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Video game developers need to unionize, like as a whole. This has pretty much become the norm for these big studios and it's fucked up.
I feel like that would change video game development to be like filmmaking. In Hollywood, everyone working on a movie is unionized but jobs are not steady. You have to get a job on each movie separately and once filming wraps up you’re out of a job again.
Game publishers seem to already want that sort of model anyway. They don’t want to hire 1000 people full time. They want temporary workers until the game releases, then a small staff for maintenance and updates.
Uh, that's how it works already.
Somewhat, but not formally. Epic did keep those 1000 staff on Fortnite until now. They would’ve laid them all off years ago under the Hollywood model (gone as soon as filming completes).
That’s more or less how it works so unionising to get better working conditions would just be a win.
I’m so glad I didn’t go into games development. I make boring old business software and it’s great.
It would be a win in the short term for the developers who unionize but I think it would be a long term loss. The AAA games industry is already in a pretty precarious position. Hollywood (which I think is a preview of things to come for game studios) is practically moribund.
The issue is that the bar keeps getting raised on production costs. That means spending more and more money up front which involves bigger and bigger risks. This in turn leads studios to take fewer and fewer risks in gameplay design, story, and all the other innovations that people want.
At the same time, the indie game world is getting better and better at innovating and capturing more of the many small niches that people are looking for. This further adds to the pressure on big studios to spend more on artists and level designers. It’s a vicious cycle!
I think unionizing will lead to the closure of a lot of game studios for the above reasons, so those developers may find themselves in the indie game market (which offers zero job security and is really feast or famine in terms of success).
Hopefully this will get people to stop pretending Epic is the good guys against Google and Apple.
Android and macOS never stopped Fortnite from running on their platform. Only iOS ever did that, because Epic wanted its virtual currency to be sold directly from them and not give Apple their cut. In and of itself, that is not an unreasonable argument, except Apple is entitled to something considering Fortnite has multiple 10GB+ updates, per user, per week. Multiple. They can't afford that infrastructure, so they have Apple bear the load, but they don't want to pay for it. That's what the App Store fees are for.
On macOS you also have the App Store, but you can also go around it entirely. The Epic Games Launcher works on macOS. However, Epic does not distribute Fortnite through it on macOS because they don't want to pay the server costs of the constant, huge, mandatory updates. They just say it's unavailable. On Android, the Play Store has never been the exclusive app store. You could always just download an app and install it. Recently they warn you it could be harmful, but they still let you do it. Nothing has ever stopped Epic from releasing Fortnite directly on Android, or via the Epic Games Store. Similar to Apple, they just want Google to bear the load.
Yes, they recently settled with Google. Now Google will carry Fortnite in the Play Store and support the updates, which are getting neither smaller nor less frequent, and Google will take less money from selling the Fortnite "V-Bucks" (even though you could always buy them directly from Epic, either on their website or via gift cards sold in stores).
It was never about the V-bucks. Yes, Fortnite makes money from licensing pop culture stuff and selling it to players, but the game's true purpose is to advertise the quality and capability of the Unreal Engine it runs on. If you've never played Fortnite, do yourself a favour and try it out, preferably on a modern console, or a capable PC. The gameplay is at least as good as old Unreal Tournament (which is what it's basically the modern incarnation of), and the graphics are outstanding. Yeah, the culture around the game is juvenile, but if you're good at shooters, you will do okay. I can't love it, I remember when it was a beta, it was a very different animal to what it is now, and I remember YouTubers I still follow raving about how cool Fortnite was. It still has some of those elements, but it's not what was originally promised. In many ways it's more, but I'm not sure all those ways themselves are good.
Anyway, while you can say that Apple and Google are "rent seeking," Epic has always been after free high-demand high uptime web serving. Maybe Apple and Google should have charged less, but Epic was always trying to get something for nothing, and that should be frowned upon as well.
