Doesn't mean that if you guys all get fired that they will be able to match what you have done in the past actually it will be the opposite. It's sad to see my favourite company since I was a kid being taken over like this and they are ruining our games also.
All they are interested in is money, every other week they are trying to add more to in game shops etc Diablo immortal dropping because they had a wet dream about how many Asians might buy it.
@@meliohe5080 No, but Capitalism is an economic system that inherently rewards corporations being greedy. So yeah, I would say you can't have Capitalism without greed.
The fact that Blizzard has been under fire for something every year these past few. The company has seriously lost its former integrity. Not even in just game development, but company ethics (or maybe they never had a strong/clear ethics code to begin with).
Bitter News to add to this: About a year later, Blizzard decided to close their location in France. I'm curious about how the fact that they are unionized played into this.
Different industry altogether, but Walmart does just that under the pretense that "it wasn't profitable" that even if true doesn't hide their ulterior motive. They hire union busters after all, so does Amazon I believe
If I had to guess of how big a factor their being unionized was, I say about 98.99% or more. The only reason it's not 100% is dur to rounding errors from potential cheaper labor elsewhere (which is itself a matter of unions or their lack). Companies hate unions; they loath the idea of their cattle, I mean employees, having any rights or protections whatsoever. Full stop. There is good reason that companies spend millions of dollars each in antiunion and union busting activities.
@@wallhackergotdammit I checked this out the other day, apparently they are not in the same situation that Bungie was, so they cannot physically separate from Activision as they are technically the same company now, whereas Bungie was just a Developer using a Publisher. But yeah, Blizz getting away from Kotick would be a huge start.
Huge shoutout to these guys, because here in france, the employers syndicate and the lobbies fight hard to take this kind of laws down, for they think the Code du Travail (labour laws) is too restrictive. IMO, the workers are totally right but for some reason, president Macron thinks that Blizzard's CEO is the one to defend...
He probably thinks so because less companies will put offices in France because it is hard to "hire and fire". Not saying that is good, just that could be the reason. At the moment there are enough other countries without such restrictive labour laws where companies can go, so it will probably be bad for France, at least short time.
I found this video really interesting. It's great to see how things are different in France, in terms of informing how things could be different elsewhere. As usual, you get information across in a way that's easy to take in and digest. Great animation as always.
@@RobertsKong That France is really bad for tech jobs and unions make it worse over there. Simply put, the harder it is to fire people the harder it makes to hire people that is why there is so much unemployment in France.
@@todomachii That's an interesting argument. I can definitely see how it must be frustrating for a company to not be able to operate freely in the hiring and firing of their own employees, but I also think it's crucial that these people feel protected and can stand up to bullying, massive corporations. What do you think to the fact that Blizzard had made record profits? Seems to me like they could've been gentler to the departing staff should they want to turf them out of employment.
@@RobertsKong I completely agree with you and that is why I don't really care about Activision and why we shouldn't talk about them. They killed their best creative teams and the results is that they haven't any new interesting games announced. What do you think about the employee that has chosen to work for Activision. Why would you do that when you cannot ignore how they treat their staff? The real question is how do we help the next Blizzard, the next innovator, to build the best franchise and the best working conditions? There is an objective reason why there are not many studio in France because employee are too protected and the net results is a lack of innovation and the double amount of unemployment.
Ireland is generally cheaper to do business than France aside from the salary difference. We have ridiculously low corporation tax. Cork has the European HQ of Apple. Also offices for Amazon, Facebook Oculus and Blizzard in a relatively small city of 120k people. American companies also like that Ireland speaks English. We do have a great third level education system. But mostly its the cost of business that Ireland wins over so many companies.
@@pavelmeyer9197 To be fair, capitalism and greed are two faces of the same coin. People like Kotick use their financial power to prop up capitalism so they can satisfy their greed and gain even more financial power.
luckyli not only france. and this is also why you have to accept the working-laws of the countrys. otherwise they will just place the corp.-head of each buisness in some 3 world country, just to bringt theyr laws as corparat-law to each branch. ... and im not sure, if someone in the eu or the us is willing to work for the same conditions, like in china, india or afrika. ... so yea. the standards have to be the same, of the country they have theyr branch in and hire ppl there.
France is falling behind on a global scale, slowing growth for decades now. Unionizing might be great for the individual, but soon they'll just move everything to Asia where labor is cheap.
