next up: microsoft announces development of Bethesda’s next game will be largely outsourced
Seeing the rebirth of unions in tech companies might be one of my favorite things about this timeline.
Not nearly prevalent enough or fast enough, let’s gooooo!
I’m at a tech company. It’s nowhere near prevalent, nor do I think many employees actually want it. I’d love for it to happen, though, and IMO the first place it should happen is the video games industry.
Agreed. I think we’re in the, “fuck around and find out,” era of tech company unionization, and I’m fortunate enough to work for a company whose legal team is smart enough to know that a reasonably happy, fulfilled, and compensated workforce is significantly less likely to even start discussing unionization, and so I don’t think that my company will see it anytime soon, if ever (which I also think is fine, for the record). But to your point, with the way that the vast majority of the video game industry treats their employees, I hope that every single one of those large game companies ends up joining a union, because the employees deserve better.
A few years ago a tech friend literally couldn’t comprehend why he would want to be in a union.
A glimmer of hope in dystopyan world. Starlight Glimmer of hope.
Gamersprolitariat did unite and push back against exploitation.
As a decades-long Bethesda fan, I think this might improve product quality from what we saw in Starfield. It’s clear that somebody needs to be able to talk back to King Todd.
Maybe if they’re not so alienated from their work, we’ll see more of other people’s creative vision.
Starfield is Todd Howard making his Homer Simpson car. It’s a pile of shit no one wanted.
I do think that’s more Emil Pagliarulo’s car than Todd
next up: microsoft closes bethesda game studio, reassigns all assets to other departments.
… still glad to see it though. i’d love to see tech giants brought low by all the workers just withdrawing their labor.
This is what’s next for Bethesda, but it’s smart of them to only unionize after Bethesda has started on their next “independent” project. It all depends on how ES6 does. If it isn’t a smash hit with decent reception, Bethesda will be absorbed into Microsoft I guarantee it
Considering the assholery that Obsidian went through with New Vegas, I fully expect the higher ups to do everything in their power to fuck up TES6 if it means the end of the union, one way or another.
Congrats! Now you guys can use collective bargaining to ensure you’re paid for every single bug you code. This is huge!
Seriously though, unions are good for the industry, I’m happy to see this is continuing at ever more software companies.
Unions work in ancap just as well as IRL, thus I support unions.
Regulation doesn’t work IRL and doesn’t exist in ancap.
Why do people here hate ancap again?
Ancaps are like monotheists to anarchism’s atheism. You’ve given up MOST oppression and hierarchy but for some reason you still worship the inequalities of capitalism.
Abolish all hierarchy, end all oppression.
but for some reason you still worship the inequalities of capitalism.
We actually don’t, we worship voluntarism, taboo on aggressive violence and personal borders, the rest is up to free interpretation from these axioms.
Also it’s not monotheism, rather a system like Taoism in the wild.
But I’ll return to this:
but for some reason you still worship the inequalities of capitalism
There’s an issue with no evolutionary mechanisms in a society.
A person who doesn’t know how to survive and doesn’t get help from others dies. A person who knows or gets that help doesn’t. On this level there are no problems as we assume that people help each other, if we are talking about “usual” anarchism.
Now, people form communes. Communes require organization. We don’t want them to have hierarchy, but the situation where everybody respects the rights of others won’t hold by itself. If you expel those who make trouble, then a sufficiently intelligent sociopath may persuade the majority to expel those they don’t like. Other than it being the problem in itself, this will eventually make sociopaths more likely to be the leaders of communes, and form hierarchy. If you don’t expel those who make trouble, you’ll need hierarchy right away to re-educate or jail or punish and otherwise discourage them somehow. These are all with the assumption of common property.
But if we have private property and voluntarism, so every person is a faction in itself, as if they, pun intended, had sovereignty, - we have an evolutionary mechanism which reduces the advantage sociopaths have. It doesn’t negate it, but you may collect power, expressed in property, as an alternative to power expressed in social ties, and the existence of the latter you can’t abolish. So we prolong the life of communities.
