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Hell yeah good for them.
Good for them
This is the best summary I could come up with:
More than 200 developers at Bethesda Game Studios, the studio behind hit franchises like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout, have unionized with the Communications Workers of America (CWA).
241 workers, including “artists, engineers, programmers and designers,” have signed union authorization cards or “indicated that they wanted union representation via an online portal,” according to a CWA press release.
Microsoft has recognized the union, the CWA says; the company has already recognized unions formed by Activision QA workers and ZeniMax Studios QA workers.
The CWA describes this as “the first wall-to-wall union at a Microsoft video game studio,” meaning that all eligible job titles will be represented by the CWA instead of just one type of worker, according to the CWA’s Catalina Brennan-Gatica.
(Until now, all of the unions at Microsoft-owned studios have only been formed by QA workers.)
Microsoft didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
The original article contains 165 words, the summary contains 147 words. Saved 11%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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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
If it depends on how ES6 is received they still have another 6 or 7 years
Finally some good news out of Bethesda
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!
A few years ago a tech friend literally couldn’t comprehend why he would want to be in a union.
Check again, maybe it was me.
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.
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?
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Because many ancaps don't agree with you about unions. Are you sure you're not a market anarchist?
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Not everyone here is an anarchist.
It was a rhetorical question ; unions function through negotiating together most of all.
Unions don't work without a central state.
If there isn't an organization larger than a corporation making it keep to a line, a corporation will end up as a monopoly. If a line of work for certain skills is completely monopolized by one company, a union can't ever get bigger than them to enforce anything. Its a stalemate that the company can end by training scabs and a union can't end at all. That's assuming the company doesn't just start murdering Union heads which is probably the first thing they'd start to do without an organization larger than a company to call on.
Of course, maybe we could unionize everyone into a people's union, for the purposes of having a bigger entity than a corporation that can defend the people. Pay some Union dues to them to get some police-equivalent people to make companies toe the line. But corruption exists and while the USA isn't really for the people today, that is pretty much how the USA started.
Unions as we know them rely on regulations like anti-monopoly laws to exist.
Although for the record I don't hate anarcho capitalism, I just think it's more of an ideal. A more realistic but comparable system would include a government to protect union rights and prevent oligarchical behaviors while still being mostly hands off on an industry with a Union, letting the union enforce safety and related guidelines.
Ancap does not allow murder, but ancap also doesn't protect patents and trademarks, so from stage one a monopoly can't form. In some perspective it can.
Although for the record I don’t hate anarcho capitalism, I just think it’s more of an ideal. A more realistic but comparable system would include a government to protect union rights and prevent oligarchical behaviors while still being mostly hands off on an industry with a Union, letting the union enforce safety and related guidelines.
This is what just a bit under half of ancaps think.
Almost all other ancaps want panarchy, which is more or less the same, but involves a central entity to prevent outright mass violence, while all other functionality is under exterritorial jurisdictions under it.
There's a negligible minority of complete idealists.
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.)
weird how this flavour of "anarchism" is pretty identical to conservative politics
I've specifically put parentheses to leave the hypothetical situation where I'd like to see answers as the last paragraph without them.
I've literally explained how with property you get a mechanism for communal cooperation without hierarchy.
You don't seem to differentiate private property and personal property and also I learned long ago not to bother debating with ancaps because the rational ones tend to un-cap themselves on their own eventually
The difference would exist in a world where you have a mediator making it. How would you differentiate them without such?
Say, I have a longbow, a tunic, leather pants and shoes and arrows on me and a piece of cloth I sleep on. Is that piece of cloth personal or private property? Say, for me they are all the same, but somebody near me needs that cloth. I say no, because I need it too. They say I'll be fine with half of it. I say no without disputing whether half of it is enough for my needs. Who's right?
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what private property is. Also I'm not sure if you understand exactly where capitalism begins and ends compared to other concepts like money, trade, and markets.
The gap there is again the concept of private property and how economic production capability is owned and operated.
It's shocking to me how much trouble people have imagining non-capitalist systems, propaganda has successfully conflated the idea of capitalism with economy, and with freedom. You're more a victim of that than anything else, so no hard feelings.
Anarcho-capitalism is a contradictory ideology and there's no way to reconcile those two things together. Capitalism must be rejected in any egalitarian society.
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what private property is.
That's damn certain, I've only seen any discussion on the possible separation of such 1) in Russian language, 2) it's specific to your ideology, so requires clarification of terms.
Also I’m not sure if you understand exactly where capitalism begins and ends compared to other concepts like money, trade, and markets.
