Employee Dissatisfaction in The Video Game Industry Leads to Growing Demand for Unionization
The year is 1899, and anarchy in the Wild West is in decline. You and your gang of outlaws are faced with many foes and many more tough decisions that will ultimately decide your fate. And so you forget that you are sitting on your sofa, staring at a screen, and immersed in one of the defining games of your generation, Red Dead Redemption 2, delivered to you by the well-respected Rockstar Studios.
What you do not know about Rockstar Studios is this: its chief executive bragged in a Vulture feature that employees worked 100-hour weeks several times in the year just to release the game on it’s scheduled date.
The comments came from a sense of pride and were a display of the effort the team had placed in the game. Yet, those comments also give an insight into the prevalent industry practices and their impacts on employees that are often left undiscussed.
The state of the video game industry is complicated. It continues to grow with consumers like never before. 60 % of Americans play video games daily, and another 56% engage in multiplayer games once or twice a week. With around 90% of the games being connected to the internet, games can be, and are constantly updated with DLC — downloadable content that makes video game worlds feel like a living environment. So it’s not surprising to learn that the video game market today amounts to over $95 billion.
What is surprising for many to learn is the state under which video game employers work. The ‘crunch’ culture, defined as working overtime and sacrificing personal life for the company is prevalent in the industry. Statistics state that more than 79% of video game companies consist of less than 500 employees, and crunch culture is most prevalent in these companies. Due to small teams, employees are pressured to work overtime to produce content.
However, crunch culture still dominates many bigger companies as well. Rockstar, the esteemed publisher of Red Dead Redemption, is one of the less extreme examples of the crunch.
Other companies expect employees to work 100-hour long weeks, often without extra pay. This is considered a privilege in the game industry and employees are willing to do whatever it takes to stay there, says Emily Grace in an interview with TIME Magazine. The truth of the matter is this: companies continue to lay-off workers post-release, leaving them without a source of income for months. So employees have to work hard to earn a spot in the company.
Overtime work and stress can result in extreme consequences for company employees. Amanda Gardner, an independent indie game developer comments in an LA Times interview that “I’ve seen the effect of it, and I’ve heard horror stories from the trenches about how people have gotten divorced and people have gotten hospitalized.”
And all this is finally shifting the perspective of the video game industry employees towards unionization. An annual survey by the International Game Developers Association shows that demand for unionization has grown over the last ten years. In 2019, only 1⁄3 of the population was in support of unionization. Now, those numbers have risen dramatically with 46% answering ‘yes’ and another 26% answering ‘maybe’.
However, according to Jet Bogan, it is hard to ask colleagues to unionize when they are so dependant on their company income. In addition to that, video game companies themselves are hesitant to comment on potential job action.
There has surely been a dramatic shift in the industry, with employees making their voices heard through the media, and it has given rise to more initiatives that promote unionization.