And there’s another consideration - property can be collected both by honest and dishonest means, the former meaning someone’s opinion is more valuable on practical subjects. Power as social ties is usually of the “dishonest” kind. Even without private property, frankly, someone of more use for the commune has more weight, but private property allows to account for that more easily. When your understanding who is more useful for the commune and who is less useful for the commune is skewed, it’ll have smaller chances of survival.
And then how do you share resources with a commune part of which you don’t want to be? What will make them behave in the spirit of brotherhood and equality and such? Same if you are a smaller commune. Will they declare you antisocial or something, capture all those resources for themselves and leave you to die?
(With ancap to share resources and various devices of existence property is preserved, and other borders erected, and systems on basis of voluntary agreements are offered to prevent violence.)
Capitalism is inherently based on dishonesty. It routinely treats people as things in the employer-employee relationship. When the factual and legal situation don’t match, that is morally a fraud.
Postcapitalism would consists of various intersecting and overlapping voluntary democratic associations managing their own collectivized means of production. Within these groups, there would still be a notion of possession of the shared asset.
It routinely treats people as things in the employer-employee relationship.
No. A contract can only be signed by two equal sides. If you mean emotionally and in planning - well, do you treat your employer as people or as that thing, system, which allows you to get money in exchange for work?
Postcapitalism would consists of various intersecting and overlapping voluntary democratic associations managing their own collectivized means of production.
Does this mean that such an association is the basic entity? Because any system where a human is not the basic entity is unacceptable for me.
there would still be a notion of possession of the shared asset
Specifics? When I leave that voluntary association, what of possessions stops being managed by it? If I enter it with some “means of production” and leave it after some time, with what I leave?
How does possession of those means overlap between associations?
Does the described mean that a person can’t have property, but an association can?
Capitalism puts de facto persons into a thing’s legal role. Consenting to a contract doesn’t alienate personhood. As labor-sellers, workers are treated as persons. The issue arises with the workers as labor performers. The employees are jointly de facto responsible for using up inputs to produce outputs, but get 0% of property and liabilities for the results of production. Instead, the employer has 100% sole legal responsibility.
Individuals are the basic entity. Groups’ rules vary
@technologyThe issue arises with the workers as labor performers. The employees are jointly de facto responsible for using up inputs to produce outputs, but get 0% of property and liabilities for the results of production. Instead, the employer has 100% sole legal responsibility.
That’s true, but cooperatives can legally exist where workers share those.
It’s rather that dynamic of power makes bad behavior advantageous, but what would change this in “simple” anarchism?
Ancaps imagine aiming for maximal granularity and variability, so that the same kind of abusive behavior wouldn’t fit all cases and rules’ combinations (same as with epidemics) and there’d be market mechanisms functioning due to scale (things generally look better when there are, say, 100 microsofts instead of 1). They assume that those variability and granularity won’t be reduced through open violence (conquering of subduing jurisdictions with differing rules on something) and enforcement of monopolies (trademarks, patents, licenses and such), because of everybody being armed to the teeth and usually there’s still assumed some centralized state which will keep the situation from coming to open violence.
In case of “simple” anarchism I see contempt for ancap concepts of solving this, but what are the alternatives?
No anwer is too stupid for me, even new genetically altered humans (I’ve literally encountered an opinion that an anarchist society may require this to make humanity more empathetic, LOL).
Individuals are the basic entity. Groups’ rules vary
This doesn’t seem to be different from ancap+panarchy when described so abstractly.
Okay…but what about making a good game.
That’s the neat thing about workers’ rights. Workers have more interest in making good products than investors, especially in artistic fields. Investors will gladly sabotage a product’s quality for the sake of personal gain and move on to the next company with goodwill to exploit, but for workers a job well done is inherently rewarding.
Unionization directly leads to better games with more artistic merit.
Better compensation and working conditions typical result in improved productivity and higher quality goods.
And I doubt the studio will see the end of this decade under Microshit‘s umbrella. Nonetheless I applaud the employees. Their success might be short lived but it‘s a success all the same.
5.5 years? No way they’ll shut down this quickly. The next Elder Scrolls alone will carry them into 2030. (As much as I would enjoy you being right though…)
You assume TES6 isnt going to be pure trash like FO76 and starfield but… um… I dont share that same outlook. If anything TES6 will be the final nail in the coffin when the masses get their hands on it and see the buggy outdated mess they get.
