gameplay department.
>there's a large pool of juniors/interns that will accept these low wages just because they want to be a part of something popular.
That's an unbelievably bad _and_ disrespectful take. They accept these low wages because it's their only way in the industry, and because the industry has made sure to keep a steady supply of fresh meat to burn out. "because they want to be a part of something popular" doesn't work when the vast majority work on unknown games in content factories for the first ten years of their careers.
tpmoney 1 days ago [-]
> That's an unbelievably bad _and_ disrespectful take. They accept these low wages because it's their only way in the industry, and because the industry has made sure to keep a steady supply of fresh meat to burn out
Is it really “disrespectful” to make an observation of how the world is even if it maybe isn’t how it should be? That fact of the matter is no one “needs” to accept these wages. Software development in general and game development in particular are labor fields of choice. Being a software developer can pay you better in so many different parts of the field, even today long after the dot com boom. People are choosing to accept these bad offers because they value working in this part of the industry more than they value the higher wages they can get elsewhere. Just like plenty of us choose not to make FAANG levels of money because we value our work life balance, or our specific living locations or our principles and beliefs over the money that those companies are throwing at people.
We can talk about how these bad offers are knowingly abusive or artificially suppressed and still acknowledge that people are making informed choices to accept those offers.
elefanten 1 days ago [-]
I think by “something popular” gp meant an industry that people are excited to be in — which dovetails with your implication about accepting low pay for a way in the industry
ux266478 24 hours ago [-]
> but because many engines have moved to a visual node style of programming, it's also less and less programming in the gameplay department.
He's talking about the people who make those tools, and he's right. Engine developers are paid pretty well, especially at Epic and Unity. You don't think Tim Sweeney snagged SPJ because he's really into Fortnite, do you?
well_ackshually 10 hours ago [-]
Epic has over 4000 employees. For 1 SPJ (that might be really well paid, but you don't even know that), there's a hundred good engineers that are underpaid (compared to what they could make selling AI slop and advertisement).
If your goal is to get rich, you make more money as an L3 at Google doing absolutely fuck all than an L5 at Epic does bearing the entire responsibility of an entire subsystem on your shoulders.
flohofwoe 1 days ago [-]
Modern AAA video game development has much more in common with a traditional factory assembly line than a typical tech startup (for better or worse) - or maybe movie production is an even better comparison (especially now where most of the production seems to happen 'in post').
Also VC doesn't seem to be all that interested in investing into game dev companies, I guess because it's such an extreme hit-and-miss business (e.g. even when a game-dev company lands a massive hit, the next attempt may be a massive flop and sink the whole company).
> Ostensibly they are doing remarkable similar engineering problem solving
The engineering problems have been mostly outsourced to Unity and Epic Games (e.g. Unreal Engine)
LPisGood 1 days ago [-]
That’s only true in some instances. Do most AAA titles like Call of Duty, GTA, etc use Unity or Unreal?
pawelduda 1 days ago [-]
There are many studios with their own engines that rival or exceed UE5 - which seems overhyped, because at this point they caught up with graphics fidelity without terrible performance that dread a lot of UE5 titles.
Recent notable example is Crimson Desert, they spent years building their own engine for this game and IMO they raised the bar when it comes to creating a huge realistic world.
Others that come to my mind are Decima and RE Engine.
jdw64 1 days ago [-]
As a Korean freelancer, I’ve spoken with former developers from Pearl Abyss. They officially work 10 to 7, but the relentless crunch culture drives most people out.
While the company is extremely proud of its proprietary engine, I was told it causes severe internal politics. The studio is heavily biased toward the engineers who built the engine. Another huge downside is the lack of documentation—you can't just Google your bugs. (Granted, this was the situation two years ago).
The CEO is famously known in Korea for prioritizing developers while devaluing writers and planners. However, even within that developer-first environment, the proprietary engine has birthed a clear internal hierarchy among the programmers
flohofwoe 1 days ago [-]
The main point of using a 3rd-party engine like Unity or UE is not to buy technical excellence, but to get a 'good enough' asset pipeline, authoring tools and engine runtime cheaper than building and nurturing your own inhouse engine and tools team ... especially when the best programmers on those teams are then poached by Epic or Unity anyway ;)
pawelduda 9 hours ago [-]
I agree and that's why I'm happy not all studios not going this route. It usually means they game will be unique above average because one of the reasons would be needing the engine to work for something else than a "typical game template".
krzyk 1 days ago [-]
Companies I remember: CD Project RED, but they are now switching their newest game to Unreal Engine.
id Software, the new Doom series uses highly performant engine (as if there was some legacy there for that).
nazgulsenpai 1 days ago [-]
Crimson Desert's engine is heavily derived from Black Desert's engine (called BlackSpace Engine) so it wasn't really from the ground up, but your point still stands.
pawelduda 1 days ago [-]
I've read somewhere they had several attempts until they could comfortably support the scale of the game, so maybe it was just rebuilding some major parts
flohofwoe 1 days ago [-]
In the last few years the pendulum has been swinging back from inhouse engine to Unreal Engine. There are a couple of holdouts, but my guess is that the majority of AAA games currently released are back on UE - at least it feels that way ;)
And Unity always ruled supreme for AA and mobile games.
LugosFergus 23 hours ago [-]
A couple of holdouts? Hardly. Capcom uses the RE Engine. Released ~4 games with it in the past three years. In fact, SF6 went from UE to RE Engine. Death Stranding 2 is Decima. Id still uses IdTech, and that's never changing. Ubisoft still uses Anvil, and Outlaws was Snowdrop. EA still uses Frostbite. Bethesda continues to use their crappy engine, which I forget the name of. FromSoftware will likely never give up their engine, which has been used for Elden Ring and its successors. There's more that I can't be bothered to look up.
garaetjjte 23 hours ago [-]
Swinging back? Was UE used more widely in the past than it is now?
flohofwoe 10 hours ago [-]
When the Xbox360 was released, a lot of game companies moved from inhouse to UE3. In the next generation the pendulum has swung back to inhouse, and now its swinging back to UE5. Seems to be a 10 year cycle or so...
jdw64 1 days ago [-]
I heard a great perspective on this from a Chinese developer. The reliance on outsourced engines like Unity or Unreal isn't just driven by the high costs of in-house development and yearly upgrades. The real issue is career mobility.
Knowledge of a proprietary engine is completely locked to that specific company. They pointed out that Unity and Unreal became industry standards simply because of the dynamics of changing jobs. I fully agree with that assessment.
1 days ago [-]
asdff 1 days ago [-]
Microsoft moved Halo to Unreal Engine. Call of duty engine is based off ID tech 3.
bananaboy 21 hours ago [-]
It barely resembles id tech 3 at this point (I am an engine and pipeline programmer at Sledgehammer Games). There are very very few remnants of it in the codebase. I occasionally do some spelunking to see what’s left and these days it’s just the occasional comment and function names (although the content of the functions will have changed significantly).
DrBenCarson 1 days ago [-]
Most massive studios have their own which they use across a bunch of titles
UK-Al05 1 days ago [-]
Game VC is called being a publisher.
HugoTea 1 days ago [-]
I think a never-ending pool of young, fresh, and naïve graduates happy to sell their soul to make video games has been a strong contributor for low wages for a while.
Any time someone gets too senior, just replace them with another graduate.
Naturally, the product quality and timescale suffers too.
doublerabbit 1 days ago [-]
Yep, 0-day contracts. Don't like it? Move on and we'll hire another set of university grads.
That's how most studios work.
ZivenChang 17 hours ago [-]
Can AI replace game developers now?
4 hours ago [-]
tyleo 1 days ago [-]
I'm actually in the industry. I don't think it's as much about supply and demand as it is about expected value of the product.
Most games are expensive to make and most of them fail. Way more than normal software which doesn't have ultra-high marketing costs or diverse staffing needs (Art, QA, game design, etc).
maldev 1 days ago [-]
It's so bad man. I'm pretty specialized in Windows antivirus/malware dev. Big AAA company leading their anticheats? ~200 and that's PUSHING the band. Generic midsize company doing half the work, 300+, at the big names? 700 TC. Remote, game companies want in person 5 days a week, half the pay, and don't have proper interview timelines. And this is for a really niche skillset, my friend with 7 years experience at 2k is making 120k as a C dev. Now part of it, is they don't believe they can literally just double their salary AND do a fourth of the work by getting out of that horrible industry.
asdff 1 days ago [-]
Seems like game studios are distributed too where you just don't benefit in any way shape or form of economies of scale and agglomeration for the worker. Activition in Santa monica lays you off, where do you go now? Raytheon probably doesn't want you given how many actual aerospace people they can pick from and they all know the secret fire of software engineering too. Google in Playa vista would probably want more pure CS experience not someone pigeonholed into gamedev. Got to pack up your life and go somewhere else in all likelihood.
moooo99 1 days ago [-]
Because pay is not directly correlated to technical finesse. It is primarily dictated by how much money a company can expect to make.
And Advertising (FAANG) is insanely profitable, while doing software in other difficult fields (firmware in automotive or embedded, etc) may be technically challenging, but the margin is is only like 6-10% max
LPisGood 1 days ago [-]
Only 2 of the letters in FAANG are primarily advertising companies.
psvv 1 days ago [-]
They're all pretty high margin though.
I think flipping the question like this gets at the heart of the true answer.
The question is not why video game pay has lagged, but why tech pay has jumped ahead.
ihaveajob 1 days ago [-]
In my time I heard some people called this the "Tower Records effect". If the workplace is cool enough (record store, video game company, rock band), enough kids will want to work there that the employer can pay peanuts and won't run out of applicants.
abcd_f 1 days ago [-]
Way outdated info, but back in mid '00s when I was interviewing with EA, the recruiter guy who happened to like me said - "be careful when entering gamedev domain, because it's very hard to exit it once in."
Not in a sense that it's so good so you don't want to leave, but that other companies are leery of hiring people with the gamedev experience.
Make what you will out of that remark.
Scaled 1 days ago [-]
Not true. Regularly had FAANG want to double/triple my salary to leave games.
rayiner 1 days ago [-]
Supply and demand. There's a high supply of people who want to work in video game development, which drives down the price of labor. It's the same reason why nearly all actors work for a pittance.
somedude895 14 hours ago [-]
Most industries or companies that have a brand or make something people are passionate about, get away with paying lower salaries since they'll attract workers who want to work specifically at that company or in that industry. Companies that do boring things have to compete harder for workers.
para_parolu 1 days ago [-]
I work in tech. I would be happy to work on gta 6 for 30% of my current income.
stevekemp 1 days ago [-]
In addition to low salary, and crunchtime, the other big downside in the gaming industry is frequently layoffs, and studioes going bust.
You can't ride on a single game for long, and if the next one goes badly half the company will get fired. Not true of the bigger studios, but of course not everybody works in those.
I have friends who work in gaming, and it's a regular thing for studios to form with a great game, go bust a year or three later, and then a new studio get formed with largely similar staff.
Developers move between the same companies around and around again. The lack of stability is a real problem, especially with increasing use of "AI".
asdff 1 days ago [-]
Shit can hit the fan with bigger studios when Microsoft or Sony acquire them.
SuddsMcDuff 1 days ago [-]
Seconday question, for how long do you think you would be happy with that arrangement?
DrBenCarson 1 days ago [-]
Video game development is largely grunt work outside of the engine
maccard 1 days ago [-]
As opposed to making a crud app for a SAAS?
jhatemyjob 1 days ago [-]
At least for a crud app you have a real customer, need to coordinate between the server/client, etc. A game scripter is just making pretty pixels that will show up on a 14 year old's computer monitor for a split second.
maccard 1 days ago [-]
The ignorance in this comment is offensive.
bananaboy 21 hours ago [-]
Exactly. There is a lot of ignorance in this thread. As if the only two roles are engine programmer and gameplay programmer where gameplay is just scripting. Nope. We have engineering teams dedicated to: UI, physics, rendering, streaming, automation, gameplay (people who write gameplay features that the game designers will access via script), build infra, pipeline (and pipeline is split up into people doing lighting/geometry tools vs tools that package up data for efficient runtime use), level editing tools, asset editing tools. I’m sure I’ve forgotten plenty. Then there are the QA teams, automation (not engineers but write test scripts etc), production, level designers, vfx artists, tech artists (almost programmers), character artists, 2d artists, prop artists, gameplay scripters. This is Activision but I know EA are similar and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that most AAA companies are also similar.
There’s a wide range of pay levels there.
maccard 21 hours ago [-]
And none of those people are “low skill”.
jhatemyjob 19 hours ago [-]
I never said they are low skill. They just don't have their priorities straight.
Those QA teams, automation people, production, level designers, vfx artists, tech artists, character artists, 2d artists, prop artists, gameplay scripters, etc are doing all that work just to put some pretty pixels on a 14 year old's screen. There's very little value there.
Auracle 19 hours ago [-]
Jesus Christ dude.
First off, adults play video games too. I think they’re actually the leading consumers, though I don’t care to look that up. Second, people like entertainment. Videogames are certainly no less important than movies, TV, or most novels. Entertainment can be important. Personally I find really hard videogames to be meditative and it’s bad for my mental health when I can’t get some time now and again to play some. I also made most of my adult friend group as a teen playing Halo together in a cabin multiple times per week.
I’m guessing you at least consume some sort of entertainment, so to say something like that is incredibly hypocritical.
jhatemyjob 17 hours ago [-]
I touched a nerve huh? You wanna know another leading consumer? Recreational drug users. Lot of money in that industry.
maccard 19 hours ago [-]
Sorry - you said it’s “grunt work”, not low skill.
> There's very little value there.
As opposed to the 373rd X-as-a-service crud app with AI features?
jhatemyjob 17 hours ago [-]
Ok so now you're lying. I never said that.
jhatemyjob 1 days ago [-]
This, and also, if you just take a step back and think of the bigger picture, the work isn't valuable. There's a lot more value in pushing ads, a CRM, an email app, etc than keeping a 14 year old kid entertained.
I don't really buy the supply/demand argument everyone else is saying here. The end product just doesn't provide value to people's lives. The amount of effort you'd need to put in to provide value to someone's life through a video game is way higher than the effort you'd need to put into a productivity tool.
In fact, more often than not, video games provide negative value to people's lives. They're usually a waste of time at best. And at worst, addictive and carpal tunnel inducing.
oreally 14 hours ago [-]
> The end product just doesn't provide value to people's lives.
You're waaay too tuned in to the corporate ideology to be saying something like this. I suggest you zoom out. The top heavy games do make a ton of money, so evidently there's value in entertaining people and giving them some good playtime compared to the drudge that is corporate life (PS. in case you didn't know not all people love to work for some other guy's mission/vision).
abnercoimbre 1 days ago [-]
This is a crazy worldview to hold when looking at the annual revenue of just a single IP like Pokemon? Video games surpassed Hollywood years ago! If we want to measure value differently, I already treat certain games with the same reverence as literary classics, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone.
jhatemyjob 1 days ago [-]
Funny you mention Pokemon. Have you been to a Pokemon regional championships recently? Take a good look at the average Pokemon player. You really think that hobby is adding value to their life?
abnercoimbre 1 days ago [-]
I've met people whose lives were almost destroyed due to games. This is true. I've also met those whose lives were transformed positively by it (no, not Pokemon.) They run the whole gamut.
I'll concede an email app doesn't produce that kind of wide-ranging effect on humans.
jhatemyjob 1 days ago [-]
That is precisely my point, thank you. Yeah there's a few good ones like Undertale or (early 2010s era) Minecraft or Roblox or Garry's Mod but those are rare. Most of the games out there are the types like Pokemon which are more like a drug addiction.
So bringing this back to the "why don't game devs make boatloads of money like FAANG" it's because the vast majority of roles are being a scripter at Game Freak or Rockstar or whatever. I'm sure the engineers at Valve or Roblox or Epic Games are being treated very well because those companies actually provide value to people's lives.
Roblox to a lesser extent, but you get my point. I'd rather have my kid play Roblox where he might learn Lua scripting, than Pokemon which is just a complete dead end. Just look at what happened to Byuu and Hax. Or hell, even endrift with that weird unnecessary drama with Analogue. Many such cases. Not sure if you get those references. But the stories surrounding those people are why I stay far away from Nintendo stuff. And gaming in general.
simonjgreen 1 days ago [-]
You could invert this question and it would be equally valid.
The question is why the gulf, rather than why the lag. Why is big tech pay so high?
When you compare it to other trades and industries video game dev pay is much more “normal”
psvv 1 days ago [-]
Flipping the question like this was my instinct as well. I think the passion tax and supply and demand are definitely factors, but the real reason for the gap is that big tech has gotten increasingly exploitative and monopolistic, leading to larger margins and higher competition for talent.
Nifty3929 20 hours ago [-]
Basically - building video games is (or seems from the outside) fun and cool, and so there are lots of people who want to do it. In effect, people are willing to be paid in fun, rather than in money. Also, games just generate a lot less revenue overall than boring, run-of-the-mill, dime-a-dozen SaaS apps. By a wide mile. When you look at these SaaS companies they're generating maybe $1M/yr in revenue per employee (not just developer). Some blockbuster games can achieve that, but not many.
So basically, high supply of labor and relatively lower demand for it in games than in boring business/SaaS software.
deaux 20 hours ago [-]
99.99% of SaaS could only dream of the revenue of GTA5, and this post is about GTA6. It generates more revenue than famous SaaS unicorns like Notion and Figma.
neilv 1 days ago [-]
I think the usual theory is: So many of us got into computers because we loved playing video games, and wanted to make them, and then loved making games. So the game companies that will pay you money to make games (even if there's a lot of non-fun to it) don't have to pay as much as, say, a surveillance capitalism company of sharp-elbowed careerists.
