Thank fuck for that. With any luck the better conditions will even give them the power to push back on management if management demands something stupid be added to a game.
In an industry as notoriously dreadful as game development, every bit of quality of life counts.
In other news, Microsoft shuts down Bethesda game studios…
Microsoft has actually voluntarily recognized a gaming company union before. It seems they prefer to voluntarily recognize the unions and then fight them during the contract phase, not sure exactly why they do it this way instead of trying to stonewall the first step like most companies.
Maybe they try are trying to avoid some additional scrutiny by letting the union exist?
It’s more likely a cost benefit analysis. Fighting the Unions is lawyer expensive and PR expensive. Gamers are noisy after all, when riled up. Microsoft is evil, but also like Trump, they understand optics.
Oh this could definitely be it, let the union exist, get the good press, and then fuck them hard in contract negotiations.
I think it might be more subtle than that, unions exist so that when negotiations happen they can fuck back, but we know Microsoft can strategise longer term than that. They pioneered “embrace, extend, extinguish”. Embracing a union then trying to infiltrate and turn it into a corporatised union is another version of that exact same play.
Companies can leverage CBAs to “fix” pay scales well below CPI or other metrics by forcing extensive negotiation as a way to sell down an agreement. Similarly, they can use agreements to create separate classes, for example: the SAG/AFTRA agreement for voice actors with all the Gen AI exemptions.
I wonder where a union draws its power from in an industry where there are so many people desperate for work right now.
Trade unions make sense because there’s such a shortage of skilled workers in total, much less scabs. How does a union for such a well known legacy game developer sustain itself in an environment where I bet scabs would be in abundance?
Maybe for Bethesda specifically, there’s also a shortage of skilled work? I mean, they often hire modders and Creation Engine STILL uses flash (Starfield’s menus are .swf files),
Creation Engine STILL uses flash (Starfield’s menus are .swf files),
YOOOOOO WHAT THE FUUUUCK.
Seriously, how hard is it to change the UI to use JS?? They really go through old ass Adobe documentation whenever they make a new menu with AS3???
I seriously hope it’s all AS and compiled to SWF, if they’re running some fucked version of Adobe Flash to make the swfs by hand, 💀
Seriously, how hard is it to change the UI to use JS??
JavaScript can do animations without wanting to commit suicide?
With some jquery, yes. Without it, suicide feels like a release
I don’t know about the details, but I found that out while browsing the menu mods, as the Undelayed Menus, which removes the pointless delay in opening and closing of menus, comes with a bunch of .swf and that was when I thought to myself “You have to be fucking kidding”
Checking any other menu mod, it’ll be .swf files.
Yea, they probably have that one guy still there from the days creation engine was made that is required to be on staff for any future games to fix whatever archaic code they break. Get him on board with the union and Bethesda is probably held by the short hairs to do whatever they say.
I wonder where a union draws its power from in an industry where there are so many people desperate for work right now.
With more than 450 employees, you can’t really replace all that on the fly.
Maybe they can start making good games again
Nah man, I want the same tired design as we’ve had for the better part of twenty years!
I COULD EAT SWEETROLLS ALL MY LIFE
*Presses jump button for no reason*
*Presses interact button to vault over obstacle*
“God do I love these game mechanics”
How are the decisions taken by the highier-ups related to workers unionizing?
Hell yeah. Hopefully this will improve the quality of their games as well
Fuck todd
✊
Their games are shit - Starfailed was garbage, Fallout 3 and 4 are running on the same engine designed for… Oblivion 20 years ago. They can’t write jack shit, and the optimization is a joke.
I hope they go bankrupt
“I don’t personally like their games so I hope all of the hundreds of employees working on them lose their jobs and their families are devastated by life changing hardship”
I think you missed the exit for Reddit, it was back there a ways.
“Fortnite and Tekken 8 are running on the same engine designed for… Unreal Tournament 20 years ago.”
I think their games are great. And I think the Creation Engine is great, the amount of immersion I get and amount of hours I spend playing fallout, oblivion, Skyrim, morrowind is second to none. The mod support is endless, they were in a league of their own when it came to RPGs
Granted they have slipped a little (okay alot) lately but that doesn’t take away from their past works.
Creation Engine is great
It’s objectively not. It was great back when Oblivion came out
oblivion, Skyrim, morrowind
Back then their games were good. But it was long, long time ago.
It’s objectively not. It was great back when Oblivion came out
It objectively is for their use case. What do you want them to do? Switch to Unreal? Switch to Unity? Switch to any other pre-built engine? They can’t, none of those will work for their use case without major modification.
Want them to create an entirely new engine from scratch? I mean, they could do that, but that would involve throwing away 20 years of innovation and experience on this product and would delay any projects massively.
Want them to massively update their engine? They just did with Starfield’s Creation Engine 2.0, which fixed or improved 90% of their engine issues and is a massive overhaul of their original engine.
This is a company that recently sold for several billion dollars, they’ve undoubtedly had a team investigating what they could to do their engine for at least a decade, and they’ve decided that this path is the only realistic one for them.
But I’m sure you know better than the large team that does this for a living. /s
What do you want them to do? Switch to Unreal?
Yep. Unreal is more than capable doing everything they need
They just did with Starfield’s Creation Engine 2.0, which fixed or improved 90% of their engine issues
It’s the most unoptimized engine out there. It’s performance is horrible. And Starfield couldn’t even achieve loading screen free planet surface landing like No Man’s Sky, or Star Citizen
Out of curiosity, which engine would you say is your favourite? If Bethesda were going to start using a new engine tomorrow, which engine would you hope they would use?
If they had to switch now? Unreal Engine.
But what they should do years ago, is to use engineering expertise of IdSoftware they own to create their own engine tailored to their needs.