Solid nation-wide labor laws, first and foremost. Might be harder in US, where every state is has separate jurisdiction. But unions shouldn't be treated as replacement for lack of solid regulations. They're advisory body, and do great when the scope is limited to a particular industry or workplace. Poor labor law is the real problem.
Unions with dynamite and rifles are how we got those reforms. Everything from child labor laws to the 8 hour day 40 hour work week can be attributed to organized labor. Look up Mother Jones(Mary Jones not the publication), Blair Mountain Mine Wars, Haymarket Affair. they sure as hell didn't allow us to learn that in US schools. Skip out on liberal news sources when you look it up; they might "sanitize" the story.
@Stale Bagelz Mine bosses were raping their wives and daughters. It started with strikes and then the companies hired the Pinkertons to club and machine gun the miners. Fun Fact: Securitas has direct lineage to the Pinkerton company and still has union busting services. They post spies in coffee shops near places of employment.
The world needs more unionisation in general but definitely in the games industry. Keep it up Bratterz! Solidarity with the Blizzard staff fighting for their jobs against corporate greed.
maybe we could call it the Soviet Union. Nah that doesn't sound good, let's name it something more appetizing. I KNOW, European Union. We can pretend its less communist!!!
@@andyrushent251 And the most incredibly broken, corrupt and completely useless neoliberal establishment on the planet. There's a reason why countries that can produce are leaving it, and the ones that can't are clinging to it.
As a shop steward in a more traditional UK union it's nice to see some actual push for unionisation regarding issues that matter to the workers. It's the antithesis I've seen in other unions that have become ineffectual because they waste all their time arguing about issues that have little to actually do with their job as a union.
Diablo Immortal was a blip. What hit activision was the short term success followed by the long term underperformance of Call of Duty's battle royal mode.
Brilliant, Bratterz. Absolutely brilliant work. The entire video was super well done, from information to animation, all great. I love the angle your channel takes - really filling a niche not really covered much.
Great video overall, and it's nice to see that at least one part of the world has some form of protection against these layoffs, but I don't think you should assume older employees just don't want to rock the boat because they're comfortable; I've read more than a few statements from older developers in the US that are primarily worried about their families. If they make themselves a target and get themselves fired or, less directly, are put in work environments that force them to quit, they're not as capable of supporting themselves or moving to another city for work when they have a spouse and kids.
@@lizardlegend42 "Within the same company" as opposed to worker solidarity across several companies. Again, it struck me as more of a general statement.
@@Gormathius a general statement of what? How does it relate to this story where all we saw was great worker solidarity. Even if it's meant as a broad general statement, it's a non-sequiter at best.
the effect of the amount of political and business campaigning against unions over the past decades is pretty dang evident in a number of the comments here, which is disappointing, but not unexpected. wonderful video as always, and good breakdown of the facts.
Eh, unions are just as capable of becoming the same soulless exploitative bureaucracies as the corporations they fight against. Government can be bad, corporations can be bad and unions can be bad.
Really glad that you're using this channel and audiance to talk about the industry and labour rights. The visualization of the information was also really strong this week!
I'm still confused about where has gone all the money this people've made during this last 15 years. Wikipedia: "The game had over one hundred million registered accounts by 2014 and by 2017, had grossed over $9.23 billion in revenue, making it one of the highest-grossing video game franchises of all time."
Thank you, for your great work! These videos of yours look great, sound great and tackle important issues in a very unique way. Keep on the good work. I like to believe, that gold always shines through in the long run. Maybe doing some crossover-stuff to raise awareness for the channel would be a good idea? With ShutUpandSitDown (how boardgames inspire videogames for example), or RPS/ Eurogamer or (insert any nice games youtuber here)...
This is what is wrong with business in general, not just the games industry. The constant desire (greed) for more and more profit. Where hundreds of millions, even billions of profit is not enough. I mean, profit is literally where you've earned more money than you've spent. If you've LOST money, sure make people redundant. It sucks (I have been made redundant once before), but I guess you have to protect the future of the company. If you've made a small profit and think things could get worse, maybe. But not when you've made massive profits like this. Great work as always Chris.