IIUC, the majority of FAANG is people who are there, first and foremost, for the paycheck. (And then maybe they get interested in the work, especially if it seems like progress towards a promotion for more money, or because it gave them skills or resume keywords that they can then use to get more money elsewhere. It's the money/career that's interesting first -- craft and product are only a consequence of wanting the money.)
jrmeyer2 1 days ago [-]
Supply and demand would suggest that there's more supply of those willing to be paid less to work in entertainment 'on games' to meet the demand. Would be cool to see actual economics on it though.
whatever1 1 days ago [-]
Big video game industry never had to compete with META for top talent.
Tangible example: Walmart labs had to quadruple the salaries once it realized they could not attract any scientists or top tier engineers.
bananabiscuit 1 days ago [-]
Passion tax.
SuddsMcDuff 1 days ago [-]
Individuals making choices.
throwawaysoxjje 21 hours ago [-]
And companies using the many individuals to magnify their leverage.
smsm42 1 days ago [-]
Maybe the skill set in game dev is less portable to other domains? I'm on backend side, and I interviewed a lot of people over my career, with all variety of backgrounds, and I can hardly recall anybody coming from the gaming industry for some reason. It seems to be somehow separate from other tech fields, not sure why. If that's true, then the cause is that the market is smaller, so the gaming studios have more power.
whywhywhywhy 1 days ago [-]
“Working on GTA 6” is a dream job for many millions of young people and there is only one rockstar north, if you quit the line of people willing to replace you for minimum wage would be thousands long, the number willing to do it for free would be hundreds long.
“Writing react components” “deploying a database” “debugging the Android build” are not dream jobs and you can do it at hundreds of companies
jayd16 21 hours ago [-]
Supply of folks who want to work on a game is higher so wages suffer. Pay is not influenced by talent or merit alone.
That and they used to be able to waive a mythical shipping bonus but if it was ever true, I don't think its really something to count on these days.
ninth_ant 24 hours ago [-]
Everyone says supply and demand and then explains labour supply. Which is an important piece.
But the labour demand half is important too. Bigtech makes so much money (or is so well financed) that competing on top talent is more feasible when compared to the boom/bust nature of the games industry.
neya 1 days ago [-]
Historically it has always been a bottom tier paying industry. Same like animation and VFX. On top of this, now you have AI and almost anyone can create some impressive games using stuff like Claude code. So, I foresee it will only get worse from here.
fidotron 1 days ago [-]
Supply/demand.
For example, GPU shader programming is something people will practically fight over doing because it's so non obviously utterly addictive.
I would say dev roles in tech in general that lack an operational component also lag in pay, and much of gamedev is pure dev in a sense the wider tech industry has since largely forgotten exists.
On the art side it's even more extreme.
smartties 1 days ago [-]
GPU programming has to be one of the highest paying jobs in the game industry, and it can transition quite easily into other industries as well. Mostly because it’s not an entry-level position. On top of being a solid C++ developer, you need to understand the entire hardware stack and be able to optimize shaders at the instruction level while juggling things like occupancy, memory coalescing, and other low level performance concerns.
fidotron 1 days ago [-]
My experience of it, which is quite substantial both as dev and overseeing whole teams at it, is people do not pay for GPU programming, they do pay for integrating it into their framework, optimizing what the artists did already, and developing profiling tools, but the only part of that remotely competitive with ops related roles is "We didn't think we needed developers so our art team made an inefficient mess in Unreal and we're desperate to release the game on time and are throwing money around to make sure it actually runs on remotely normal hardware", after which they will sit around complaining about how expensive it was and the amount of damage that was done to their artistic vision in the process.
manas96 1 days ago [-]
I agree, low-level highly specialized technology roles within game companies do pay well.
wnevets 24 hours ago [-]
> Can anyone comment on why "big video game" dev pay has lagged "big tech" pay so badly?
I believe its game developers are more easily exploited is because typically they really want to work in the game industry.
Thaxll 1 days ago [-]
Major studio pay the same as in tech for the base salary, the big difference is in bonus/stock.
claysmithr 19 hours ago [-]
I imagine it is because people who aspire to work in gaming will also aspire to lower pay for the prestige, even if in reality the work is equally boring.
jmyeet 1 days ago [-]
It's really the same in any creative industry. Employers exploit you through this combination of factors:
1. You love the area and are willing to take a cut to work in that area, particularly when the alternative is working on CRMs for a PBM;
2. Demand for these jobs still exceeds supply; and
3. The very top of this pyramid makes a shitload of money. If you get to like a Lead Engineer type position, you might be making points on unit sales. And for a big hit that can be big money; and
4. Historically, indie development wasn't a viable route to making a living but it suffers from the same distortions too. For every Notch or ConcernedApe, there are thousands of pepole who below the poverty line. Look at something as widely regarded (but niche) like Dwarf Fortress. They made bank (and deserved it) from the Steam release but they spent 10+ years making a couple of thousand of dollars a month between the two of them.
Just look at the music industry. There are artists and bands who are trying to make it, training for years and making $50 to play some local venue and they're just hoping to get noticed. In years gone by that was a record contract. Nowadays, there are alternate routes. Justin Bieber was a Youtube breakout.
Fun fact: the first artist to have a #1 single without a record contract was Lisa Loeb for Stay in the early 1990s because it was picked up for the sound track (those used to be a big deal) for Reality Bites.
sjtgraham 1 days ago [-]
How can pay ostensibly be lagging behind big tech at Rockstar, yet GTA 6 allegedly has a budget of $3B? Granted not all of it will be allocated to development cost, but still.
geriatricguy 1 days ago [-]
My guess would be that game prices haven't dramatically changed in 20-30 years and development costs have skyrocketed. Easiest way to save money is on payroll.
jampekka 1 days ago [-]
Game sales have skyrocketed though. Inflation corrected revenue has increased something like 5x in the past 30 years.
Where are you seeing a 5x there? I see a 2x over the last 30 years for PC & Console - which are the expensive platforms to develop for. (If you're AA(A).)
asdff 1 days ago [-]
This forgets about microtransactions.
Sevii 1 days ago [-]
Employee pay depends on the margins of the industry. High margin industries can afford to pay high wages. Game publishers have nowhere near the margins of Google.
tripleee 1 days ago [-]
People are willing to work for less because they enjoy the work more. Also wouldn't be surprised if the gaming industry trends younger, so less experience negotiating.
1 days ago [-]
swatcoder 1 days ago [-]
There are more silos in the software engineering industry than you might expect as a "Big Tech" kind of engineer (assuming that's where you're speaking from). Gaming, embedded, audio, aviation, defense, automotive, medtech and pharmacy, deep enterprise, finance, etc.
Those silos maintain different processes and workflows, different company cultures, different skill specializations, etc and jumping around between them in mid-career or senior can be very challenging. So they tend to have their own org chart shapes and salary/benefit norms.
When a Big Tech company moves into or absorbs one of those silos, or emerges from one of those silos, it can shake up what the people within them get paid (and thereby have big knock-on effects for legacy employers), but otherwise it's just it's own little bubble in a lot of ways. People can share stories and ideas across the siloes in venues like HN, but many of the "what are you even talking about" reactions that happen on here often occur when people from these different silos stumble into what are sometimes deep differences in what they do and what their work experience is like.
saadn92 1 days ago [-]
my guess is: the ENGINEERING problems they solve are harder, but they're still just video games at the end of the day, compared to something that solves an actual business need.
Jare 1 days ago [-]
The business need of the games industry is making money selling games and content and ads, just like the business need of Netflix or Spotify is making money via ads and subscriptions for music or movies or etc.
It's a consumer business much like any other. Just like most startups and major companies, they are not necessary for the world in the way utilities for example are.
The problem of videogames compared to startups and SV tech is that the long-term money potential is very limited at best, and rapidly becomes very brittle. Most startups pay bigger salaries for much easier work, because they burn the money investors are betting hoping the company will crack a new long-term market, not because they make money themselves. There's very little games market to crack, very little chance to turn your product into a long-lived platform to built on top of, meanwhile the upfront investment is huge.
oreally 14 hours ago [-]
This is correct. Market economics doesn't care how hard/deep you worked on something, just how much value it can get for cheap.
7 hours ago [-]
RicoElectrico 1 days ago [-]
It is a tax on dreams.
MagicMoonlight 1 days ago [-]
Because building video games isn’t really work, it’s just fun. I’d do it for half of whatever these guys are being paid.
majorchord 1 days ago [-]
Because they put up with it.
basisword 1 days ago [-]
Has it? A lot of 'big tech pay' is based on US salaries which are astronomical compared with all of Western Europe. And big game companies are lot more spread out globally. For example, in this case they're in the UK so how do their salaries compare with UK dev salaries?
connicpu 1 days ago [-]
Even in the US, game developer positions tend to pay much lower than the same skills can get you at a "big tech" company.
zipy124 1 days ago [-]
They pay slightly above market rate compared to standard software in the UK, but below London/FAANG wages.
whywhywhywhy 1 days ago [-]
I mean it’s not just tech ALL salaries in the US make Europe look a joke.
justinhj 17 hours ago [-]
A lot of game development is not technically sophisticated, especially when the engine is bought or developed already.
The other factors are the hit driven nature of the business, meaning you can spend years building a game that flops, and the fact that many people want to make games which drives down salaries.
In my opinion game developers should work like movie staff; mid level wages but the ability to earn residuals from all their games. It means a secure life if you have enough hits.
bdcravens 1 days ago [-]
Sexy rarely pays.
forrestthewoods 22 hours ago [-]
Because “big video game” revenue did continue to grow exponentially.
Big Tech has infinite money from ads to spend on whatever. Video games do not.
victorbjorklund 1 days ago [-]
More people dream about building the next game than building another CRM system.
dyauspitr 1 days ago [-]
Too many people are willing to do it for low pay and long hours because of their passion for it. Also most games are not guaranteed clients and thus profits like with large corporate software.
jackmott42 1 days ago [-]
supply and demand as always
gambiting 1 days ago [-]
So I can comment on this as someone who has worked in video games for 15 years now, for 3 of the biggest publishers.
To start with, I've been at Ubisoft for 10 years - and the pay was famously abysmal. Like you could go and work at a supermarket and earn more, without joking. And every time I tried to argue about it the counter argument was
1) we pay low but you get to work on cool stuff
2) there is an infinite number of people interested in working here
3) if you don't like it, then leave
And you know what....as much as I absolutely hate to admit it, there was a nugget of truth to that. I was paid like shit, but I got to work on games which sold 30-40 million copies and were enjoyed by a lot of people. Nothing makes me happier than meeting people saying they played one of the games I worked on and they loved or they have fond memories of it. I don't think that justifies the poor pay, but all of my friends in IT were paid a lot more but worked on some software they hated and no one remembers it. I mean there are exceptions to this, but in general, I really enjoyed my time at Ubisoft, the problems were interesting and everyone who worked there really wanted to be there. Incredibly skilled and passionate people.
BUT I've since moved to one of the other largest publishers in video games and basically had the same position but doubled my salary. Then couple years later I moved to another big publisher and I got a crazy pay bump, basically in line with what people I know at "big tech" are being paid. And I took a step down from a tech lead to senior engineer to be here.
So I think some parts of the industry are definitely paying top money for people to work for them. When I was looking for jobs I had several offers from big companies in video games at similar pay too, so they weren't alone in this.
I think the industry has just changed from what it used to be. At least afaik programmers are being paid much better than they used to be. But that's just my personal experience.
ernesto905 23 hours ago [-]
> An end to crunch
I 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" -- wikipedia
Needless to say this seems extremely predatory.
ZenoArrow 22 hours ago [-]
It's been an issue in the game industry for decades, and yes, crunch is predatory. It's exploiting the passion people have for making games to make them commit to burnout-inducing working conditions. Some game companies have taken steps to improve their working culture, but based on what I've read I get the impression it's still a big problem.
usefulcat 13 hours ago [-]
At the last game company I worked for (decades ago now) the pay was at best average, and crunch time lasted for at least several months each year, every year (title had an annual release schedule). AFAICT this was both expected and considered normal by my coworkers.
And that’s why it was the last game company I ever worked for.
wahnfrieden 19 hours ago [-]
Crunch is good for maximizing shareholder value though. Which is the job of the developers. If they don’t like it they can simply not accept the contract and perish.
kbenson 15 hours ago [-]
Definitely flying too close to Poe's law for some.
j1elo 20 hours ago [-]
It's surprising how Wild West it gets out there. In the EU that would strictly fall into unlawful working conditions; I kid you not, in Spain the law doesn't allow to work overtime for more than 80 total hours per year.
Flere-Imsaho 14 hours ago [-]
I worked in the games industry from 2000 to 2010 in the UK... We very much did crunch.
Arbortheus 13 hours ago [-]
I remember it was very common when the UK was in the EU to have employers get you to opt-out from the European Time Directive.
moi2388 2 hours ago [-]
How? Because if there is any negative consequence to not opting out, that’s illegal.
maccard 19 hours ago [-]
And if you believe that nobody in Spain breaks that law I have a bridge to sell you.
j1elo 10 hours ago [-]
I just didn't want to get into that angle in my comment. Of course there is widespread abuse. But precisely, having this practice explicitly ruled out makes a huge difference and allows calling it "abuse" instead of "just another Tuesday", which is the stepping stone on being able to defend against it.
apeescape 11 hours ago [-]
I'm just a regular web dev outside the gaming industry, but crunch is a concept that's occasionally present in any project work; I'm sure many HN readers are familiar with it from their own work too.
When you have a deadline to meet, sometimes you need to go into crunch mode to get things done. Of course the crunch mode should last no more than a week or maybe two, otherwise you risk burning out. After crunch mode there should be a slow period where you take some time off or work on something not urgent at all.
merlindru 11 hours ago [-]
yes but the compensation part is the problem
An 80h week should not be compensated the same as two 40h weeks
estetlinus 8 hours ago [-]
Actually, one hour of overtime should cost twice as much, if not more. When I worked on movie sets, hour 1-8 was ordinary pay. Hour 8-12 was 1/5 of the daily pay an hour, hour 12-15 1/3 of daily pay an hour and so on. This forced production companies to front load effort on planning.
bigmadshoe 5 hours ago [-]
In the case of crunch in the video game industry, an 80 hour week is compensated the same as one 40 hour week
jimnotgym 12 hours ago [-]
I'm interested in this when people talk about low pay.
In the UK if you are low waged, paid for 40 hours, asked to work another 40 hours for free... your pay test for minimum wage compliance is total pay divided by total hours worked. If this puts you under minimum wage, then the company is paying you illegally
Agentlien 13 hours ago [-]
When I worked for EA (2015-2019) it was better than some horror stories I've heard, but still way too much overtime and many weekends spent at the office. The worst part that it was unpaid in exchange for an extra vacation week and then they had the gall to ask us to please not take our vacation because "don't you care about the game?".
Since then I've worked at Thunderful and now 505 Games. I haven't done overtime since I quit EA and I've been very efficient because I'm not too tired and I get peace of mind working from home.
saltyoldman 22 hours ago [-]
who is in hn these days, remember like 10/15 years ago everyone was just willingly working 65+ hours. now it's "extremely predatory".
ZenoArrow 22 hours ago [-]
It is extremely predatory. Perhaps if you're a company founder you can try to glamourise this level of personal sacrifice, but for standard employees it's clearly an unhealthy level of work, and would have been seen so by most normal people 10/15 years ago too. Also, nobody is going to do their best work when they're having to work so many hours, it's highly likely you're not getting a lot of good work done if you push yourself that hard.
bouncing_bolete 22 hours ago [-]
Imo it's fine to glorify the 65+ hour grind a founder takes on. The issue is trying to apply that logic to normal employees. The calculation of time v payoff is worlds different
abustamam 21 hours ago [-]
Yeah you can't expect employees who maybe have a 0.1% stake in the company if they're lucky, to put in 65h+ a week.
ZenoArrow 14 hours ago [-]
> Imo it's fine to glorify the 65+ hour grind a founder takes on.
While you're right that it's easier to try to justify this level of work for founders, the reality is that this level of work is not sustainable by anybody, and founders would risk damaging their physical and mental health and reducing the quality of their work the longer this went on just as much as anyone else.
I'd also argue that it's largely unnecessary. There may be some periods of time when there are too many competing demands on your time and you just have to accept extended working hours to get through a week or two or even a month, but more often than not this situation comes about due to poor planning and/or poor working processes. Effective delegation and automation can greatly reduce the likelihood of having to work 65+ hour weeks, even for founders.
saghm 17 hours ago [-]
"Willingly" is basically just peer/manager pressure. "Everyone else is doing it, why aren't you?" "Do you want to be the reason we fail to meet our deadline?" My experience in tech outside of video games is that although there's an offer letter with terms and a bunch of stuff like signing invention agreements and non-compete clauses, it's also pretty much always "at-will" on both sides without any sort of contract. The actual job is basically just "do what we ask", with the conditions that each side is wiling to ask for or tolerate being a game of chicken (that tends to favor the employer, since most employees can't survive without a paycheck/health insurance, but an individual employee is likely expendable for the company as a whole).
steve_adams_86 16 hours ago [-]
I got nothing out of working like that 10/15 years ago but my employers certainly did.
I may have thought it was cool and in line with my passion and desire to learn and ship cool things, but I was plainly taken advantage of. I’m willing to admit I was naive.
eqvinox 5 hours ago [-]
> remember like 10/15 years ago everyone was just willingly working 65+ hours
> saltyoldman
I wonder how you've gotten so salty... those working hours wouldn't be a factor, would they?
sunaurus 21 hours ago [-]
Glorifying this type of abuse needs to be called out.