Same with this. People mean all kinds of things saying "capitalism". It requires clarifying which exact meaning you are using.
It’s shocking to me how much trouble people have imagining non-capitalist systems, propaganda has successfully conflated the idea of capitalism with economy, and with freedom. You’re more a victim of that than anything else, so no hard feelings.
Well, no hard feelings, but when I try to extract specific statements from this sentence, I get none. A bit similar to the Imperial ambassador's words from "Foundation" book.
Anarcho-capitalism is a contradictory ideology and there’s no way to reconcile those two things together. Capitalism must be rejected in any egalitarian society.
Anarcho-capitalism does not necessarily involve capitalism (depends on the definition of that). It's a name that stuck.
Yikes dawg how does one communicate with someone whose ideological landscape is full of missing definitions and contradictory definitions? There's a lot to untangle here and I'm not willing or able to do that for you. I can only suggest reading more anarchist sources. I typically share this one as a decent conceptual intro https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anarchy-works although I don't agree with everything it says.
I'm finding it difficult to be talking to an "anarcho-capitalist" who doesn't seem to agree or identify with either anarchism or capitalism nor have confidence in their understanding of the terms.
Maybe don't be so quick to label yourself, let your mind explore without the baggage of assuming what you are a priori.
Yikes dawg how does one communicate with someone whose ideological landscape is full of missing definitions and contradictory definitions?
That's not what I've said. I've said that your definitions are subjective to your own ideology. Thus they require clarification when used.
There’s a lot to untangle here and I’m not willing or able to do that for you. I can only suggest reading more anarchist sources. I typically share this one as a decent conceptual intro https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anarchy-works although I don’t agree with everything it says.
I've read Kropotkin. For everything good, against everything bad, no specifics, no mechanisms, and how animals don't hurt each other for power (in fact they do).
I’m finding it difficult to be talking to an “anarcho-capitalist” who doesn’t seem to agree or identify with either anarchism or capitalism nor have confidence in their understanding of the terms.
I've even explained to you how ancap is just a common name and what the ideology called that actually is. That your brain skips anything you don't expect from this conversation is your own flaw, sorry.
Maybe don’t be so quick to label yourself, let your mind explore without the baggage of assuming what you are a priori.
That's amazing.
Here are a few anarchist and anarchist-adjacent sources to go into specifics about institutions that an anarchist society might have:
The Possibility of Cooperation by Michael Taylor - A critique of Hobbes's argument for the state with modern game theory
https://www.radicalxchange.org/media/blog/plural-money-a-new-currency-design/ - A currency design that encourages mutual aid. Mentions how collective ownership can be achieved without a state.
Ancaps support employment contracts. This is contradictory: https://www.ellerman.org/inalienable-rights-part-i-the-basic-argument/
If regulation didn't work, corpos wouldn't fight so hard to dismantle them every step of the way. If they didn't work, we wouldn't see things get markedly worse every time they're removed.
And ancap just sounds like all the worst bits of libertarianism taken to their illogical extreme and would produce one of the worst possible societies imaginable so why do any people here not hate ancap?
If regulation didn’t work, corpos wouldn’t fight so hard to dismantle them every step of the way. If they didn’t work, we wouldn’t see things get markedly worse every time they’re removed.
OK, they work, just both ways. Corps work to make them work more for them and less for everyone else. Since they have more power, they slowly succeed.
And ancap just sounds like all the worst bits of libertarianism taken to their illogical extreme and would produce one of the worst possible societies imaginable so why do any people here not hate ancap?
Ancap is one of the words for libertarianism.
and would produce one of the worst possible societies imaginable
I think a society valuing freedom and non-aggression above the rest in not that.
best thing bethesda has done this decade
Well it's not the company that did it, it's the workers
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.
What are you talking about, he revolutionized the walking simulator. Now you can jump real high too. And instead of traveling places you just loading screen everywhere.
You can jump further too, but only if you rebind the jump button :D
This is the first thought I had. Capitalist apologists would probably say the exact opposite, that owners need to be able to abuse workers to get more and better work out of them, but that's basically never true. Owners owe so much to their workers' creativity - even in fields where you wouldn't expect - and they are deeply unaware of it.
to be fair, a forest fire might improve product quality from what we saw in starfield
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...)
This will help standardize contracts across the business and ensure things like credits, benefits, etc are done in a systemic way
Damn I needed some good news bad, that is fantastic!
Hope it won’t slow down tes 6
Can't slow down something that's not moving.
That said, I'd rather play a union made TES6 than another non-union Starfield.