Excellent video as always Chris! One of the many things that I love about living in this country is the strong worker's rights. It's very popular on the net to describe the French as lazy because they have negotiated these rights over the years but the truth is that most people work extremely hard and while the standard working week is 35 hours, that's a minimum for full time work not a maximum and it's frequently exceeded. I live in Brittany where many people work shifts in meat production factories, often opposite shifts to their partner to cover childcare. Everyone knows someone who works in meat production here. You will find people with degrees on the factory floor because there is nothing else. Unions protect these workers and they protect those in game development. They helped me when I worked in corporate IT back in the UK and our company was sold to a multinational and put through round after round of rendunancies - I was a member of UNISON. If you ever need help with French or survival tips while in Brittany, don't hesitate to get in touch!
I would like for trends in companies to be examined of people in sales/marketing, being promoted over those in the actual creation of said games and the ramifications of the developers, coders, artists, writers, etc. I'm a technician but it's an underlying trend that might be an overarching issue thats causing the sort of AAA stagnancy we as gamers are seeing right now. Just a thought, don't know if its valid either. Just something to look into.
By promoted I mean representing all the departments equally in the upper echelons of whatever the company is. Seems sales is driving the car more than the development team.
Record results at the cost of human dignity great work Activision I hoped Blizzard did the same as bungie but with wow subscriptions it seems pretty difficult.
They can't. Bungie was a subsidiary - Activision and Blizzard MERGED. They are the same company. one cannot leave. It's over. Blizzard can pretty much never ever become independent again, it would mean that the board of directors for "Activision Blizzard" would sell their own IP... to their own ... Employees... Wat? They will never sell their IPs to anyone unless the franchises start tanking hard and become a liability for them. And then they would sell it to an external company who'd pay them some good cash for it. It was over for Blizz the moment the merger happened. Me and many like me knew this would happen, even back then. We wrote angry forum posts about it, saying it would poison and corrupt Blizzard. Kill it from within. Welcome to the current year.
@@grumpycup4762 yeah i know that most likely blizzard will never be what it was again , most of its veteran programmers left by now but in comercial societies where there is a merger there can always be a split too, it depends on the terms agreed upon in the merger so I would never say never but it seems very unlikely now that even bungie left off.
I think the only way unionisation can progress to a point at which the big publishers & studios have to listen is to start small. Get employees at smaller studios to fully unionise & the union suddenly gets some clout once bigger ones want to buy them up & absorb (or sack) those employees. It's incredibly frustrating that it's such a slow process, but I hope that more of the actual workers will see the benefit rather than having a go at those with protection.
Lol. This is happening to Woolworths in Australia, giant supermarket chain who’s CEO makes 8m a year. All these department managers got made redundant, even the department 2IC’s. Departments being merged, but with one manager. All in the name of “evolving to meet customer needs and keeping up with retail”. Everyone’s blowing up about it, and turns out the union knew all about it. Everyone’s leaving the union because of it, with another union stepping in.
Great job on the video on such an important topic guys. It was also great to see Cork get mentioned in the video - we don’t get much attention. Everyone always thinks of Dublin when they think of Ireland. I just hope next time there’s layoffs at Blizzard it’s not the guys here in the Cork office on the line. If they haven’t already unionised, perhaps they should.
Current Triple-A game dev is an unsustainable system stretched close to breaking point. Either employee or the client has to be willing\forced to compromise their monetary interests for there to be "profit" for the employer: Vulnerable people are "whaled" with the help of psychological manipulation, staff are "crunched" in hopes of keeping the fickle consumers satisfied... All while shareholders demand profit growth and the average consumer wants more for less. And on the backdrop -- inflation that eats at everyone's margins. Who breaks first?
Brilliant video. Thank you for covering such an important topic in such a thoughtful way. Also massive props to Anni for the, as always, beautiful design.
I love this channel and all the videos they make, but by far, the best part are the sponsorships. You guys make them entertaining every time despite seeing ads for dollar shave club, skill share, loot crate (does loot crate still sponsor people?), etc. Keep up the great journalistic work!
In this episode: How do you make more money when you're already making nearly 2 Billion per year. I uninstalled Blizzard software as soon as it became Activision Blizzard.
The gist of the worker protection for these sort of layoffs is laid out in the EU Directive on collective redundancies (98/59/EC). europa.eu/youreurope/business/human-resources/employment-contracts/redundancies/index_en.htm Hence, not only France has these sort of protections in place, all EU workers should have a similar variant of it. Of course, if there are no worker representatives to meet with, then there can be no collective bargaining. Even the UK (for now) and Ireland would have it, though I'm sure the UK did the absolute minimum for the workers in their national legislation.