Every human gets only ~16 waking hours a day to live their lives, it is absolutely immoral to sign a contract to pay somebody for literally half of this time, and then pressuring them into giving up even more of their life on top of that. Especially when using threats of revoking the original contract if they don’t comply, and/or not offering any additional compensation.
19 hours ago [-]
wesselbindt 15 hours ago [-]
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barbazoo 7 hours ago [-]
Smoking cigarettes, heart attacks, not knowing your children, those were the days /s
__natty__ 1 days ago [-]
> Together, we are organising around the things we want to change. Starting with:
Pay transparency
Flexible working
An end to crunch
That’s a lot of demands, what next? Competitive salary?! /sarcasm
I 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.
jayceedenton 24 hours ago [-]
How do you end crunch? Teams always work at a more relaxed pace when the deadlines are years out. You can't beat Parkinson's law no matter how generous you are with the estimates.
We've all tried methodologies to counter this problem and create a continuous, sustainable pace. Unfortunately there's something deep in human nature that prevents us spreading that effort out evenly from day one.
Insanity 24 hours ago [-]
The games industry is notorious for this, yet far from the only industry working against deadlines. Deadlines are a good way to timebox work, but they need to be set in a realistic way rather than an optimized happy-path.
I do understand there are certain periods where games _should_ release to make more sales, and for most games that's probably true. But this is GTA VI, they can miss the launch window by a month and it'd probably hardly impact their sales.
socalgal2 22 hours ago [-]
GTA6 in isolation is not the issue. Coordination with the entire rest of the ecosystem is. Ads are bought and paid for 6 month before launch for certain time slots. Store shelf space is reserved. Miss the deadlines and those downstream companies suffer. Their promotion time slots / space, is unbooked and it's too late to fill it with something appropriate. So, the company makes the promise "we'll have ready by November". They make this promise in April. Don't deliver and they don't do business with you next time. Maybe GTV6 is an exception here, that doesn't change the general point.
You could try to argue that companies shouldn't even start that process until the project is finished. Step 1: finish project, Step 2: book ads/shelf space, Step 3: 6 months later, ship it. But sitting on a finished project for 6 months is like not investing your money for 6 months. A lot of money is lost. Money can comes out of salaries
kbenson 15 hours ago [-]
> So, the company makes the promise "we'll have ready by November". They make this promise in April.
Make smaller promises but make them more often, and shit changes more often. Be clear about features 3-6 releases out, and when and why features get bumped. Companies delivering software are already doing this because they often can't deliver in 6 months and telling the customer it will be in the nest release a year from now does, as you note, make them stop doing business with you, so instead now you can tell them it's just delayed by a few months which they can maybe deal with.
Games don't really work like this, but games also don't seem to really work the same way at all and have different incentives.
kelnos 11 hours ago [-]
The downstream stakeholders (ad networks, retailers, etc.) need to be more flexible and tolerant of these events. If they had to deal with them regularly, they already would be. There's no law of nature that says things have to work exactly this way.
Meanwhile we have software devs and artists and product people damaging their mental health and suffering burnout for this. It's a video game. It's not worth it.
spopejoy 19 hours ago [-]
> Store shelf space is reserved
I thought this would be over by now, I certainly haven't bought physical this decade. Who is buying physical, parents of young kids?
walthamstow 23 hours ago [-]
Movies are just as bad, animation and vfx shops get crunched to hell. Fashion houses ahead of fashion week too.
cineticdaffodil 22 hours ago [-]
Well, GTA 6 was basicallly thrown away and rewritten, so after the first crunch, ever more crunch to get the 2nd attempt to the finnishing line.
csallen 22 hours ago [-]
> GTA 6 was basicallly thrown away and rewritten
How do you know? This sounds like an unverified rumor.
slumberlust 3 hours ago [-]
I agree this is unsubstantiated. I follow NXL and Giantbomb and havent heard thus reported.
SpaceNoodled 23 hours ago [-]
They've missed their launch window by years now.
Insanity 23 hours ago [-]
I mean the ideal sales window within a year, e.g period leading up to Christmas.
kbenson 15 hours ago [-]
Of which year? GTA6 has been in development so long they could miss that period slightly in a year and decide to wait for the next year and polish it up and they likely wouldn't run out of things to fix or make better.
kelnos 11 hours ago [-]
> How do you end crunch?
You (as an employer) accept one of two things: either 1) scope is reduced when you get closer to the deadline and find that you are behind, or 2) deadlines will have to be moved.
It's not like other industries, or even other software companies don't have deadlines and feature sets they want. And some of them do have a form of crunch that I equally rebel against. (I've never worked at a company where we had several months of crunch, though; at most it was a couple weeks.) They end up doing fine, dropping features from the first release, or pushing the release date out if they have to.
These are video games. No one should be ruining their mental health or getting burned out because a corporation decided they need to ship exactly their vision on a particular date.
jayd16 21 hours ago [-]
Hourly pay rate with OT. That'll clear up the crunch or at least compensate the workers.
Xunjin 14 hours ago [-]
The world is not that simple, let's say you do pay overtimes, the salary in this industry is already low, will that be worth it to the employee?
kelnos 11 hours ago [-]
I mean, that's what collective bargaining is for, no? Get the hourly rate and overtime terms to a level that the employees are happy with.
saghm 17 hours ago [-]
I've spent the last 5 years or so (out of a career coming up on 11 years at the end of this summer) working on early development for products outside of the video game industry that hadn't yet been at release when I joined the team, and somehow none of them have ever made me crunch. The better question is why companies making video games so overwhelmingly make their devs crunch when it does not seem to happen anywhere close to as often anywhere else in tech even when the release timelines are similar. I'm sure some people might argue that there's something inherent in the economics of video games that forces it, but demands for more fair labor practices have historically always been met with protests that it would be impossible for companies to survive if they were adopted, and yet somehow we managed not to run into total economic collapse by banning child labor, mandating 40-hour workweek, etc. It seems far more likely that management does it because they've been able to get away with it so far, and unionizing is has generally been a pretty effective way for labor to stop letting them get away with unfair labor practices (hence why management is always so aggressively against it).
jachee 23 hours ago [-]
Easy: No one should do unpaid labor. Period. “Crunch time” has traditionally been deployed by games management as a license to free slave labor from game developers.
Failures of management’s planning are imposed as emergencies on the devs.
magguzu 15 hours ago [-]
Don't reveal super far away release dates.
retired 22 hours ago [-]
Change videogames so they aren't big-bang releases but make them monthly releases.
Building a piece software for years and then releasing it all in once reminds me of the 1990s. Nowadays we continuously deliver.
Euro Truck Simulator 2 works with that model. Every few months they release a new part of the European map. And every few months they release new truck models.
cyberax 24 hours ago [-]
> How do you end crunch?
Two words: overtime pay.
This makes crunches disappear as if by magic.
Jach 22 hours ago [-]
Many game studios have overtime pay and yet still crunch.
jayd16 21 hours ago [-]
Who?
Jach 19 hours ago [-]
EA was famously sued ~20 years ago for not paying overtime. They lost and had to reclassify roles to non-exempt and paid up. It impacted hiring decisions for non-exempt/hourly roles (especially QA), encouraged more outsourcing, but this didn't eliminate crunch then, and it hasn't eliminated it since.
That's really my point: overtime-paid crunch is still found all over the place. EA, Activision-Blizzard, Sony's studios, Com2uS, 343 Industries (even with "priority zero"), outsourcing groups like Keywords Studios... They all have crunch stories but they also all make use of both overtime-paid roles and exempt salaried roles during crunch time. If overtime pay eliminated crunch, we'd expect to see a stronger separation in overtime-eligible workers not experiencing crunch, and crunch concentrating entirely in exempt roles. Instead, crunch appears in both.
Furthermore, over the last 20 years, crunch has decreased in both. I think that's better explained by things that directly affect the underlying reasons for crunch like changes to production practices (i.e. patching instead of going gold) and better management practices (i.e. less waterfall methodology). On indirect pressures, it's a broader mix with competition from the rest of tech, cultural backlash against crunch, and sure overtime classification changes. Explicit overtime pay increases the cost of crunch and thus incentivizes figuring out how to reduce it, but it doesn't directly reduce it itself, and certainly doesn't eliminate it.
kelnos 11 hours ago [-]
At least in this case non-exempt employees are getting compensated for their extra hours. That seems more fair; the company gets what it needs, but has to pay for it.
Reclassifying people as exempt in order to eliminate OT pay is a garbage move, though. Something unionization presumably could fix.
jayd16 18 hours ago [-]
I think you're conflating has crunch and has non-exempt employees with everyone is getting crunch OT. It is simply not the case.
Jach 18 hours ago [-]
Certainly exempt FTEs are crunching and not getting (directly) compensated for it. But the above comment's "overtime pay makes crunches disappear" claim is also simply not the case, just given the still-present abundance of crunch time for non-exempt employees who do get overtime pay.
cyberax 16 hours ago [-]
Non-exempt employees are typically cheap enough to not care about the OT pay. The lower limit for the exempt employees is around $20 per hour.
Any OT pay above that is typically negotiated by unions in the current market.
nightski 24 hours ago [-]
I'm confused, wouldn't this incentivize crunch? You could make a lot more money that way.
hnaccount141 23 hours ago [-]
Typically overtime pay requires approval from management
nightski 23 hours ago [-]
I don't think they are in a place to deny it if they are fighting a video game launch deadline.
xmprt 22 hours ago [-]
When management needs to pay more for crunch then it will prove whether the deadline is real or fake. eg. If we don't meet this deadline will it materially affect the business... or is it not really needed and it's better to save on the overtime pay.
gmadsen 23 hours ago [-]
It aligns incentives to reduce crunch as much as is feasible
cyberax 23 hours ago [-]
It will incentivize the management to prohibit working overtime and/or hire more people.
toomuchtodo 1 days ago [-]
Unions are the only legal way for workers to improve their situation around compensation and working conditions. Support for them is at a historical high, especially amongst younger cohorts.
> Unions are the only legal way for workers to improve their situation around compensation and working conditions.
How about going to work somewhere with better compensation and working conditions?
mrkpdl 21 hours ago [-]
> How about going to work somewhere with better compensation and working conditions?
Generally the reason there is a company that has better working conditions and compensation to go to is because of their union… so…
jayGlow 2 minutes ago [-]
or because they're trying to attract talent?
saghm 17 hours ago [-]
That works when labor is higher enough in demand for that to be possible, and in practice management is most likely to try to get away with lower compensation and poor working conditions.
toomuchtodo 22 hours ago [-]
Individual exit is a short-term solution to a systemic problem. Unions raise the floor, and you have no power otherwise. “Be lucky” is not a strategy that scales.
If workers could easily find jobs where employers aren’t maxing extraction at the lowest cost possible, your proposal might be realistic. In this timeline, it is a suboptimal proposal.
> Today, the US Treasury Department released a first-of-its-kind report on labor unions, highlighting the evidence that unions serve to strengthen the middle class and grow the economy at large. Over the last half century, middle-class households have experienced stagnating wages, rising income volatility, and reduced intergenerational mobility, even as the economy as a whole has prospered. Unions can improve the well-being of middle-class workers in ways that directly combat these negative trends. Pro-union policy can make a real difference to middle-class households by raising their incomes, improving their work environments, and boosting their job satisfaction. In doing so, unions can help to make the economy more equitable and robust.
(“if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together”)
shric 21 hours ago [-]
You said “Unions are the *only legal way* for workers to improve their situation around compensation and working conditions.” (Emphasis mine)
My reply was not to say unions were bad or ineffective at accomplishing the goal, it was simply refuting your blanket statement.
kelnos 11 hours ago [-]
I don't think that blanket statement is false if you interpret "workers" as "workers as a whole" (as I did when I first read it). Certainly an individual worker can quit and (try to) find a better-paying/better-hours job, but as GP notes, that method does not scale very far.
spopejoy 19 hours ago [-]
In case you haven't noticed, the era of sw devs being able to leave and find better conditions/pay anytime they want is gone. But even in the good old ZIRP days, leaving for better pay is not an action that can be taken collectively. OP said "workers" not "worker": if you want to improve conditions at a given company, collective bargaining is all you have.
21 hours ago [-]
psychoslave 18 hours ago [-]
What about cooperatives?
HugoTea 1 days ago [-]
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.
fourside 21 hours ago [-]
Damn this comment really made the anti-unionists come out of the woodwork. I’ll admit, I’m a bit skeptical and think it’s not a given that the benefits you listed will come to be.
But I’ve been annoyed at the significant shift in tone that software company executives’ have used when communicating with employees lately. For one, we went from being admittedly pampered compared to most other industries to getting threats of mass layoffs unless we do more and demand less.
I wouldn’t mind the idea of using the possibility of unions to have executives back off, but if people are going to pop off at mere suggestion of unions I don’t think we’d get very far.
matchbok3 1 days ago [-]
There's no data to prove this assertion, unfortunately.
There are countless counter examples that are obvious. Teacher's unions (hard to fire teachers, poor quality). Transit unions (mandating 2 drivers per subway car, crazy benefits, etc). Auto industry fighting EVs.
Sorry, it just doesn't make any sense to make such a broad statement regarding this at all.
manmal 1 days ago [-]
Teachers can be bad without union, and unionized EV manufacturing was never a problem. If you are playing at German auto unions. The lack of European sourced batteries is the problem, unions have nothing to do with that.
VanTheBrand 1 days ago [-]
so there is no data or there are counter examples to the data? because you seem to have shifted to an entirely different assertion... Also to say the counter examples are countless is a pretty broad statement itself.
karmakurtisaani 1 days ago [-]
> Teacher's unions (hard to fire teachers, poor quality)
Certainly you can quantify this poor quality and show it's due to unions and not, say, lack of resources?
2 drivers per subway car sounds like (at least with old tech) a good thing for everyone's safety.
> Auto industry fighting EVs.
Sounds like this was more the companies themselves, but I don't have the details.
In my view unions are largely a good thing to balance out companies power, but I've also heard stories where they have become too strong. There's nuance to the matter, but I feel like at least the US could use much more and stronger unions.
dcrazy 24 hours ago [-]
Anecdotally, if increasing resources improved outcomes, California would have fantastic education results, as would every purely economic intervention in low-median-income school districts.
Teachers may be underpaid on a time/effort basis compared to other jobs, but paying them more doesn’t actually improve outcomes. I am no expert—not even a parent—but my understanding is that curriculum choice and implementation are really, really important. (Can’t say how important relative to, say, family situation.)
According to one news report I read, 50% of the public school teachers in California are actively ignoring the state’s recent switch back to a phonics-based language curriculum, and the union itself is anti-phonics. Is the union just representing the will of those 50% of law-defying teachers, or are the teachers inferring their behavior from a politicized union?
karmakurtisaani 23 hours ago [-]
I have exactly 0 knowledge of the situation in California, but I'd be curious if they have (on top of my head, might be missing many more factors)
- adequately paid and educated teachers
- small classroom sizes
- available support for special needs kids
If all of these are in place, are the bad outcomes explainable by poorer socioeconomic factors? And are there any forced learning policies like standardized tests that promote rote memorization?
It just seems so far fetched that a teacher's union would single handedly sabotage the whole education system. Even if they push for a certain kind of teaching, it would simply not tank the whole ship, so to speak.
(I know I'm talking slightly past your points, but I'm mostly interested in the point of how much does the union actually affect the learning outcomes, all the other factors considered)
lucky_cloud 1 days ago [-]
There are plenty of studies backed by plenty of data to support exactly these assertions.
matchbok3 1 days ago [-]
There are countless counter examples that are obvious. Teacher's unions (hard to fire teachers, poor quality). Transit unions (mandating 2 drivers per subway car, crazy benefits, etc). Auto industry fighting EVs.
Sorry, it just doesn't make any sense to make such a broad statement regarding this at all.
A union's job is to protect the union. Nothing else.
qmmmur 1 days ago [-]
I would be interested to understand more about what you think unions and organisation have done for working rights over the last 100 years.
matchbok3 1 days ago [-]
That is an entirely different argument that's not particularly germane to this topic. One can agree that unions, in the past, have helped workers, and also understand that they are not always in the best interest of the general public. It's complex, but possible!
Cyph0n 1 days ago [-]
No, that is not a “complex” position at all. On the contrary, it’s a fairly simple position where you take no strong stance but still want to claim the positive aspects from each side.
Are unions universally good? No, because humans are in the loop, and humans can do bad things.
Does that change the fact that the concept of a union is one of the greatest innovations in all of human history? No.
Can unions today help disparate human workers collectively improve their working conditions? Yes, because this is what unions were designed for, and I think is the key outcome the Rockstar folks are betting on.
For a recent example, read up on the Samsung union bargaining for company wide bonuses in the wake of the huge profits made off the surge in demand for memory.
matchbok3 19 hours ago [-]
The Samsung deal is exactly what I'm talking about. It is not all entirely good. Everyone at Samsung not working in chips got screwed. And those lucky few union members used their power to extract an unfair amount of money from the company. This will cause the company to lean towards other avenues in the future, potentially harming everyone else.
Why are those people getting a huge check? Not because they worked harder. Because AI came along and made their product more valuable.
> But a smaller union associated with workers in the consumer electronics division — which boycotted the negotiations and whose 15,000 members were excluded from the vote — accused the lead union of neglecting their interests, and decried the deal as “discriminatory.” Under the agreement, workers in the consumer electronics division are expected to get payouts that are a fraction of those of their semiconductor division peers.
Cyph0n 5 hours ago [-]
And how exactly is this situation worse than the unfair allocation of salaries and bonuses in companies today? Even within the same company, people can get paid more based on the org/division they work in (e.g. core AI teams), or even based on their (team or individual) perceived value to higher ups.
