GameDev Industry is Suffering From Stockholm Syndrome – But Trade Unions Can Help!
Hi from Gamechuck. This article was written as a result of our internal discussions and includes thoughts from Lucija (who is drafting the collective agreement in our company), Alex (the managing director), and Jan (our elected union representative).
As this dev blog is set on the backdrop of Labour day (1st of May), we’re taking the topical opportunity to write about a thing that interests us personally, and that’s trade unions.
As you probably heard, this is becoming a thing in the game development industry, with large op-eds like this one popping up here and there every now and then.
Things suck
Last year we visited many industry events and were happy to see working conditions becoming more and more of a topic there as well as in media. Just last year Reboot Develop in Dubrovnik hosted a wonderful lecture “Game Creators and the Quest for Worker Rights” from Kate Edwards, the CEO of Geogrify and the former Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA).
Even if a conference has no worker-themed talks, you never fail to hear at least a few “personal horror stories” from keynote speakers from their experiences working with the big leagues. It’s always a similar story – how the CEO or board of this or that company made a series of bad decisions that the workforce couldn’t do anything about or had no say in.
Continue reading “GameDev Industry is Suffering From Stockholm Syndrome – But Trade Unions Can Help!”