How can Activision expect creative people to want to work for them when they are punished for making money? These game companies will eventually bring about their own downfall once they run out of old franchises to milk. Blizzard is already running pretty low on good will from gamers.
A lot of younger people wanting to get into the industry see the union as barrier. Employers prefer to hire people outside of unions (obvious reason) So finding support for Game work unions has been very hard.
The best way to protect ours rights is to organize, strike and make ours fights known as widely as possible. Laws are useful, but shouldn't be the end goal.
Maybe they are not game developers, but you should make a video about the CGI designers of the Sonic movie. In a short time they have to change the model of sonic in an entire movie in a short time which will result in a hard crunch.
Hey man, really good video, i enjoyed it! However, i'm having trouble understanding the line of reasonning you had when you said (more or less) "Maybe no-one should have gotten the opportunity to collectively negociate, or maybe everyone (as in, everyone in the world) should have" For me it felt like you were saying that all of the employees of a company should be treated the same, no matter the country they are employed in. In other words, it felt like you said that the way the company wants (or should) treat its workers should Overrule the labor laws in whatever country the workers are working in.. and i have a problem with that :) Still, the way you said it still conveyed the fact that you want workers in the gaming industry to be treated fairly, but i thought i had to point out how this wierd line of reasonning resonated with me. Have a good day!
This is such an important topic and needs more eyes 👀 I will look into how I can support the movement in the UK. People need to feel safe in their job and receive fair treatment if that job is no longer there for them.
Games industries everywhere should unionize but people are just too scared of losing their jobs or reputations for even mentioning it, it is sad. As if what our ancestors have bled and died for was for nothing. In terms of creating Unions and protection from the corporations that care nothing for people, unions are the only protection we can have and law created by the governments. Fellow devs esp. in Canada time to do it.
@@loveblanket6512 The city and the date, It was signed june 28th 1919, this was published june 28th 2019, enjoy the happenstance, you joyless miseryguts!
the people in france have it right, every country in the world should be making a stand against companies like this, that report record breaking profits and then want to mass layoff. personally if i was the goverment i would pass a law saying if you want to mass layoff your ceo and higher executives should have to lose a percentage of their pay and be forced to use it too see how many jobs could be saved with a minor pay cut to these rich dinks.
The only way that unions work and get off the ground is when the workers give a shit about each other. And the game industry in NA just seems like everyone is on a rock, only caring about themselves and not giving a shit about things that don't effect them until they're the ones being laid off for unfair reasons. People need to wake the fuck up and realize there's power and strength in numbers and to protect each other, because one day you'll need that protection too.
Watching this after the disaster of a year 2023 has been (and 2024 is shaping up to be) for game developers is crazy. How a lot of these developers didn't even get a heads up about the layoffs until they were unceremoniously kicked out, how pretty much every game company raked in massive profits and how the year was marked with some of the biggest acquisitions in business history and yet about a THIRD of all employees in the game industry were either laid off or knew someone who was. An absolute disaster that seems like it's becoming the de-facto status quo now, being challenged less and less and being accepted as just the reality of the current scenario. As someone who once dreamed of being a part of this industry, it's borderline horrifying. I hope this past couple of years are covered in a lot of detail and the shittyness of the higher management and their practices is brought to light and most importantly- some important actions are taken so that developers can actually have decent job security for once. The people who work the hardest are the ones who are screwed over the most. It sucks so much.
Why anyone supports or plays their shit, when they keep showing us their true feelings and motives, is beyond me. There are WAY too many ABSOLUTELY EXCEPTIONAL indie developers that could use even a fraction of a % the player base. Play what you like, but also play responsibly and don't support people like McNamara (Bondi) or Blizzard when they're busy screwing with us. Sometimes they need to be reminded who actually holds the (sometimes unfortunately, collective) power!
I hate to be that person, but your infographic at 1:00 is wrong. Instead of the radius of the CEOs circle being 300x larger, it should only be sqrt(300) (approx. 18) times bigger.
its record results from the in game shop. Meaning turn key profits. Meaning less skilled labor than their game production. This all means you need less people to make a profit. This is all short term, micro transactions and shoddy content from Blizzard is driving people away and they are inflating their numbers by borrowing from the next quarter. Unionizing will not help, the company is not thriving. I don't get why people think they are guaranteed a job. If a company doesn't want to hire you anymore they shouldn't have to. If my neighbor gives me money to mow his grass I can't just mow it every week and force him after the first mow. Don't like Blizzard business practices? Don't buy from them. I sure as hell don't anymore.