At least with the Samsung union, the decision is being made bottom up vs. top down.
kelnos 11 hours ago [-]
> And those lucky few union members used their power to extract an unfair amount of money from the company.
Why is it an unfair amount, though? Who gets to decide what compensation is fair and what isn't?
Apocryphon 1 days ago [-]
Then that is an argument to reform and innovate on unions, not do away with them altogether.
smsm42 1 days ago [-]
"Are unions net benefit for the general public" and "whether reforming or abolishing the unions is the best course of action for the general public" are two separate questions. The unions could be beneficial (and still a reform could improve this benefit) or they could be harmful (but a reform could make them beneficial without abolishing them). The original claim was they are beneficial right now, in heir current form, but no actual proof had been provided.
Apocryphon 1 days ago [-]
If it’s a matter of proof, these are all links already posted on this site:
> This is a great example of how unions can really work for their members.
I think this is way different claim than "unions work for the society". Surely, there are a lot of organizations that work very well for their members. Not all of them are beneficial for the society though (criminal gangs aren't, for example). In your third link, there is a power struggle between two sets of people - movie studios and writers. One of them has achieved transferring some money from the other, using the power of unions. But how is it good for the rest of the public? Unclear.
The case in Vox starts with "I liked the union" (the same claim as above) and doesn't get more convincing as it goes. The best the author can do is "When you stack up all the research and look at the broader picture, though, the net effect of unions — bad examples included — is good for the typical worker.". But that, again, is not the question we started with - I am not arguing that the union can be good for those who get more money from the deal. I want to see proof it's also good for those who don't. And the best is something like "reduces income inequality" - which frankly is a very weak evidence, since obviously absolute inequality is bad, and absolute equality is bad, but there are a lot of gray in the middle, and how do we know whether a particular union makes us closer to the good side than to the bad side?
matchbok3 1 days ago [-]
Do you think Vox has ever written about how transit unions increase costs by mandating redundant workers and work against technology that could automate trains?
Do you think Box has ever written about how Detroit unions fought EVs and AVs and automation that could result in cheaper cars?
Why do you think that is?
Apocryphon 22 hours ago [-]
So is that an ad hominem crossed with tu quoque, or an ad hominem crossed with a false equivalence?
matchbok3 1 days ago [-]
Is Rockstar try to ban unions? Or just deciding they don't want to work with one. Those are very, very different things.
Apocryphon 1 days ago [-]
I’m not talking about Rockstar, I’m talking about your implied position.
jayd16 21 hours ago [-]
> Sorry, it just doesn't make any sense to make such a broad statement regarding this at all.
After the first comment this really reads like "only Sith deal in absolutes."
lawn 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
Helloworldboy 23 hours ago [-]
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Sevii 1 days ago [-]
Exactly, that is why US ports are the most efficient in the world.
dymk 1 days ago [-]
Indeed, The US, pinnacle of strong unions
parineum 1 days ago [-]
> but also improve the final product by not having underpaid stressed staff with high turn-over.
We'll see. It's not like police unions are making life better for citizens.
Unions are there for one reason, the union members. This will most likely be good for the employees and good on them for acting in their best interest but it seems just as likely that a unionized rockstar is negative for the consumer in either increased pricea, extended timelines or minimum effort to meet exact requirements from employees.
The benefits that workers gain from unionizing come from somewhere.
zarzavat 1 days ago [-]
I would happily pay extra money for GTA 6 if it goes to improving working conditions. It's only negative for the consumer if the consumer views life as a zero sum game.
jjice 1 days ago [-]
I agree with you, but I think most people don't. People generally hate paying for software and the $60->$70 standard AAA game pricing got a lot of people (my well paid friends included) complaining. Even if it was very clearly said that it is the cost of a well paid and respected team behind the game, I think most people won't care.
zarzavat 17 hours ago [-]
That's fine though. The value of unions is that they can force consumers to pay for better working conditions and prevent a race to the bottom.
Consumers usually are workers themselves so they also benefit from raising the bar of working conditions. Even if they don't like paying more, they are still receiving the benefit of living in a better society.
jjice 3 hours ago [-]
I completely agree with you, but I have found that the average person I've talked to about things like this refuses to look past the first thing they see, which is higher prices. If everything could go up and not just have people switch to the next lowest cost good with bad worker conditions, then that could work.
I'd argue GTA 6 is an inelastic good and people will play it no matter what, so I do think what you're saying applies here.
mrkpdl 21 hours ago [-]
Look at the big picture. Most consumers work somewhere. Better working conditions across the board can only be good for consumers.
Edit: and a note to say that comparing all unions to police unions isn’t a good faith/useful comparison. It’s true that the quality of unions vary, but overall they do far more good than bad.
M2Ys4U 1 days ago [-]
>We'll see. It's not like police unions are making life better for citizens.
The police aren't allowed to join a union
keybored 1 days ago [-]
Anti-unionists are here to tell us that consumers might possibly suffer. Higher prices and delays on a video game. Which has not seen a release in this series in half this century so far.
For all this consumer cares, great. Make it 20% more expensive. Make it 50% more expensive. A hundred. If that helps the greater union cause I can take more walks in the woods to pass the time instead.
matchbok3 1 days ago [-]
What a luxury you have to spend so much money on things, then. Hint: most people don't live that way.
fodkodrasz 1 days ago [-]
Well, given that computer games are not essential goods, most people could survive perfectly well without these so-called luxuries. Or is it only fairly produced luxury goods that are considered a luxury, while exploitatively produced luxury goods are simply treated as the standard way people live?
vouwfietsman 1 days ago [-]
Hint: maybe they would if they would unionize themselves.
thrance 19 hours ago [-]
It's extremely dishonest to frame it as "if workers get good working conditions then consumers suffer". The reality is that Rockstar is extremely profitable. The crunch they impose on their devs with every single release shouldn't be tolerated, and I stand in full support of the unionized workers.
And if a product requires human suffering to be so cheap, then maybe it shouldn't be so cheap.
StevenNunez 1 days ago [-]
Or :gasp: take less profit. The game will take in Billions especially if they release new versions like GTA5 over time.
keybored 7 hours ago [-]
Certainly. ;)
charcircuit 1 days ago [-]
That will negatively affect shareholders which is the opposite of the employees' job. Maximizing the value of the stock to shareholders over time.
wahnfrieden 1 days ago [-]
I hope you tip your earnings back to corporate and organize your peers to suppress your wages
charcircuit 1 days ago [-]
I do a personal stock buy back which applies upward pressure to the stock price. I don't organize to suppress wages due to wanting to avoid the secondary effects of driving away good talent.
wahnfrieden 1 days ago [-]
Doesn't sound like the talent is very good if they are not so mission-driven to donate their wages to shareholders.
You want to surround yourself with peers who negotiate for as high pay as the market will bear? That sounds like a sacrifice of shareholder value for selfish cause. Just because workers have leverage doesn't mean they should use it against shareholders.
GuinansEyebrows 1 days ago [-]
> It's not like police unions are making life better for citizens.
which is precisely why many union advocates argue that police should not have unions. the police exist as the physical arm of the capital class in direct opposition to the labor class. they are class traitors. police unions are not the same.
AndrewKemendo 1 days ago [-]
Police unions aren’t labor unions and are illegal in many countries including Japan.
Notably, American police (the country that invented police unions) are a modern invention that largely exist as a output of slave catching and bounty hunting services.
strictnein 1 days ago [-]
The police union in my city, in a state that borders Canada and fought against slavery, was founded in 1915. I'm guessing they would be surprised to learn that they are a "modern invention" that was from "slave catching" (I guess they do time travel?) and "bounty hunting services". I'm not even sure how you can say something is both a "modern invention" and the "output of slave catching". There's nothing modern about them and being the "output of slave catching" makes them definitionally not "modern".
Police unions act just like every other union does: in the interests of their members.
Unions are illegal in lots of the world. Federal public sector unions weren't legal in the US until the 1960s. Did the fact that they were illegal in 1965 have any bearing on whether or not they should be allowed? Does the fact that something is illegal in the US have any bearing on whether or not Japan should allow it?
AndrewKemendo 1 days ago [-]
Modern being post Industrial Revolution
iknowstuff 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
tpmoney 1 days ago [-]
This is a just so story that is trivially and obviously false and I don’t understand why it continues to persist. Paid public police forces in the US appear as early as the 1600s in Boston. The first what we might consider modern police departments were formed in the urban hubs of 1800s America where immigration tensions and the general increases in crime you expect when putting a lot of unconnected people into a concentrated area were driving factors for changes to what laws were made and how they were enforced. And those were modeled off the London police forces, themselves guided in large part by Robert Peele’s principles of policing.
Slave patrols were a form of early organized policing, but only one of many and hardly the first. And certainly this isn’t to say that racial tensions didn’t drive various forms of law enforcement. But this idea that police in general and American Police in particular are some direct descendant of salve patrols or wouldn’t exist without the institution of slavery ignores so much of human history and the long history of organized forms of law enforcement that predates the American colonies.
> formed in the urban hubs of 1800s America where immigration tensions and the general increases in crime you expect when putting a lot of unconnected people into a concentrated area were driving factors for changes to what laws were made and how they were enforced
This is a dog whistle if I’ve ever seen one. I’m not going to let that slide and your citations are not supportive of the strength of your claim
tpmoney 23 hours ago [-]
How is it a dog whistle? What words would you like to put into my mouth?
Are you suggesting that “urban hubs” and “immigration tension” are code words for “black people” and “slavery”? Because I regret to inform you that when New York City established the first US police department in 1845 (per britanica) the “immigration tension” at the time would have been the influx of Irish immigrants. And while Cincinnati had indeed had a white on black race riot in 1841, when it established its own police department in 1852 the anti-catholic / anti-German immigrant riots in 1853 and 1855 were the more contemporary “immigration tensions” I was referring to. Boston too when it founded its police department in 1854 was in the middle of a surge of Irish immigrants. Certainly these northern state city centers weren’t simply giving uniforms and badges to “slave patrols” when they founded their police forces, regardless of what other racial tensions may or may not have played a hand in the demands for a police force.
All of which is to say if you recall your American history, we have a long and storied tradition of hating on our immigrant populations and having conflicts with them. Yes white vs black was a problem at the time. And so was “white vs Irish” and “white vs German”. Our history is littered with racial tensions across just about every set of ethnic lines you could care to draw.
I'd really like to know what kind of tangled logic it requires to believe that.
Regardless, police unions aren't the only example of unions who have worked against the benefit of everyone else but themselves. I only used them as an example because I didn't think anyone here would argue disagree that it's had negative outcomes.
What I didn't expect was to find someone arguing that a union wasn't a union. It doesn't matter if it's legal in other places, it's legal in the US. Just because Japan has made police _unions_ illegal doesn't make an US police _union_ not a union.
groundzeros2015 1 days ago [-]
Not true at all. They protect the weakest employees at expense of the strongest and in game crunch at the end when the vision has materialized is good and makes the product better
kelnos 11 hours ago [-]
> game crunch at the end when the vision has materialized is good and makes the product better
At the expense of the mental health of everyone involved. It's a video game, not a life-saving new medicine. Not worth it.
groundzeros2015 3 hours ago [-]
I enjoy a crunch with well defined scope and goals.
1 days ago [-]
amazingamazing 1 days ago [-]
Really? American cars suck compared to japanese and chinese which are not unionized.
What’s an example of a unionized vs non unionized group producing the same thing where unionized is better?
simonjgreen 1 days ago [-]
The unionised Openreach in UK who are really the de facto layer 1 network provider telco build infrastructure to a staggeringly higher quality than most of the move fast startup alternatives.
Aviation unions force very high standards and represent a lot of the developments in safety and procedures.
Nuclear power is heavily unionised, resulting in a very stable and highly qualified workforce.
Unions in film and tv have done great work defending artists rights and protecting actors, writers, crew, and others from predatory behaviour by studios.
Fire fighter unions stand against unsafe demands and protect the crews in ways the individuals can’t, resulting in meaningful change. (I’m aware of UK but projecting and assuming this applies internationally)
I could go on…
amazingamazing 1 days ago [-]
I see the benefit of a union for the workers, but your examples seem strange. They do not illustrate that a union somehow results in a better product.
If that were self evident how come there has never been a company that started with employees unionized? To get this supposed benefit
AndrewKemendo 1 days ago [-]
They’re called cooperatives
Mondragon is a extremely large well structured cooperative that did exactly this and is a hallmark of success for anarchist cooperatives worldwide
bit-anarchist 1 days ago [-]
It's a bit reversed, labor unions are cooperatives, not the other way around, as cooperatives are more flexible in arrangement than unions.
Don't disagree with the rest of the comment though.
EDIT: also, I wouldn't consider coops an anarchist victory over traditional private companies anymore than democracy over monarchy. The corporation > worker hierarchy is still there, even with the different share distribution. It's a good demonstration of an alternative and underappreciated corporate structure, tho.
1 days ago [-]
smsm42 1 days ago [-]
> Aviation unions force very high standards and represent a lot of the developments in safety and procedures.
Boeing joined the chat.
Ralfp 1 days ago [-]
The company that does union busting to cut labour costs?
ed_balls 1 days ago [-]
> The unionised Openreach in UK who are really the de facto layer 1 network provider telco build infrastructure to a staggeringly higher quality
and it's crap compared to Romanian or Polish which are not unionised (I think)
VanTheBrand 1 days ago [-]
But Japanese autoworkers are unionized and have been for a very long time? So there is an example of a unionized group producing a great product!
dcrazy 24 hours ago [-]
I’d be hesitant to directly draw broad generalizations about unions across countries. Labor practices and historical context are very different, and the U.A.W. is a singular creature.
paddim8 1 days ago [-]
Volvo workers in Sweden are unionised
evdubs 1 days ago [-]
> What’s an example of a unionized vs non unionized group producing the same thing where unionized is better?
Here's a layup: art. Remember the writer's union strike in 2007-2008? All of the shows whose writers were on strike that still went on were terrible.
Edit: also, the purpose of a union is not to "produce something better". The purpose of a union is to protect workers' rights. They generally serve their purpose very well.
AndrewKemendo 1 days ago [-]
Japanese auto workers have been unionized since the 60s
Seems hard to compare since there is no comparison in Japan that is not unionized
But given that China is now winning my original point stands
AndrewKemendo 1 days ago [-]
Hey as long as you can find a reason you are right, that’s really what all life is about right?
amazingamazing 1 days ago [-]
Huh? Are you projecting something here?
evdubs 1 days ago [-]
Is it so difficult to say, "You're right. I'm wrong. There are actually unions for autoworkers in both China and Japan." ?
afavour 1 days ago [-]
Correlation != causation. There are a ton of differences between the US car industry and those in other countries, unionization is just one factor.
As a counter anecdote I’d point to Boeing’s non-union facilities, which have produced notably less reliable airplanes than their union locations ever did.
amazingamazing 1 days ago [-]
Aren’t most boeing made by unionized workers? If by both that seems like a good comparison to make
dcrazy 24 hours ago [-]
Boeing actually offers a fascinating direct comparison. 787 Max has historically been assembled in two locations: unionized Renton, WA and non-union Charleston, SC. The Charleston planes were notorious for needing rework at Renton before they were airworthy.
But the conclusion is muddied by the fact that Boeing has been making planes in the Seattle area for a century, so the talent pool is larger and more qualified than those they could find in or persuade to move to Charleston. Also, the whole Charleston move was one of many drastic cost-cutting efforts, including the spinoff of Spirit Aerospace that ultimately led to the door blowout on the Alaska Air MAX 9.
humoctopus 22 hours ago [-]
most japanese auto workers are unionized, though unions work a little differently there.
thrance 19 hours ago [-]
American manufacturers suck because of rampant financialization, not unions. They have prioritized the needs shareholders over those of consumers for a while now.
Your hatred of workers striving for better working conditions is disturbing. Maybe there are more important things in life than conspicuous consumption and filling one's home with cheap garbage?
insane_dreamer 20 hours ago [-]
> japanese and chinese which are not unionized
might want to check your facts before posting
squigz 1 days ago [-]
Is there any reason to believe North American cars wouldn't be even worse if there weren't unions?
SV_BubbleTime 1 days ago [-]
Hello, long-time automotive EE here… The absolute insanity I’ve seen from the UAW would make your fucking head spin right off. It took me a LONG time to accept it.
Ignore my first hand experience with your political ideology, it doesn’t bother me.
But, I’ll tell you I’ve been at on-site RVs and BBQs with dozens of on the clock workers. I know a guy making 80/hr to nap and watch TV in his RV for six of his eight hour shift, and this was not uncommon. I know him, because he is THE GUY that can get a vital operation checked out and no one else.
I’m not debating history or ideology. Just experience of a long time working adjacent to UAW.
When I go to on-site to Mexico it’s like an entirely different industry.
kotaKat 1 days ago [-]
Don't forget all the guys that got caught by Rob Wolchek on a Fox investigative news report down on their break at the Jeep plant drinking beer and smoking pot in a park then hopping back in their Chrysler products to scamper back to the plant to build some more sloppy Jeeps... apparently a crooked enough arbitrator said that wasn't enough evidence and forced their jobs back.
The UAW does nothing good.
Looking at my 2018 Mexican-built Ford Fusion I've had no major defects. Looking at our 2020 UAW-built Ford Escape was nothing but quality issue after quality issue. When the trim literally falls off the windows, you know we've screwed the pooch. There were moments I genuinely wish I could have driven it back to Kentucky to go make some slovenly fuck repair what they didn't put on the thing right the first time. Quality is no longer "job 1".
chasd00 1 days ago [-]
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.
gsnedders 2 hours ago [-]
> 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.