Except they can afford that infrastructure because you can download Fortnite on Android through their own epic store, but on apple they have no choice but to use the iOS store.
Maybe none of the 3 are "good guys" and we should be rooting for the fight itself instead?
Yes, I've made that point a few times. ;)
My bad, I probably missed it with my scrolling-ruined attention span.
Hopefully this will get people to stop pretending Epic is the good guys against Google and Apple.
NGL I haven't heard a soul saying Epic is the good guys in any situation involving them. Randy tried to frame the game store as helping devs but a 12% cut for Epic instead of 30% and all the prices were still the same so as a consumer I didn't care... but the PC exclusives thing? Yea deffo didn't spark joy.
Interesting. The Internet's been pretty divided, with a lot of people supporting Epic because they ultimately want to see Apple's control over iOS reduced, and ultimately, so do I. But the fact is, if Apple allowed sideloading like Android did, Epic would still try to force Apple to allow them on the App Store despite breaking the rules because they want Apple to host their app and its updates. Those of us rooting for Epic aren't rooting for Tim Sweeney per se, we're rooting for the change he's bringing.
Your argument would be valid if Apple allowed any other app marketplace on iOS. They force all apps to use their app store. That's the definition of anticompetitive behavior. Apple wants to force everyone to use their app store and get a cut of all their transactions, that's some corporate mafia extortion shit.
Epic sucks, but Apple is/was completely in the wrong there. Google is at least less guilty, as you can still install apps from outside the Google app store on android.
I never said otherwise about iOS. I said macOS lets you install apps outside the App Store.
The question is, did you misunderstand me, or are you intentionally moving the goalposts?
You completely missed the point of the previous comment.
No one exonerated Apple; they just pointed out that there are “no good guys here”
Then you missed the fact that Google is locking down other app stores, but you’re still yelling at Apple for being Apple? Get it together man
I didn't say they were exonerating Apple. I was specifically pointing to their argument regarding Apple bearing the server costs. For macOS, sure, that's valid. But for iOS, Apple is forcing those costs on themselves by keeping a closed system.
Also, Google is not locking down apps from outside the store. I still run the f-droid store just fine. Issuing a warning about installing unknown apps is hardly "locking it down." For people not knowing what they're doing, I think giving them a warning that APKs from third party sources could be dangerous is absolutely fine. That being said, Google could easily create or at least facilitate a APK signing service for third parties so that the warning wouldn't appear for APKs that aren't from shady sites.
I think I just poorly framed and articulated my response. No need to be so hostile and telling me to, "get it together." This is supposed to be a casual discussion, not some heated argument.
How is this unexpected?
I would guess, Fortnite has peaked a while ago and entered the decline phase. So...
One could argue, that it would have been nice to split the revenue more evenly. But shrinking an unprofitable business isn't bad per se. Or ist it?
Something pointed out via a friend is that, while we like to shit on corpos for these layoffs, sometimes in the art/story field they (the employees) really are not needed or not desired anymore. Some places eant to hire a new storyboard person/team, or art directors to make changes to the existing items . The first guy made his impact, now the company wants changes that, as an artist, they just don't see from their artstyle (of any medium like story, characters, environment etc) perspective. Think the botched Ecce Homo fresco as it was originally painted, and then the restoration - the original artist could not concieve of what it became and therefore is legitimately no longer needed. Paying him his dues and letting him go is the nature of it, if done honestly.
That doesn't excuse hoarding wealth and trying to get out of paying severance, retirements, royalties for their work, and insurances, but while we often praise that one time Nintendos kept people on at the expense of the CEO, the question is "for what though" if it was a legitimate direction pivot.
But in general fuck epic because thats not what this is. This is almost always"line must go up" behavior. Just wanted to mention it so I can say "ah, there it is" when fortnite skin quality/story direction/landscape changes invariably catches up with and shows the result of these missing staff in a season or 2, as a direct result of these people's layoffs.