Isn't it ironic how Game Worker's Unite has a hand with a gamepad as their symbol instead of keyboard or pen-tablet. No game has ever been created with a gamepad. Even those games which are played with gamepad aren't made with gamepad.
Easily parsed semiotics beats accuracy, I'd say. A keyboard or mouse could be anything, a gamepad is obviously about videogames. The clenched fist is standard union imagery.
I just didnt understand how US law is so unappreciated towards labour rights. In my country, that still count as developing one, wouldnt allow more than a year contract for labour with mandatory national worker insurance system. Either they have to look a new one after the contract expired, or they should employed the worker with all benefit intact.
I just don't understand the value in hiring a single executive for that amount of money, with the same money you could almost develop a whole extra game product..... where is the logic? What magic does this guy have that warrants a $30million paycheck?
They exist because of unions. The unions also represent the workers legally here. Would you want to have to deal with this sort of thing on your own lonesome? No colleagues to back you up, no heavyweight organization looking out for you, no legal expert who handles your case as a matter of course? I thought not. You can't really separate law and unions here.
Got a distaste for their ability to understand their loyal customer base. This is just enforced by general distaste for their constant hunger for money.
Really important work Chris. Keep it up!
Woah, my two favourite channels in one place!
Brilliant work as always Chris - nobody else is producing this kind of content right now
OMG is GMTK! I love you!!!
Yeah, what a concept...
People with similar interests, doing similar things, coming together...
Thank you for covering it. As one of the 134, I feel it's important that people know what's going on.
MrKagemitsu god bless
Doesn't mean that if you guys all get fired that they will be able to match what you have done in the past actually it will be the opposite. It's sad to see my favourite company since I was a kid being taken over like this and they are ruining our games also.
All they are interested in is money, every other week they are trying to add more to in game shops etc Diablo immortal dropping because they had a wet dream about how many Asians might buy it.
@@meliohe5080 No, but Capitalism is an economic system that inherently rewards corporations being greedy. So yeah, I would say you can't have Capitalism without greed.
@ you first
The fact that Blizzard has been under fire for something every year these past few. The company has seriously lost its former integrity. Not even in just game development, but company ethics (or maybe they never had a strong/clear ethics code to begin with).
Super reporting as ever. Wonderful work Chris.
NoClip and GMTK giving kudos to Chris is so wholesome
Bitter News to add to this: About a year later, Blizzard decided to close their location in France. I'm curious about how the fact that they are unionized played into this.
Different industry altogether, but Walmart does just that under the pretense
that "it wasn't profitable" that even if true doesn't hide their ulterior motive.
They hire union busters after all, so does Amazon I believe
If I had to guess of how big a factor their being unionized was, I say about 98.99% or more. The only reason it's not 100% is dur to rounding errors from potential cheaper labor elsewhere (which is itself a matter of unions or their lack).
Companies hate unions; they loath the idea of their cattle, I mean employees, having any rights or protections whatsoever. Full stop. There is good reason that companies spend millions of dollars each in antiunion and union busting activities.
Blizzard has so permanently and irreversibly damaged its stellar reputation that I am unsure if they can ever really recover from it.
They leaving Activision like Bungie did is a start.
@@Rio-zh2wb Hahahaah yeah true, bit of a paradox I put forward there!
@@wallhackergotdammit I checked this out the other day, apparently they are not in the same situation that Bungie was, so they cannot physically separate from Activision as they are technically the same company now, whereas Bungie was just a Developer using a Publisher.
But yeah, Blizz getting away from Kotick would be a huge start.
Nope, Blizzard got addicted gamers.
Nothing they'll do will stop them paying to play their games, only paid loot boxes.
Blizzard as a company hasn't been a thing for a while now. Shit, been over 10 years now.
Huge shoutout to these guys, because here in france, the employers syndicate and the lobbies fight hard to take this kind of laws down, for they think the Code du Travail (labour laws) is too restrictive.
IMO, the workers are totally right but for some reason, president Macron thinks that Blizzard's CEO is the one to defend...