I’m unaware of this ever being the case in the UK — the lack of closed shop units means that even when collective agreements cover promotion they cannot meaningfully set this based on dues paid, both because they don’t necessarily know how long each employee has been a member of the union, and regardless that would be illegal discrimination based on union membership vs not.
In the common case for private-sector white-collar collective agreements in the UK, promotion is mostly just required to be transparent, rather than setting out procedural rules for promotion.
Your focus on union dues also makes me suspect you’re commenting from the US, expecting a union environment much more like the US — and US unions are outliers in many ways.
Per https://iwgb.org.uk/en/join/game-worker/ union dues max out at £35/month for those earning £80k and more — this is vastly less than unions require as dues in the US, and that almost certainly reduces the impact that union dues have, even beyond the illegality of closed shop units.
wasabi991011 1 days ago [-]
> In a union, the only way up is seniority
This isn't a strict requirement of unions though, right? As a trivial example grad student unions have no real career ladder, though the union negotiates a minimum pay and amount of work for everyone.
rozab 1 days ago [-]
I've never quite understood how unions in the US work or why they have the perception of them that they do. But rest assured, that is not what a union is elsewhere in the world.
criddell 1 days ago [-]
> the only way up is seniority
That’s not true at all. Look at professional athletes. The starting pitchers in a baseball game are the best pitchers. Or consider WGA screenwriters in Hollywood. Their ability to make money doesn’t depend in seniority.
flohofwoe 1 days ago [-]
The typical carreer ladder for most people on a game dev team is basically to get fired when a game project ends and trying to get hired by another game company that's just starting a new project ;)
Maybe exaggerating a bit, but that's the reality in many game dev shops, especially when a game doesn't immediately sell in great numbers.
dude250711 1 days ago [-]
"...when a game project ends..." ...regardless of whether the game is successful or not. On the upside, you get freedom to create stuff like Concord and Highguard.
mrkpdl 21 hours ago [-]
Yeah that’s not how unions work in my country
MagicMoonlight 1 days ago [-]
Unions have nothing to do with career progression…
groundzeros2015 1 days ago [-]
how could they possibly be unrelated?
ShinyLeftPad 1 days ago [-]
Who would have thought we'll get programmer unions before GTA 6!
joshu 1 days ago [-]
we're probably going to have AGI before GTA 6
tosti 24 hours ago [-]
Well obviously, if you want to play GTA you're gonna have to steal it.
nazgulsenpai 1 days ago [-]
Not sure why downvoted because that got a chuckle out of me
debo_ 17 hours ago [-]
I searched for this comment.
brap 22 hours ago [-]
This is wonderful news, congratulations to Anthropic, OpenAI and Google!
fourside 21 hours ago [-]
And to the developing industry of software consultants who specialize in fixing vibe coded slop that has grown out of control ;)
TZubiri 17 hours ago [-]
Brb, I need to file an expedited Delaware registration for UnSloppifiers Incorporated real quick.
unselect5917 22 hours ago [-]
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.
amazingamazing 21 hours ago [-]
Ironically even in the case here it is the outsourced people unionizing.
gsnedders 2 hours ago [-]
Who is outsourced here? It’s not immediately apparent from the article that people were being outsourced?
Izikiel43 22 hours ago [-]
> hire foreign competition (H1b
Not so much anymore, still a lot but much less than it used to be
rolifromhermes 1 days ago [-]
Damn we had unionized GTA6 devs before we have GTA6. Wild.
aubanel 1 days ago [-]
Cheat code to get >5 stars in GTA6 instantly: type "sizes the means of production" in chat
Refreeze5224 1 days ago [-]
Solidarity forever! Game devs eat a a lot of crap, so I'm glad they are banding together to bargain collectively.
outlore 24 hours ago [-]
As GTA V before it, 6 probably has 20 years worth of content updates ahead. Might as well be well compensated for it.
zthrowaway 7 hours ago [-]
This game is going to suck so much.
ionwake 1 days ago [-]
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 items
C) 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 replies
PS - And to whoever is downvoting me, feel free to reply and tell me what I am wrong about
flohofwoe 1 days ago [-]
This JSON-parsing problem is the least of Rockstars problems I think.
But I bet it happened like this:
- when the game was still in active development, it was maybe anticipated that the shop might have a couple dozen items, no problem even when the JSON parsing is extremely slow
- game is released, a separate maintenance team takes over, online mode is running for several years
- over time more and more items are added to the shop, and now maybe there are a thousands of items in that JSON file
- ...and when there's some 'accidental exponential' code in the JSON loader/parser the loading time gets worse and worse, what once was a few milliseconds is now minutes, but there was never a sudden regression after an update, just every week a little bit slower
- depending on the churn on the maintenance team, the current people on the team probably don't even notice an increase in loading time until they leave again for greener pastures, e.g. for them "it has always been that slow"
- management probably first read about the problem in the news ;) (which of course is a problem on its own - but as long as the money keeps flowing and the curves in Tableau go up and up, why should they even care... players apparently also endured it without bringing out the pitchforks)
vouwfietsman 1 days ago [-]
Although this is possibly true, at any time the dev team could've gone: "loading is slow man, can we just profile it and see if there's anything obvious?". To someone with access to the source code and a debugger, that's probably less than 30 minutes of time to go from zero to hero.
I've done this kind of stuff many times, and something like a json array taking minutes to parse would likely be very very obvious when looking at a trace.
oreally 13 hours ago [-]
The dev team is usually under immense pressure to deliver. This probably slipped under the radar to let all the other features get through.
The maintenance team probably maintains other games as well.
Then you add in the knowledge loss through the churning of developers and over time the organization forgets how things should be.
vouwfietsman 8 hours ago [-]
Again, you're not wrong, but none of those things are insurmountable. If the team is really so stressed it cannot spend 30 minutes, over the many year of the existence of that bug, that seems like a development environment close to hell.
Knowledge loss is precisely my point: there is very little a-priori knowledge needed to solve this, the guy who found the bug proves that.
oreally 3 hours ago [-]
Yea development environments are close to hell in game development, won't argue that.
ionwake 1 days ago [-]
Thanks for your insight its appreciated. I know I come across mean but Im just reminding everyone of simple facts that atleast contributed to all these problems.
I have nothing to do with Rockstar and wish them well, Im just saying that if I were management during these situations I would have quit or made a public apology. Its just what I feel I would have done. Regardless of the salary. I mean if one is mgmt they should take responsibility.
But maybe in late stage capitalism that is both an abhorrent and illogical idea.
matchbok3 1 days ago [-]
If this "management" is so incompetent and ineffective, the workers shouldn't need them, right? They should just start their own company.
Didn't think so.
This simplistic view of "management" is detrimental to a productive conversation and doesn't reflect reality.
ionwake 1 days ago [-]
A comment from a new account with Negative inference statements.
This is the kind of weird ass replies I just said appeared last time.
PS - You are editing your comment which is fine, but in turn I have to reply. If it is not reflective of reality feel free to add to the discussion and explain what is false. Also ironically your statement doesnt add to the discussion by elaborating on any part of it. This is exactly the kind of behaviour that doesnt help anyone learn any lessons. its just random insults.
matchbok3 1 days ago [-]
Your avoidance of answering my question provides me with more than enough knowledge about your capabilities regarding engaging in this topic in a thoughtful, intelligent manner.
Capricorn2481 11 hours ago [-]
This is a puzzling comment. Are you asking why the famously underpaid game developers don't bootstrap their own company? Because the answer seems fairly obvious, and it says nothing about the quality of Rockstar's management.
Does the concept of redundant middle management scandalize you? It's a relatively common experience, even if it's sometimes exaggerated. It actually takes a lot to be a good manager, and most people are not self aware enough to be good at it.
wonkyfruit 1 days ago [-]
At this point, we get everything before GTA6. Unions, AGI, Life on Mars.
vondur 23 hours ago [-]
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.
vortegne 1 days ago [-]
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.
guywithahat 21 hours ago [-]
I think anti-union sentiment comes from the practical reality which is if you go to union-towns, they often look bombed out and horrible. The UAW, arguably the largest private union in the US, was founded in Flint, Michigan. The union didn't care about the city or its future, it simply sucked money out of the economy until there was nothing left, and then they ran off to DC. Conversely, industry towns without unions are usually nice places to live as the companies continue to invest money in them to attract more employees. This is a pattern we see over and over again, and in my opinion has led to the strong anti-union sentiment we see all over the midwest rust belt.
zamadatix 13 hours ago [-]
Grew up in the rust belt of Michigan, but not with parents holding unionized jobs, and still live elsewhere in it (also without a unionized job). Can't say I've seen the same sentiments or patterns be as common as presented. Of course I've always leaned towards supporting unions so that colors the perspective a bit too, but, in general, approval of unions in the US has actually been in an upswell https://news.gallup.com/poll/694472/labor-union-approval-rel...
There are obviously areas with decline for sure, e.g. the auto industry, but unions are usually seen as lessening the impact of that on the workers rather than the source of blame (not that everyone holds a single view). E.g., for the most part, people don't blame the union (or non-unionized industry) for the problems in Flint as neither is meant to privately fund e.g. the water pipes. They blame the downturn of the auto industry, which then gets into whatever reasons one prefers to assign. For some that's unions, but it's not actually been a very big mind changer on that aspect.
yieldcrv 1 days ago [-]
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”
smcl 1 days ago [-]
Hell yeah
1 days ago [-]
5701652400 1 days ago [-]
maybe Google, Meta, Anthropic, MSFT, and every single tech company should unionise.
harddrivereque 23 hours ago [-]
So the tl;dr of this is that GTA 5 is indeed going to be the last and final GTA ?
brap 23 hours ago [-]
If I learned anything from unionized companies is that we’re never getting GTA 6
user0648 19 hours ago [-]
Is it time for us to join in?
1 days ago [-]
bozhark 1 days ago [-]
30 years late but oh so needed
seydor 1 days ago [-]
They should call it a cartel
AndrewKemendo 1 days ago [-]
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.
dyauspitr 1 days ago [-]
Seems like a bad time for rockstar for this to happen. Can’t fire everyone now.
guywithahat 22 hours ago [-]
I don't want to make this a take on right vs left, but private unions in the US simply don't work. If unions work Flint wouldn't have had a water crisis, Detroit would still be a rich city, and the rust belt wouldn't exist. There's no reason to think after a hundred years of failed unions the guys at rockstar games suddenly figured it out, they'll just produce lower quality products until they either figure out a way around the union or go out of business.
saint_yossarian 21 hours ago [-]
This is about their UK workers.
dark-star 21 hours ago [-]
Unions are not there to protect companies from mismanagement or simply failing/going bancrupt.
insane_dreamer 22 hours ago [-]
The rollout of AI makes unionizing for knowledge workers more important than ever.
standardly 1 days ago [-]
happy for them but uh.. 2028 release confirmed lol
OsrsNeedsf2P 1 days ago [-]
Good. I want them to take their time, pour their craft and passion into it, and release something amazing.
standardly 1 days ago [-]
Yeah, same. I'd rather wait for a better game made by happier devs. The studio is just notorious for crunch and failing to adhere to release dates, so i was just stating the obvious
bonoboTP 22 hours ago [-]
We already have enough good GTA games, 3, VC, SA. I'm fine without GTA6 ever getting released. It's unlikely to be as good as SA anyway, so whatever.
dude250711 1 days ago [-]
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).
zamadatix 13 hours ago [-]
"Pay transparency" is only 1 of the 3 main initial changes the workers mention, and the amount they take home is only part of that. Besides, with schemes like % of profit there is a peculiar tendency for profit to disappear as revenue goes up (e.g. "hollywood accounting" type things).
1 days ago [-]
maipen 1 days ago [-]
> paying a percent of profit instead of salaries is always an option
lol no.
georgefloid 20 hours ago [-]
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animanoir 1 days ago [-]
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Helloworldboy 23 hours ago [-]
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fleroviumna 23 hours ago [-]
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whywhywhywhy 1 days ago [-]
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.
sgarrity 1 days ago [-]
One of these days I'm going to see an article here about how the sex worker characters in GTA 6 have unionized.
lobf 22 hours ago [-]
You really thought you were cooking here, too.
sgarrity 20 hours ago [-]
I did! I thought I was funny! We'll, today was my turn to be an idiot on the internet.
jpttsn 17 hours ago [-]
This is a funny self-own, what am I missing?
Timing v. trends:
- big game studios are already reviled as lazy, bloated
- nimble indies are hitting a lot of records
- gen. AI coming for many studio roles
- employees have lower friction to be entrepreneurial
It’s like if home cooking and self checkout were going really strong and then the restaurants workers picked that time to riot for higher wages
zamadatix 13 hours ago [-]
If things are really on the downtrend for the business while the industry is in various uptrends (in reality, GTA V is doing as great as ever and the anticipation around the GTA VI release dominates the industry) it still makes sense to push for quality working conditions for however long it makes sense for the business to be hiring people the same as it does when the business is doing well.
Pay related items also seem to be a small portion of what's being pushed for change.
First off let me get on my high horse and say the engineering in video gaming is generally more complex than the engineering I've done working in big tech. You need a lot more creativity and ingenuity to solve the unusual problems you run into in gaming.
From there, as others have said, it's a simple supply and demand issue. Nowadays I am a university professor, nearly every student who comes in wants to pursue one of the three fields: cybersecurity, video gaming, or recently ML/AI.
This shouldn't come as a surprise, they want to work on the things that influenced them and shaped their experiences so far. There's an absolute over supply of students who want to make video games.
Gaming, like most of entertainment, is a passion-driven industry. You trade good salary for your name in the credits. You trade nights, hobbies, marriages, and your health for this opportunity. That is unless you reach that lofty 1% of developers who are too valuable to be fired.
Not all areas of gaming are like this. Gambling, like working on slot/pachinko machines, pays very well and has pretty realistic work-life balance. However every student I've talked to about this has universally said "no I don't want to make slot machines. I only want to work on GTA/Stardew Valley/Hollow Knight/Fortnite."
There's seriously no shortage of starry-eyed students who are willing to accept minimum wage to solve SDE3 level problems. I was one of them once.
Yes. Having done everything from mainframe OS internals to proof of correctness to autonomous vehicles, video games are the most difficult.
At the beginning, game dev looks easy, because the tools are good and modern hardware is very capable. But as you approach a big, highly detailed, photorealistic world, the easy approaches hit a performance wall. Then the necessary optimizations become insanely complex. That's the tyranny of the frame rate. That's why I've complained about game engines in Rust. Everybody writes My First Game Engine, then hits the wall about two years in.
The metaverse problem is even worse. All the problems of game dev, plus the problems of user-created content and large scale. With all the effort and money put into metaverses, none emerged that worked as well and looked as good as an AAA game title from the GTA V era. Roblox, Improbable, and Second Life are as good as it got. You'd think there would be some good examples still around, with small user bases, but there are not. There are a whole range of problems only metaverses have, and some of them are unsolved. For commercial games, much of the work takes place during level building and optimization. Unreal Engine Editor does much of the heavy lifting. Metaverses don't have that option.
The total failure of the metaverse industry comes partly from this. It's hard to do, and the problem was underestimated. Mostly by the people who really just wanted to sell their crap NFTs and coins.
The people and wage problem comes from too many people wanting to make games. It's like Hollywood. If you've spend any time around there, you've met the actress/model/waitress types. The male version has stand up comedy levels of ego. That pushes wages down.
Wouldn't VRChat qualify?
An example - a 3d humanoid character. You need code to manage the mesh, the animation (probably skeletal), the animations themselves, all the blending logic, probably specialised code and data for facial animations, and then you need to make sure all of that can mesh with both input driven locomotion and AI driven locomotion - and that's just one problem domain.
And I'm grossly oversimplifying what's involved even in that particular area.
Yeah that's other part. What was PhD level computer graphics becomes table stakes a few years later and not only do you have to do that, but you have to top it a few years later.
Oh and all of these systems have to be aware of each other, because the higher fidelity they become, the harder it is to keep the seams hidden, because the seam between them become more jarring.
Sure, you have skeletal bone animation and all that stuff in 2003, but do your characters adapt their footstep placement to the terrain height? Does the run animation blend smoothly between states? Oh it blends smoothly but now player inputs feel unresponsive because you had the clever idea to make it inertial? Oh now do it all over a network at minimum latency because esports are a hundred million dollar industry.
The overwhelming majority of games actually don’t. Even 5+ year old rigs can run most modern games just fine.
AI-hardware demand is responsible for slowing down the AAA graphics frame-rate treadmill. Back when Nvidia and AMD were releasing improved mid-range consumer GPUs at a steady clip, there was incessant pressure on AAA games to have ever-increasing frame-rates and "photorealistic" graphic-fidelity. Making a game update at 144Hz at 4k resolution/max graphics quality, with no upscaling shortcuts would be a challenging problem, were it a common target.
In an alternate universe where the LLM boom didn't happen, we probably would have 24GB midrange GPUs (and 32GB/48GB Nvidia 5090 Ti), allowing for humongous textures, and likely games rendering at 8k, which 5+ y.o. rigs would struggle with except at low-quality settings.
* this doesnt even include graphics programmers who are also awesome. and are just a different breed than i am, for whatever reason my brain just won't process the world of graphics pipelines
Now I've branched off on my own as I've been disillusioned with academia as well. Can't win'em all.
It comes in the form not so much in dropouts, but in bad course feedback and bad professor reviews.
"The professor made the class unfun."
"The professor said she's made games but clearly has never done that before with how she taught the class"
I'm a woman so, unsurprisingly, I experience a fair amount of misogyny from students in the class who have never made a game nor have they worked in industry but believe they know how it works.
You say in a post below that your total games industry experience was a single internship at Blizzard and then a second stint where you "quickly realized" you didn't want to be a games dev at all, and went back into academia where you have been ever since. You say you made a game as part of your PhD, but it's actually a speech therapy program you describe as research. There's nothing wrong with that project for what it is, but your students aren't criticizing you because you're a woman, they're saying they wanted a teacher who spent time in the games industry making the sort of games they themselves would play.
I wouldn't bother pointing this contradiction out normally, but it's just so socially destructive to ask students for feedback and then attack them with the nastiest accusation you have access to, just because they requested a more experienced teacher. Poor kids! It's this kind of thing that results in recommendations to just avoid university entirely. Why sign up for being abused by a teacher like that?
And to be honest, I think games are a good stepping stone towards a career in software engineering / computer science. Especially back in the day when getting a game to run required you to mess around with the computer haha
(And in indie it's way worse, it's more like 1% making it one year)
If you wanna do low-level code, you can go into embedded, sponsored OSI-companies, Microsoft, etc and get paid the same to more than gamedev with 10% of the stress and no crunch. If you wanna get paid much more and do more "vibe"/fun coding, you can go into app/web dev. If you want stability, you go into fintech/medtech/onsite/etc.
Gamedev offers the worst of all worlds and then constantly posits "why is there so much turn over?"...because you made the industry suck to work in.
I worked on games for several years early on but quit after going through an EA spouse experience.
In some ways it’s too bad, because the great thing about games is that there is such a great variety of different kinds of problems to solve. Even so, I quit cold turkey and never looked back. It is what it is.
From there, I wound up at a community college running a bachelor's level degree. They hired me because I was the only candidate with NSF experience. They proceeded to fire their grant manager and have me manage the whole grant without extra pay.
Actually used to hire people for exactly what you want to do: be an adjunct for night classes in tech.
If you want to go that route you need to make friends with the Dean and the head of program. It's rare that we hire someone from the general application process, because most people who work in tech do not make good instructors.
What kind of PhD research did you do? I considered going back for a PhD program focusing on simulation as it relates to discoverability within AI research, but kept ruling out it was a bad career decision and should be left as a retirement thing
Seattle based? If so toss me your email or contact and I'll see if I can help you break into teaching if you're interested.
> What kind of PhD research did you do?
Assistive technology. I primarily worked with kids who had cleft lip and palate to improve their at-home speech therapy exercises. Trained some offline ASR models, built a therapy game, and automated metrics. I passed the research onto another student once I got my PhD, but the project lives on as https://spokeitthegame.com/
Robjrivera23 at gmails
I will have to check out that speech therapy game. Before I entered pilot training, I had received new fake teeth implants that introduced a lisp (new airflow) and as a 20yrold, had to go through speech therapy drills with a military doctor for a whole semester to get my qualification back. Jokes on me, cockpit wasnt for me haha.
This is such a bullshit thing to experience. I had a version of this where I took on extra work that I was interested in which became a new revenue stream but was told "let's see how you do and then we'll see about salary bumps". Never saw an extra dime from it. I used the experience learned to land a new job six months later with a salary bump while dumping the other job responsibilities. It's truly the only way to get that bump you deserve.
Seems like you found an opportunity that you really wanted to pursue, but unfortunately at the same time sort of became a stat of those that can't do, teach.
I had plenty of professors along the way that touted their credentials, but they were so stale in what they were teaching. I know I know, a Computer Science degree doesn't match industry expectations, but so many professors definitely did not keep up with what was going on outside of their bubble.
Guilty as charged, despite my best attempts to the contrary. I wish I had time to go back to school for some kind of teaching degree. Is there something else I can do or read or watch or something to make me a better teacher? Knowledge transfer is probably the most important aspect of my job.
This tracks with my experience. Games present so many unexpected challenges. Or, known and expected challenges that are challenging nonetheless.
The other place I've had my ass handed to me was in robotics. Translating digital models to the physical space is how physics tells you it's actually in control and your ideas are cute and all, but other things are going to happen instead.
The simulator starts out simple and gradually becomes grotesque as it contacts reality.
I'd agree with all of this from what I've seen though. The problems that some of my buddies solved straight out of college, while very different than 'hard problems' at bigcorp, are... hard.
One buddy ended up moving to the worst of both worlds... backend infra for a large video game and ended up getting video game salary for bigcorp distributed systems problems.
I always roll my eyes when I hear this from game developers. And my eyes hurt from rolling I've heard it so many times.
I've done game dev, systems, backend, frontend, all of it. It's all the same. Maybe you developed low complexity "big tech" projects but, c'mon, you're really going to argue that games are categorically MORE complex than what Google, Apple, etc develop?
They're not. It's all the same. Same complexity ceiling, same prerequisite levels of creativity.
Most frontends that I develop use the same patterns as games and the backends that I've developed recently look like game servers. Same patterns, same techniques, same level of complexity.
Game development is just development.
Sometimes you get similar demands at the big companies like Google and Meta, but often you have the opportunity to throw more compute at the problem. That is rarely possible in games.
Having been a game dev before getting my PhD focused on NLP, I can definitely say some of the challenges I ran into developing a first of its kind MMORTS, was seriously challenging. When I took the mandatory grad classes in distributed systems and low level architecture design, I already had first hand experience and aced those classes without any effort. I was familiar with many of the problems and their solutions because I needed to for my work. In addition to working at the lowest level debugging the memory allocators, full networking stack, database layer, you name it all in C++. Being a lead developer on a project of that scope was much more complicated than any work I did later.
My first semester of my PhD I wrote a Transformer from scratch referencing only the original paper (it was soon after the paper came out, there were few resources then). I was the only person who got an implementation that matched the results from the original Transformer (most got much worse performance). I credit the skills and abilities I gained in the game dev industry.
That isn't me throwing shade at others; as I said there are hard problems in industries other than game dev, but the skills required are not compensated at the level you'd expect given the difficulty of the work.
Expecting a 20-year old undergrad or a 23-year old postgrad to do as well as someone who left and came back to uni to finish their degree(s) is... uncharitable.
Again, I've also run into equally talented fresh grads in big tech, but they were much more rare.
Take my anecdotes as you will.
Creativity isn’t narrowly defined to exclude everything but art, game mechanisms, and narrative.
You think the creation of GMail didn’t take creativity?
I’m suspicious of anyone who tries to lay a special claim to creativity for their class or type of work. Creates a false creative vs cog narrative that always seems to benefit the speaker.
Modern sites are extremely complex. BASH, Docker, Kubernetes, Python, Varnish, NGINX, Postgres, Cassandra, Elastic, Redis, Celery, CSS/Sass, Typescript. Observability, logging, build systems, testing, backups, CI, and a consistent design system. That’s all just to get to HTTP 200 “hello world”.
And these require none of the deep math that the lower levels of gamedev stack require. It's tedious, not hard to string all of these web components.
A lot of fancy keywords, but
1) It's the stack that you decided to put your services on, your HTTP 200 could be also served by nginx + 1 html file
2) You can make empty video multiplayer game which will sound as fancy as that HTTP 200 hello world
Disclaimer: i've barely ever programmed video games
Not the same kind of creativity, for sure. Gmail has no performance constraints (and its performance is horrible), has no UX constraint (and its UX is horrible). It pushed the free tier some time ago and was arguably a decent webmail at the time, but nothing about it was revolutionary.
The hacks required to get a game to react and push pixels in real time on specific hardware are very interesting. That's closer to proper software engineering than many things we find in startups. That said, more and more games use Unity and other all-in-one engines and are not engineering anymore… and as a player, i can certainly feel the difference in the constant stuttering which mostly was not there when playing console games >10 years ago.
Have you tried doing modern frontend work? Creativity is required.
I played with Claude recently. It wasn’t able to refactor a CSS one liner into simple sass mixin.
A simple card game is on par with standard app development.
But if you're working at lower levels of a world simulation engine that require linear algebra, computer graphics knowledge? Camera and joint manipulation? Animation? Navmeshes? Physics? That's a notch harder than a REST app and microservices infrastructure. Some robotics, ML areas touch on this too.
The only tough topics at these adtechs that might match would be graph manipulation, or currently ML knowledge. I suspect leetcode isn't very applicable in everyday usage.
At a high level the engines and frameworks don't feel any different.
Work with graphics and models feels more difficult though then most networked application work I've done.
To be fair, you don't have to be a teacher / lecturer to notice this. One trip to an AI reddit thread asking what people are working on will reveal that it's either porn, role-play, or game development.
When did that become a thing? When Gears of War bonus checks started hitting Epic's parking lot went from a random collection of reasonable vehicles to looking like an exotic car show. I'm fairly certain every dev that worked on Gears or Unreal could have retired off the bonus payouts.
so economics takes over.
whereas your typical saas, adtech - once the business is proven u print money unless u r doing stupid shit n being driven by ego such as having the biggest org or pursuing passion projects such as "a.i"
Working class person being exceptional at low latency game development, will unlikely get a chance in finance and earning 10x for very much the same level of competence, because their accent might not be good enough and parents don't frequent members' clubs.
I will say that different industries have different formalities (generally speaking). But that just means you have to interview with smarter attire in FinTech vs interviewing for a job in gambling.
As a hiring manager, I can say that companies will recruit for as little as they think candidates will accept. Fintech gets a bit of a pass on this one but only because they rake in so much money that they can generally afford to attract higher salaries. But it does also mean that gaming can get away with paying people peanuts in comparison and that is literally due to supply and demand.
In places where the C-suite have set unrealistic thresholds on tech salaries, I’ve had to get creative to attract candidates. And that often meant contributing back to open source and basically using that as advertising.
Anyway, this is already a verbose reply but the crux of it is:
1. you shouldn’t underestimate the power of supply and demand in the work space
2. The profitability of a sector also plays heavily into the equation
3. You don’t need to be posh to get a job in FinTech.
Come on.
But who’s to say your experiences aren’t the anomaly? Or that other factors weren’t to play that lead those hiring managers offering to other candidates?
I also tried researching your point online (just in case I was an anomaly) and the results I got suggested that FinTech scored lower in benchmarks for bias during hiring.
So at this point in time, given what I’ve experienced, read online and the information you’ve shared, there simply isn’t enough data to support your claim. Anecdotal nor otherwise.
It may not pay the rent or put food on the table, but seeing your name in the credits of a movie your friends watched or a game they played is a perk that has real value. Writing a technical book rarely pays the bills either but it's the same story of getting to see your name on the shelf, and maaaybe it leads to getting on a conference panel or something at some point but really you're doing a lot of labour for far below minimum wage just to be able to say you did (as I did for Apress when I was 20 years old... and it landed me an internship at Google, so there you go).
in most cases it don't unless this game become really legendary which often not the case. So young person easily can spent 10y in attempt to do that but as result non of those games will be remembered in 2y after release.
- be well compensated - work on something interesting - work on something ethical
Obviously there's the rare unicorn out there where you get all three, but those are the exception, not the rule.
But in reality that environment helping only to grow in technical aspects of the job ( maybe also learning some market forces) but it leads to severe degradation in artistic practice of which person original desire cultivate even not realizing that just because is no business need for anything like that. Bus sines can be fine by just coping that everyone else doing or implementing some one else vision.
I too wanna work on cooler stuff. Sooner rather than later.
[1]: https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2024/05/seinfeld-on-when-mo...
In fact since we are on hackernews that is kind of thing people wanting to be entrepreneurs do. Work at recognizable big tech company for a few years. Leave to be a founder of a startup. Investors ... well that guy came from google they must know what they are doing etc (the irony is they probably have less of the skills to start a company going that path).
~~Ultimately the goal is the same: make more money. So I disagree the motivation is "very different" its just a lot harder now to do a startup.~~
You kept editing your comment so disregard the above. I misread it the first time and then it changed. I left my response thats makes no sense now.
I also hope it doesn't sound like I don't care for these developers who are being taken advantage of. They should be compensated fairly for their work.
EDIT I should add why I think it is a great point especially since I make recruiting software. The greatest increases in salary for most people is done by switching companies or jobs. If you don't want to leave the company because you really like what you do it would skew it so that salaries are lower.
FAANG used to be the _dream_. Change the world. Work on groundbreaking tech. Solve harder problems than anywhere else. Get Paid incredibly well.
Then I guess a generation focused exclusively on that last part flooded the zone. I still believe that The Great Resignation of 2021 did more harm to our industry than COVID or any interest rate or VC changes.
It polluted the brains of most of the people in our industry from a missionary mindset to a mercenary, and it decimated big company's established cultural memory all to prop up a bunch of unicorns who will probably all slowly die over the next decade.
So now half of the people can't get a job, and the half that can are miserable. This was true BEFORE AI.
Margins.
Game development doesn’t pay more because game development companies can’t afford to pay more.
Sure, an individual game dev company may make a lot due to the hit driven nature of the field, but the totality of the market simply makes less money per developer than big tech does.
In order for that to change, the market has to increase in size by appealing to a more casual audience, or existing gamers have to pay more. Not something I think most gamers would like. And these are the people who the workforce of game developers form from.
To really drive this point home, the gaming community recently lost their minds when it became clear that this generation of video games were going to retail for ~$90 per game. Never mind that even in the early 90’s an average game might retail for $40 and what we would call a AAA game could reach as high as $70. In 2025 gamers declared that $90 was highway robbery. But go look at the credits for an early 90s video game. That $40-90 per unit in the early 90s might need to cover the salaries of 23 people (the size of the credits list for Super Mario World on the SNES). Now $90 has to cover 435 people (the credit list for Super Mario Wonder on the switch). Sure we’re selling a lot more copies now, and (some of) the manufacturing costs are lower. But that’s a nearly 20x increase in personnel for a mere 2x increase in (non inflation adjusted) price.
29.8%: Retailer's margin
15.1%: Publisher's margin
14.8%: VAT
That's... 92.8%.
Developer's royalty: 4.6%
"Yikes" -me, just now
The fun part of all this is that when union demands start forcing the industry in the opposite direction - higher cost, higher prices, smaller market. In a sane world, we would connect this, but in this world, we will just blame management. The union will forever have an invincible PR shield no matter how crazy the demand.
There are 20,000 games released per year that split all that revenue, minus the cost of building those games.
My point about revenue was that games are pulling in more money than film and TV and we all know they cost less to make, and film and TV has good pay so therefore the games industry can afford similar rates, if not more.
There isn't any business on earth that compares to the margins of HFT firms. Regardless they aren't asking for big tech or HFT level salaries.
> People want big tech on their resume because it makes them look qualified.
I think I said that?
> People with top qualifications work at big tech because of pay.
Actually I am not sure if that is true. I think top qualification people work at these places because of other reasons than just money. I'm talking Carmack working at Facebook for example is because of more possibilities and less the pay. Like FB is we have this really smart team for you and this tech for you and you can make your own products etc.
After all there is academia and that mostly pays shit and plenty of qualified people there.
> If low quality engineers worked in big tech, it wouldn't be a coveted qualification.
And I think that is probably happening more now. The 10x developer was kind of a myth. More people for less money these days particularly with AI is becoming more of the norm.
However, I joined EA in 2015 and have been in game development since. They offered really good pay and now at my current job I even get great pay and no overtime.
There are a large number of people that are passionate about games. Moreso than say, ERP software.
And this holds true relative to demand (gaming is ~$300B/year globally).
---
Additionally, most software engineering is not FAANG. That is the upper end of it.
How is the existence of a monopsony necessary or even related to a passion tax existing? Suppose the market were a fully free market with tons of software companies on one side and tons of developers on the other. It would fly in the face of reason, and fairness in my eyes, if all developers were paid the same but some got to work on fun stuff like games and others worked on the scheduling software for the scheduling software for the warehouse robot repairs. So a passion tax seems like something that should exist and not really be decried.
To put it the other way, work that is distasteful in some way, should also pay more, but this is missing the point.
I think the point of the unionization is that the monopsony of a small number of AAA game studios gives them excessive market power to reduce compensation and especially to reduce working conditions.
A union can acquiesce to the passion tax and say that top developers at a AAA should make $150k/year (a bit low), while simultaneously saying that that developer should be able to see their children on nights and weekends. The project management that leads to "perma-crunch" is something that ought to be resolved on the employer's side, not by the employees.
Now rather than being a relatively underpaid worker in an industry you're passionate about, you don't have the opportunity to work there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activision_Blizzard_worker_org...
Regarding your hypothetical, two points. First, Hollywood unions did essentially go down the path you imagine. The solution there was to create a less arbitrary system that allowed actors to work their way into the union and get a degree of income stability and protection from (previously horrendous) employer abuse.
"The supply of jobs won't magically increase (it would likely decrease with higher wages)"
You should look into the economics of these game studios a bit more. The unit economics are not like those of producing bricks which an essentially linear (capital, labor) -> bricks production function. The distributive effects between the employers, workers, and consumers would be very difficult to model. You can't really figure out the marginal contribution of the factors of production. To use a Hollywood analogy: Do we know how much less one of George Clooney's films would net if a different actor were cast instead of him? If we can't be sure, can we know what his marginal contribution was?
> The solution there was to create a less arbitrary system that allowed actors to work their way into the union and get a degree of income stability and protection from (previously horrendous) employer abuse
Less arbitrary sounds good, but you need discretion. A lot of unionized jobs rely or pretty arbitrary rules, like how long the person had worked there. Why should someone doing the same job as me get paid more just because he was there longer? That seems more arbitrary to me than my manager's opinion of my work. You end up having an underclass of younger employees and all the benefits accruing to people that have been there longer. This could sink an entire industry or company as they would be stuck with more expensive labor they can't get rid of while a new company can just hire younger people at the bottom of the scale for the same work
> You should look into the economics of these game studios a bit more. The unit economics are not like those of producing bricks which an essentially linear (capital, labor) -> bricks production function. The distributive effects between the employers, workers, and consumers would be very difficult to model. You can't really figure out the marginal contribution of the factors of production. To use a Hollywood analogy: Do we know how much less one of George Clooney's films would net if a different actor were cast instead of him? If we can't be sure, can we know what his marginal contribution was?
I agree, but that's exactly why you don't want some union to do it that doesn't have the insights. The Hollywood analogy is exactly right, how much would George Clooney films net if they used a different actor. Movie studios have a direct incentive to find out. They can pay someone a lot less and if its comparable, they would. But the idea that a union can have a matrix that can capture George Clooney's worth and pay (how long have you been an actor for?) is unrealistic.
Would the company not conduct interviews and pick out whoever seems like the best candidates?
This just brings game development in line with other code monkeys. Top studios will pay top dollars, Indie studios will pay what they can, often almost nothing.
And I see nothing wrong with that, do you?
First you gotta get passed the resume screening before you get to leetcode. Average resumes with no-name companies don't get past FANG recruiters to get to the leetcode stage.
I had to look it up as well. I assumed it was a play on words about Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony (the three big video game console players).
Monopoly is a single seller.
Monopsony is a single buyer.
There isn't a single seller so the proper ones are
Oligopoly - Market with few sellers
Oligopsony - Market with few buyers
"few" really meaning that they have pricing power as opposed to 3 companies.
Not many people get into computers because they dream about staring at a console to figure out why the kubernetes cluster is misbehaving again (though some do).
Like another commenter said, it's the "passion tax": The more interesting a job, the more people seek it. The more people competing for a job, the lower the pay.
Suckers.
Is it any wonder the quality bar for modern AAA games is under the floor? How many $400 million dollar flops do we need before these people take a hint?
I would bet money that the story for GTA6 is gonna be horrendous, based on what we’ve seen so far, but this game will make a trillion dollars or whatever because “it’s GTA6”. Bbuut they modelled individual bubbles in the pint of beer with real physics! Does the game even need to be fun anymore? Does it need to innovate or push the medium forward in any way? Or is it just a way to juice up another GTA online putting out mid content with horrible writing just to keep buying up shark cards for another decade, because people will buy it no matter what. Game journalists would never dare give the game a bad review, because they can’t risk losing access to Take Two published games. So what are we left with? A game with completely unjustified amounts of hype and “brand loyalty” that can absolutely get away with phoneing it in and make record breaking amounts of profit. But if you criticize it in any way, you’re just a hater or you’re not “media literate” or something.
>there's a large pool of juniors/interns that will accept these low wages just because they want to be a part of something popular.
That's an unbelievably bad _and_ disrespectful take. They accept these low wages because it's their only way in the industry, and because the industry has made sure to keep a steady supply of fresh meat to burn out. "because they want to be a part of something popular" doesn't work when the vast majority work on unknown games in content factories for the first ten years of their careers.
Is it really “disrespectful” to make an observation of how the world is even if it maybe isn’t how it should be? That fact of the matter is no one “needs” to accept these wages. Software development in general and game development in particular are labor fields of choice. Being a software developer can pay you better in so many different parts of the field, even today long after the dot com boom. People are choosing to accept these bad offers because they value working in this part of the industry more than they value the higher wages they can get elsewhere. Just like plenty of us choose not to make FAANG levels of money because we value our work life balance, or our specific living locations or our principles and beliefs over the money that those companies are throwing at people.
We can talk about how these bad offers are knowingly abusive or artificially suppressed and still acknowledge that people are making informed choices to accept those offers.
He's talking about the people who make those tools, and he's right. Engine developers are paid pretty well, especially at Epic and Unity. You don't think Tim Sweeney snagged SPJ because he's really into Fortnite, do you?
If your goal is to get rich, you make more money as an L3 at Google doing absolutely fuck all than an L5 at Epic does bearing the entire responsibility of an entire subsystem on your shoulders.
Also VC doesn't seem to be all that interested in investing into game dev companies, I guess because it's such an extreme hit-and-miss business (e.g. even when a game-dev company lands a massive hit, the next attempt may be a massive flop and sink the whole company).
> Ostensibly they are doing remarkable similar engineering problem solving
The engineering problems have been mostly outsourced to Unity and Epic Games (e.g. Unreal Engine)
Recent notable example is Crimson Desert, they spent years building their own engine for this game and IMO they raised the bar when it comes to creating a huge realistic world.
Others that come to my mind are Decima and RE Engine.
While the company is extremely proud of its proprietary engine, I was told it causes severe internal politics. The studio is heavily biased toward the engineers who built the engine. Another huge downside is the lack of documentation—you can't just Google your bugs. (Granted, this was the situation two years ago).
The CEO is famously known in Korea for prioritizing developers while devaluing writers and planners. However, even within that developer-first environment, the proprietary engine has birthed a clear internal hierarchy among the programmers
id Software, the new Doom series uses highly performant engine (as if there was some legacy there for that).
And Unity always ruled supreme for AA and mobile games.
Knowledge of a proprietary engine is completely locked to that specific company. They pointed out that Unity and Unreal became industry standards simply because of the dynamics of changing jobs. I fully agree with that assessment.
That's how most studios work.
Most games are expensive to make and most of them fail. Way more than normal software which doesn't have ultra-high marketing costs or diverse staffing needs (Art, QA, game design, etc).
And Advertising (FAANG) is insanely profitable, while doing software in other difficult fields (firmware in automotive or embedded, etc) may be technically challenging, but the margin is is only like 6-10% max
I think flipping the question like this gets at the heart of the true answer.
The question is not why video game pay has lagged, but why tech pay has jumped ahead.
Not in a sense that it's so good so you don't want to leave, but that other companies are leery of hiring people with the gamedev experience.
Make what you will out of that remark.
You can't ride on a single game for long, and if the next one goes badly half the company will get fired. Not true of the bigger studios, but of course not everybody works in those.
I have friends who work in gaming, and it's a regular thing for studios to form with a great game, go bust a year or three later, and then a new studio get formed with largely similar staff.
Developers move between the same companies around and around again. The lack of stability is a real problem, especially with increasing use of "AI".
There’s a wide range of pay levels there.
Those QA teams, automation people, production, level designers, vfx artists, tech artists, character artists, 2d artists, prop artists, gameplay scripters, etc are doing all that work just to put some pretty pixels on a 14 year old's screen. There's very little value there.
First off, adults play video games too. I think they’re actually the leading consumers, though I don’t care to look that up. Second, people like entertainment. Videogames are certainly no less important than movies, TV, or most novels. Entertainment can be important. Personally I find really hard videogames to be meditative and it’s bad for my mental health when I can’t get some time now and again to play some. I also made most of my adult friend group as a teen playing Halo together in a cabin multiple times per week.
I’m guessing you at least consume some sort of entertainment, so to say something like that is incredibly hypocritical.
> There's very little value there.
As opposed to the 373rd X-as-a-service crud app with AI features?
I don't really buy the supply/demand argument everyone else is saying here. The end product just doesn't provide value to people's lives. The amount of effort you'd need to put in to provide value to someone's life through a video game is way higher than the effort you'd need to put into a productivity tool.
In fact, more often than not, video games provide negative value to people's lives. They're usually a waste of time at best. And at worst, addictive and carpal tunnel inducing.
You're waaay too tuned in to the corporate ideology to be saying something like this. I suggest you zoom out. The top heavy games do make a ton of money, so evidently there's value in entertaining people and giving them some good playtime compared to the drudge that is corporate life (PS. in case you didn't know not all people love to work for some other guy's mission/vision).
I'll concede an email app doesn't produce that kind of wide-ranging effect on humans.
So bringing this back to the "why don't game devs make boatloads of money like FAANG" it's because the vast majority of roles are being a scripter at Game Freak or Rockstar or whatever. I'm sure the engineers at Valve or Roblox or Epic Games are being treated very well because those companies actually provide value to people's lives.
Roblox to a lesser extent, but you get my point. I'd rather have my kid play Roblox where he might learn Lua scripting, than Pokemon which is just a complete dead end. Just look at what happened to Byuu and Hax. Or hell, even endrift with that weird unnecessary drama with Analogue. Many such cases. Not sure if you get those references. But the stories surrounding those people are why I stay far away from Nintendo stuff. And gaming in general.
The question is why the gulf, rather than why the lag. Why is big tech pay so high?
When you compare it to other trades and industries video game dev pay is much more “normal”
So basically, high supply of labor and relatively lower demand for it in games than in boring business/SaaS software.
IIUC, the majority of FAANG is people who are there, first and foremost, for the paycheck. (And then maybe they get interested in the work, especially if it seems like progress towards a promotion for more money, or because it gave them skills or resume keywords that they can then use to get more money elsewhere. It's the money/career that's interesting first -- craft and product are only a consequence of wanting the money.)
Tangible example: Walmart labs had to quadruple the salaries once it realized they could not attract any scientists or top tier engineers.
“Writing react components” “deploying a database” “debugging the Android build” are not dream jobs and you can do it at hundreds of companies
That and they used to be able to waive a mythical shipping bonus but if it was ever true, I don't think its really something to count on these days.
But the labour demand half is important too. Bigtech makes so much money (or is so well financed) that competing on top talent is more feasible when compared to the boom/bust nature of the games industry.
For example, GPU shader programming is something people will practically fight over doing because it's so non obviously utterly addictive.
I would say dev roles in tech in general that lack an operational component also lag in pay, and much of gamedev is pure dev in a sense the wider tech industry has since largely forgotten exists.
On the art side it's even more extreme.
I believe its game developers are more easily exploited is because typically they really want to work in the game industry.
1. You love the area and are willing to take a cut to work in that area, particularly when the alternative is working on CRMs for a PBM;
2. Demand for these jobs still exceeds supply; and
3. The very top of this pyramid makes a shitload of money. If you get to like a Lead Engineer type position, you might be making points on unit sales. And for a big hit that can be big money; and
4. Historically, indie development wasn't a viable route to making a living but it suffers from the same distortions too. For every Notch or ConcernedApe, there are thousands of pepole who below the poverty line. Look at something as widely regarded (but niche) like Dwarf Fortress. They made bank (and deserved it) from the Steam release but they spent 10+ years making a couple of thousand of dollars a month between the two of them.
Just look at the music industry. There are artists and bands who are trying to make it, training for years and making $50 to play some local venue and they're just hoping to get noticed. In years gone by that was a record contract. Nowadays, there are alternate routes. Justin Bieber was a Youtube breakout.
Fun fact: the first artist to have a #1 single without a record contract was Lisa Loeb for Stay in the early 1990s because it was picked up for the sound track (those used to be a big deal) for Reality Bites.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/video-game-industry-revenue...
Those silos maintain different processes and workflows, different company cultures, different skill specializations, etc and jumping around between them in mid-career or senior can be very challenging. So they tend to have their own org chart shapes and salary/benefit norms.
When a Big Tech company moves into or absorbs one of those silos, or emerges from one of those silos, it can shake up what the people within them get paid (and thereby have big knock-on effects for legacy employers), but otherwise it's just it's own little bubble in a lot of ways. People can share stories and ideas across the siloes in venues like HN, but many of the "what are you even talking about" reactions that happen on here often occur when people from these different silos stumble into what are sometimes deep differences in what they do and what their work experience is like.
It's a consumer business much like any other. Just like most startups and major companies, they are not necessary for the world in the way utilities for example are.
The problem of videogames compared to startups and SV tech is that the long-term money potential is very limited at best, and rapidly becomes very brittle. Most startups pay bigger salaries for much easier work, because they burn the money investors are betting hoping the company will crack a new long-term market, not because they make money themselves. There's very little games market to crack, very little chance to turn your product into a long-lived platform to built on top of, meanwhile the upfront investment is huge.
Big Tech has infinite money from ads to spend on whatever. Video games do not.
To start with, I've been at Ubisoft for 10 years - and the pay was famously abysmal. Like you could go and work at a supermarket and earn more, without joking. And every time I tried to argue about it the counter argument was
1) we pay low but you get to work on cool stuff
2) there is an infinite number of people interested in working here
3) if you don't like it, then leave
And you know what....as much as I absolutely hate to admit it, there was a nugget of truth to that. I was paid like shit, but I got to work on games which sold 30-40 million copies and were enjoyed by a lot of people. Nothing makes me happier than meeting people saying they played one of the games I worked on and they loved or they have fond memories of it. I don't think that justifies the poor pay, but all of my friends in IT were paid a lot more but worked on some software they hated and no one remembers it. I mean there are exceptions to this, but in general, I really enjoyed my time at Ubisoft, the problems were interesting and everyone who worked there really wanted to be there. Incredibly skilled and passionate people.
BUT I've since moved to one of the other largest publishers in video games and basically had the same position but doubled my salary. Then couple years later I moved to another big publisher and I got a crazy pay bump, basically in line with what people I know at "big tech" are being paid. And I took a step down from a tech lead to senior engineer to be here.
So I think some parts of the industry are definitely paying top money for people to work for them. When I was looking for jobs I had several offers from big companies in video games at similar pay too, so they weren't alone in this.
I think the industry has just changed from what it used to be. At least afaik programmers are being paid much better than they used to be. But that's just my personal experience.
I 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" -- wikipedia
Needless to say this seems extremely predatory.
And that’s why it was the last game company I ever worked for.
When you have a deadline to meet, sometimes you need to go into crunch mode to get things done. Of course the crunch mode should last no more than a week or maybe two, otherwise you risk burning out. After crunch mode there should be a slow period where you take some time off or work on something not urgent at all.
An 80h week should not be compensated the same as two 40h weeks
In the UK if you are low waged, paid for 40 hours, asked to work another 40 hours for free... your pay test for minimum wage compliance is total pay divided by total hours worked. If this puts you under minimum wage, then the company is paying you illegally
Since then I've worked at Thunderful and now 505 Games. I haven't done overtime since I quit EA and I've been very efficient because I'm not too tired and I get peace of mind working from home.
While you're right that it's easier to try to justify this level of work for founders, the reality is that this level of work is not sustainable by anybody, and founders would risk damaging their physical and mental health and reducing the quality of their work the longer this went on just as much as anyone else.
I'd also argue that it's largely unnecessary. There may be some periods of time when there are too many competing demands on your time and you just have to accept extended working hours to get through a week or two or even a month, but more often than not this situation comes about due to poor planning and/or poor working processes. Effective delegation and automation can greatly reduce the likelihood of having to work 65+ hour weeks, even for founders.
I may have thought it was cool and in line with my passion and desire to learn and ship cool things, but I was plainly taken advantage of. I’m willing to admit I was naive.
> saltyoldman
I wonder how you've gotten so salty... those working hours wouldn't be a factor, would they?
Every human gets only ~16 waking hours a day to live their lives, it is absolutely immoral to sign a contract to pay somebody for literally half of this time, and then pressuring them into giving up even more of their life on top of that. Especially when using threats of revoking the original contract if they don’t comply, and/or not offering any additional compensation.
That’s a lot of demands, what next? Competitive salary?! /sarcasm
I 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.
We've all tried methodologies to counter this problem and create a continuous, sustainable pace. Unfortunately there's something deep in human nature that prevents us spreading that effort out evenly from day one.
I do understand there are certain periods where games _should_ release to make more sales, and for most games that's probably true. But this is GTA VI, they can miss the launch window by a month and it'd probably hardly impact their sales.
You could try to argue that companies shouldn't even start that process until the project is finished. Step 1: finish project, Step 2: book ads/shelf space, Step 3: 6 months later, ship it. But sitting on a finished project for 6 months is like not investing your money for 6 months. A lot of money is lost. Money can comes out of salaries
Make smaller promises but make them more often, and shit changes more often. Be clear about features 3-6 releases out, and when and why features get bumped. Companies delivering software are already doing this because they often can't deliver in 6 months and telling the customer it will be in the nest release a year from now does, as you note, make them stop doing business with you, so instead now you can tell them it's just delayed by a few months which they can maybe deal with.
Games don't really work like this, but games also don't seem to really work the same way at all and have different incentives.
Meanwhile we have software devs and artists and product people damaging their mental health and suffering burnout for this. It's a video game. It's not worth it.
I thought this would be over by now, I certainly haven't bought physical this decade. Who is buying physical, parents of young kids?
How do you know? This sounds like an unverified rumor.
You (as an employer) accept one of two things: either 1) scope is reduced when you get closer to the deadline and find that you are behind, or 2) deadlines will have to be moved.
It's not like other industries, or even other software companies don't have deadlines and feature sets they want. And some of them do have a form of crunch that I equally rebel against. (I've never worked at a company where we had several months of crunch, though; at most it was a couple weeks.) They end up doing fine, dropping features from the first release, or pushing the release date out if they have to.
These are video games. No one should be ruining their mental health or getting burned out because a corporation decided they need to ship exactly their vision on a particular date.
Failures of management’s planning are imposed as emergencies on the devs.
Building a piece software for years and then releasing it all in once reminds me of the 1990s. Nowadays we continuously deliver.
Euro Truck Simulator 2 works with that model. Every few months they release a new part of the European map. And every few months they release new truck models.
Two words: overtime pay.
This makes crunches disappear as if by magic.
That's really my point: overtime-paid crunch is still found all over the place. EA, Activision-Blizzard, Sony's studios, Com2uS, 343 Industries (even with "priority zero"), outsourcing groups like Keywords Studios... They all have crunch stories but they also all make use of both overtime-paid roles and exempt salaried roles during crunch time. If overtime pay eliminated crunch, we'd expect to see a stronger separation in overtime-eligible workers not experiencing crunch, and crunch concentrating entirely in exempt roles. Instead, crunch appears in both.
Furthermore, over the last 20 years, crunch has decreased in both. I think that's better explained by things that directly affect the underlying reasons for crunch like changes to production practices (i.e. patching instead of going gold) and better management practices (i.e. less waterfall methodology). On indirect pressures, it's a broader mix with competition from the rest of tech, cultural backlash against crunch, and sure overtime classification changes. Explicit overtime pay increases the cost of crunch and thus incentivizes figuring out how to reduce it, but it doesn't directly reduce it itself, and certainly doesn't eliminate it.
Reclassifying people as exempt in order to eliminate OT pay is a garbage move, though. Something unionization presumably could fix.
Any OT pay above that is typically negotiated by unions in the current market.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/694472/labor-union-approval-rel...
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/08/27/majoritie...
https://www.epi.org/blog/americans-favor-labor-unions-over-b...
How about going to work somewhere with better compensation and working conditions?
Generally the reason there is a company that has better working conditions and compensation to go to is because of their union… so…
If workers could easily find jobs where employers aren’t maxing extraction at the lowest cost possible, your proposal might be realistic. In this timeline, it is a suboptimal proposal.
> Today, the US Treasury Department released a first-of-its-kind report on labor unions, highlighting the evidence that unions serve to strengthen the middle class and grow the economy at large. Over the last half century, middle-class households have experienced stagnating wages, rising income volatility, and reduced intergenerational mobility, even as the economy as a whole has prospered. Unions can improve the well-being of middle-class workers in ways that directly combat these negative trends. Pro-union policy can make a real difference to middle-class households by raising their incomes, improving their work environments, and boosting their job satisfaction. In doing so, unions can help to make the economy more equitable and robust.
https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/labor-unions...
https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/Labor-Unions-And-...
(“if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together”)
My reply was not to say unions were bad or ineffective at accomplishing the goal, it was simply refuting your blanket statement.
But I’ve been annoyed at the significant shift in tone that software company executives’ have used when communicating with employees lately. For one, we went from being admittedly pampered compared to most other industries to getting threats of mass layoffs unless we do more and demand less.
I wouldn’t mind the idea of using the possibility of unions to have executives back off, but if people are going to pop off at mere suggestion of unions I don’t think we’d get very far.
https://www.ae.dk/debatindlaeg/2023-05-staerke-fagforeninger...
Sorry, it just doesn't make any sense to make such a broad statement regarding this at all.
Certainly you can quantify this poor quality and show it's due to unions and not, say, lack of resources?
> Transit unions (mandating 2 drivers per subway car, crazy benefits, etc)
2 drivers per subway car sounds like (at least with old tech) a good thing for everyone's safety.
> Auto industry fighting EVs.
Sounds like this was more the companies themselves, but I don't have the details.
In my view unions are largely a good thing to balance out companies power, but I've also heard stories where they have become too strong. There's nuance to the matter, but I feel like at least the US could use much more and stronger unions.
Teachers may be underpaid on a time/effort basis compared to other jobs, but paying them more doesn’t actually improve outcomes. I am no expert—not even a parent—but my understanding is that curriculum choice and implementation are really, really important. (Can’t say how important relative to, say, family situation.)
According to one news report I read, 50% of the public school teachers in California are actively ignoring the state’s recent switch back to a phonics-based language curriculum, and the union itself is anti-phonics. Is the union just representing the will of those 50% of law-defying teachers, or are the teachers inferring their behavior from a politicized union?
- adequately paid and educated teachers
- small classroom sizes
- available support for special needs kids
If all of these are in place, are the bad outcomes explainable by poorer socioeconomic factors? And are there any forced learning policies like standardized tests that promote rote memorization?
It just seems so far fetched that a teacher's union would single handedly sabotage the whole education system. Even if they push for a certain kind of teaching, it would simply not tank the whole ship, so to speak.
(I know I'm talking slightly past your points, but I'm mostly interested in the point of how much does the union actually affect the learning outcomes, all the other factors considered)
Sorry, it just doesn't make any sense to make such a broad statement regarding this at all.
A union's job is to protect the union. Nothing else.
Are unions universally good? No, because humans are in the loop, and humans can do bad things.
Does that change the fact that the concept of a union is one of the greatest innovations in all of human history? No.
Can unions today help disparate human workers collectively improve their working conditions? Yes, because this is what unions were designed for, and I think is the key outcome the Rockstar folks are betting on.
For a recent example, read up on the Samsung union bargaining for company wide bonuses in the wake of the huge profits made off the surge in demand for memory.
Why are those people getting a huge check? Not because they worked harder. Because AI came along and made their product more valuable.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/27/world/asia/samsung-ai-pro...
> But a smaller union associated with workers in the consumer electronics division — which boycotted the negotiations and whose 15,000 members were excluded from the vote — accused the lead union of neglecting their interests, and decried the deal as “discriminatory.” Under the agreement, workers in the consumer electronics division are expected to get payouts that are a fraction of those of their semiconductor division peers.
At least with the Samsung union, the decision is being made bottom up vs. top down.
Why is it an unfair amount, though? Who gets to decide what compensation is fair and what isn't?
https://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/union-effect-in-california-...
https://www.epi.org/publication/unions-decline-inequality-ri...
https://werd.io/unions-work/
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-06-13/unions...
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/8/19/20727283/u...
I think this is way different claim than "unions work for the society". Surely, there are a lot of organizations that work very well for their members. Not all of them are beneficial for the society though (criminal gangs aren't, for example). In your third link, there is a power struggle between two sets of people - movie studios and writers. One of them has achieved transferring some money from the other, using the power of unions. But how is it good for the rest of the public? Unclear.
The case in Vox starts with "I liked the union" (the same claim as above) and doesn't get more convincing as it goes. The best the author can do is "When you stack up all the research and look at the broader picture, though, the net effect of unions — bad examples included — is good for the typical worker.". But that, again, is not the question we started with - I am not arguing that the union can be good for those who get more money from the deal. I want to see proof it's also good for those who don't. And the best is something like "reduces income inequality" - which frankly is a very weak evidence, since obviously absolute inequality is bad, and absolute equality is bad, but there are a lot of gray in the middle, and how do we know whether a particular union makes us closer to the good side than to the bad side?
Do you think Box has ever written about how Detroit unions fought EVs and AVs and automation that could result in cheaper cars?
Why do you think that is?
After the first comment this really reads like "only Sith deal in absolutes."
We'll see. It's not like police unions are making life better for citizens.
Unions are there for one reason, the union members. This will most likely be good for the employees and good on them for acting in their best interest but it seems just as likely that a unionized rockstar is negative for the consumer in either increased pricea, extended timelines or minimum effort to meet exact requirements from employees.
The benefits that workers gain from unionizing come from somewhere.
Consumers usually are workers themselves so they also benefit from raising the bar of working conditions. Even if they don't like paying more, they are still receiving the benefit of living in a better society.
I'd argue GTA 6 is an inelastic good and people will play it no matter what, so I do think what you're saying applies here.
Edit: and a note to say that comparing all unions to police unions isn’t a good faith/useful comparison. It’s true that the quality of unions vary, but overall they do far more good than bad.
The police aren't allowed to join a union
For all this consumer cares, great. Make it 20% more expensive. Make it 50% more expensive. A hundred. If that helps the greater union cause I can take more walks in the woods to pass the time instead.
And if a product requires human suffering to be so cheap, then maybe it shouldn't be so cheap.
You want to surround yourself with peers who negotiate for as high pay as the market will bear? That sounds like a sacrifice of shareholder value for selfish cause. Just because workers have leverage doesn't mean they should use it against shareholders.
which is precisely why many union advocates argue that police should not have unions. the police exist as the physical arm of the capital class in direct opposition to the labor class. they are class traitors. police unions are not the same.
https://theconversation.com/why-police-unions-are-not-part-o...
Notably, American police (the country that invented police unions) are a modern invention that largely exist as a output of slave catching and bounty hunting services.
Police unions act just like every other union does: in the interests of their members.
Unions are illegal in lots of the world. Federal public sector unions weren't legal in the US until the 1960s. Did the fact that they were illegal in 1965 have any bearing on whether or not they should be allowed? Does the fact that something is illegal in the US have any bearing on whether or not Japan should allow it?
Slave patrols were a form of early organized policing, but only one of many and hardly the first. And certainly this isn’t to say that racial tensions didn’t drive various forms of law enforcement. But this idea that police in general and American Police in particular are some direct descendant of salve patrols or wouldn’t exist without the institution of slavery ignores so much of human history and the long history of organized forms of law enforcement that predates the American colonies.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/police/Due-process-and-indi...
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-origins-of-policing-in...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police
This is a dog whistle if I’ve ever seen one. I’m not going to let that slide and your citations are not supportive of the strength of your claim
Are you suggesting that “urban hubs” and “immigration tension” are code words for “black people” and “slavery”? Because I regret to inform you that when New York City established the first US police department in 1845 (per britanica) the “immigration tension” at the time would have been the influx of Irish immigrants. And while Cincinnati had indeed had a white on black race riot in 1841, when it established its own police department in 1852 the anti-catholic / anti-German immigrant riots in 1853 and 1855 were the more contemporary “immigration tensions” I was referring to. Boston too when it founded its police department in 1854 was in the middle of a surge of Irish immigrants. Certainly these northern state city centers weren’t simply giving uniforms and badges to “slave patrols” when they founded their police forces, regardless of what other racial tensions may or may not have played a hand in the demands for a police force.
All of which is to say if you recall your American history, we have a long and storied tradition of hating on our immigrant populations and having conflicts with them. Yes white vs black was a problem at the time. And so was “white vs Irish” and “white vs German”. Our history is littered with racial tensions across just about every set of ethnic lines you could care to draw.
Edit:
I note now that my britanica link in my first post was the wrong one, this would be the more appropriate for the topic at hand: https://www.britannica.com/topic/police/Early-police-in-the-...
I'd really like to know what kind of tangled logic it requires to believe that.
Regardless, police unions aren't the only example of unions who have worked against the benefit of everyone else but themselves. I only used them as an example because I didn't think anyone here would argue disagree that it's had negative outcomes.
What I didn't expect was to find someone arguing that a union wasn't a union. It doesn't matter if it's legal in other places, it's legal in the US. Just because Japan has made police _unions_ illegal doesn't make an US police _union_ not a union.
At the expense of the mental health of everyone involved. It's a video game, not a life-saving new medicine. Not worth it.
What’s an example of a unionized vs non unionized group producing the same thing where unionized is better?
Aviation unions force very high standards and represent a lot of the developments in safety and procedures.
Nuclear power is heavily unionised, resulting in a very stable and highly qualified workforce.
Unions in film and tv have done great work defending artists rights and protecting actors, writers, crew, and others from predatory behaviour by studios.
Fire fighter unions stand against unsafe demands and protect the crews in ways the individuals can’t, resulting in meaningful change. (I’m aware of UK but projecting and assuming this applies internationally)
I could go on…
If that were self evident how come there has never been a company that started with employees unionized? To get this supposed benefit
Mondragon is a extremely large well structured cooperative that did exactly this and is a hallmark of success for anarchist cooperatives worldwide
Don't disagree with the rest of the comment though.
EDIT: also, I wouldn't consider coops an anarchist victory over traditional private companies anymore than democracy over monarchy. The corporation > worker hierarchy is still there, even with the different share distribution. It's a good demonstration of an alternative and underappreciated corporate structure, tho.
Boeing joined the chat.
and it's crap compared to Romanian or Polish which are not unionised (I think)
Here's a layup: art. Remember the writer's union strike in 2007-2008? All of the shows whose writers were on strike that still went on were terrible.
Edit: also, the purpose of a union is not to "produce something better". The purpose of a union is to protect workers' rights. They generally serve their purpose very well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederation_of_Japan_Automob...
In fact part of the SCAP mandates after World War II two during the MacArthur occupation was specifically to form powerful unions in Japan
https://uaw.org/we-keep-toyota-running-workers-at-critical-t...
Seems hard to compare since there is no comparison in Japan that is not unionized
But given that China is now winning my original point stands
As a counter anecdote I’d point to Boeing’s non-union facilities, which have produced notably less reliable airplanes than their union locations ever did.
But the conclusion is muddied by the fact that Boeing has been making planes in the Seattle area for a century, so the talent pool is larger and more qualified than those they could find in or persuade to move to Charleston. Also, the whole Charleston move was one of many drastic cost-cutting efforts, including the spinoff of Spirit Aerospace that ultimately led to the door blowout on the Alaska Air MAX 9.
Your hatred of workers striving for better working conditions is disturbing. Maybe there are more important things in life than conspicuous consumption and filling one's home with cheap garbage?
might want to check your facts before posting
Ignore my first hand experience with your political ideology, it doesn’t bother me.
But, I’ll tell you I’ve been at on-site RVs and BBQs with dozens of on the clock workers. I know a guy making 80/hr to nap and watch TV in his RV for six of his eight hour shift, and this was not uncommon. I know him, because he is THE GUY that can get a vital operation checked out and no one else.
I’m not debating history or ideology. Just experience of a long time working adjacent to UAW.
When I go to on-site to Mexico it’s like an entirely different industry.
The UAW does nothing good.
Looking at my 2018 Mexican-built Ford Fusion I've had no major defects. Looking at our 2020 UAW-built Ford Escape was nothing but quality issue after quality issue. When the trim literally falls off the windows, you know we've screwed the pooch. There were moments I genuinely wish I could have driven it back to Kentucky to go make some slovenly fuck repair what they didn't put on the thing right the first time. Quality is no longer "job 1".
I’m unaware of this ever being the case in the UK — the lack of closed shop units means that even when collective agreements cover promotion they cannot meaningfully set this based on dues paid, both because they don’t necessarily know how long each employee has been a member of the union, and regardless that would be illegal discrimination based on union membership vs not.
In the common case for private-sector white-collar collective agreements in the UK, promotion is mostly just required to be transparent, rather than setting out procedural rules for promotion.
Your focus on union dues also makes me suspect you’re commenting from the US, expecting a union environment much more like the US — and US unions are outliers in many ways.
Per https://iwgb.org.uk/en/join/game-worker/ union dues max out at £35/month for those earning £80k and more — this is vastly less than unions require as dues in the US, and that almost certainly reduces the impact that union dues have, even beyond the illegality of closed shop units.
This isn't a strict requirement of unions though, right? As a trivial example grad student unions have no real career ladder, though the union negotiates a minimum pay and amount of work for everyone.
That’s not true at all. Look at professional athletes. The starting pitchers in a baseball game are the best pitchers. Or consider WGA screenwriters in Hollywood. Their ability to make money doesn’t depend in seniority.
Maybe exaggerating a bit, but that's the reality in many game dev shops, especially when a game doesn't immediately sell in great numbers.
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.
Not so much anymore, still a lot but much less than it used to be
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 items
C) 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 replies
PS - And to whoever is downvoting me, feel free to reply and tell me what I am wrong about
But I bet it happened like this:
- when the game was still in active development, it was maybe anticipated that the shop might have a couple dozen items, no problem even when the JSON parsing is extremely slow
- game is released, a separate maintenance team takes over, online mode is running for several years
- over time more and more items are added to the shop, and now maybe there are a thousands of items in that JSON file
- ...and when there's some 'accidental exponential' code in the JSON loader/parser the loading time gets worse and worse, what once was a few milliseconds is now minutes, but there was never a sudden regression after an update, just every week a little bit slower
- depending on the churn on the maintenance team, the current people on the team probably don't even notice an increase in loading time until they leave again for greener pastures, e.g. for them "it has always been that slow"
- management probably first read about the problem in the news ;) (which of course is a problem on its own - but as long as the money keeps flowing and the curves in Tableau go up and up, why should they even care... players apparently also endured it without bringing out the pitchforks)
I've done this kind of stuff many times, and something like a json array taking minutes to parse would likely be very very obvious when looking at a trace.
The maintenance team probably maintains other games as well.
Then you add in the knowledge loss through the churning of developers and over time the organization forgets how things should be.
Knowledge loss is precisely my point: there is very little a-priori knowledge needed to solve this, the guy who found the bug proves that.
I have nothing to do with Rockstar and wish them well, Im just saying that if I were management during these situations I would have quit or made a public apology. Its just what I feel I would have done. Regardless of the salary. I mean if one is mgmt they should take responsibility.
But maybe in late stage capitalism that is both an abhorrent and illogical idea.
Didn't think so.
This simplistic view of "management" is detrimental to a productive conversation and doesn't reflect reality.
This is the kind of weird ass replies I just said appeared last time.
PS - You are editing your comment which is fine, but in turn I have to reply. If it is not reflective of reality feel free to add to the discussion and explain what is false. Also ironically your statement doesnt add to the discussion by elaborating on any part of it. This is exactly the kind of behaviour that doesnt help anyone learn any lessons. its just random insults.
Does the concept of redundant middle management scandalize you? It's a relatively common experience, even if it's sometimes exaggerated. It actually takes a lot to be a good manager, and most people are not self aware enough to be good at it.
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.
There are obviously areas with decline for sure, e.g. the auto industry, but unions are usually seen as lessening the impact of that on the workers rather than the source of blame (not that everyone holds a single view). E.g., for the most part, people don't blame the union (or non-unionized industry) for the problems in Flint as neither is meant to privately fund e.g. the water pipes. They blame the downturn of the auto industry, which then gets into whatever reasons one prefers to assign. For some that's unions, but it's not actually been a very big mind changer on that aspect.
“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”
(ah s** here we go again by the way).
lol no.
That’s the industry you’re in unfortunately.
Timing v. trends: - big game studios are already reviled as lazy, bloated - nimble indies are hitting a lot of records - gen. AI coming for many studio roles - employees have lower friction to be entrepreneurial
It’s like if home cooking and self checkout were going really strong and then the restaurants workers picked that time to riot for higher wages
Pay related items also seem to be a small portion of what's being pushed for change.