He probably thinks so because less companies will put offices in France because it is hard to "hire and fire". Not saying that is good, just that could be the reason. At the moment there are enough other countries without such restrictive labour laws where companies can go, so it will probably be bad for France, at least short time.
Macron's economic policies are generally more liberal I reckon. Him being a banker before his presidency before is hardly any surprising.
Si Macri es un gato, Macron es un puma...
I found this video really interesting. It's great to see how things are different in France, in terms of informing how things could be different elsewhere. As usual, you get information across in a way that's easy to take in and digest. Great animation as always.
Double the unemployment rates than most countries so yeah to them. Oh and how many jobs in the gaming industry is there?
@@todomachii What is your point precisely?
@@RobertsKong That France is really bad for tech jobs and unions make it worse over there.
Simply put, the harder it is to fire people the harder it makes to hire people that is why there is so much unemployment in France.
@@todomachii That's an interesting argument. I can definitely see how it must be frustrating for a company to not be able to operate freely in the hiring and firing of their own employees, but I also think it's crucial that these people feel protected and can stand up to bullying, massive corporations. What do you think to the fact that Blizzard had made record profits? Seems to me like they could've been gentler to the departing staff should they want to turf them out of employment.
@@RobertsKong I completely agree with you and that is why I don't really care about Activision and why we shouldn't talk about them. They killed their best creative teams and the results is that they haven't any new interesting games announced.
What do you think about the employee that has chosen to work for Activision. Why would you do that when you cannot ignore how they treat their staff?
The real question is how do we help the next Blizzard, the next innovator, to build the best franchise and the best working conditions? There is an objective reason why there are not many studio in France because employee are too protected and the net results is a lack of innovation and the double amount of unemployment.
Ireland is generally cheaper to do business than France aside from the salary difference. We have ridiculously low corporation tax.
Cork has the European HQ of Apple. Also offices for Amazon, Facebook Oculus and Blizzard in a relatively small city of 120k people.
American companies also like that Ireland speaks English. We do have a great third level education system. But mostly its the cost of business that Ireland wins over so many companies.
Ireland is like the "I'm not using a tax haven" tax haven
anni is killing it with the graphics honestly, top stuff
The graphics are brilliant, right?
She’s the best! Very very lucky to work with her. -Chris
Dunno who this Anni is, but the graphics are splendid! Amazing job, well done!
RIP the Blizzard we all loved, thanks greed for ruining everything as usual \o/
Cry Activision killed Blizzard, we would still have Pardo, Morheim, etc still there. We need nerds in there, not non-gamer salesman.
It's not greed, it's capitalism. The current system forces companies to make unethical choices for profit
@@pavelmeyer9197 To be fair, capitalism and greed are two faces of the same coin. People like Kotick use their financial power to prop up capitalism so they can satisfy their greed and gain even more financial power.
This is why Unionizing is so important, good job France
Hopeless comment
luckyli not only france. and this is also why you have to accept the working-laws of the countrys. otherwise they will just place the corp.-head of each buisness in some 3 world country, just to bringt theyr laws as corparat-law to each branch. ... and im not sure, if someone in the eu or the us is willing to work for the same conditions, like in china, india or afrika. ... so yea. the standards have to be the same, of the country they have theyr branch in and hire ppl there.
No. It's very bad. For example, I was a potential employer before getting to know about this. Now, I'll simply hire elsewhere.
France is falling behind on a global scale, slowing growth for decades now.
Unionizing might be great for the individual, but soon they'll just move everything to Asia where labor is cheap.
I see all the people who *enjoy* being screwed over by their employer have showed up. How do those boots taste?
Solid nation-wide labor laws, first and foremost. Might be harder in US, where every state is has separate jurisdiction. But unions shouldn't be treated as replacement for lack of solid regulations. They're advisory body, and do great when the scope is limited to a particular industry or workplace. Poor labor law is the real problem.
Unions with dynamite and rifles are how we got those reforms. Everything from child labor laws to the 8 hour day 40 hour work week can be attributed to organized labor. Look up Mother Jones(Mary Jones not the publication), Blair Mountain Mine Wars, Haymarket Affair. they sure as hell didn't allow us to learn that in US schools. Skip out on liberal news sources when you look it up; they might "sanitize" the story.
@Stale Bagelz Mine bosses were raping their wives and daughters. It started with strikes and then the companies hired the Pinkertons to club and machine gun the miners. Fun Fact: Securitas has direct lineage to the Pinkerton company and still has union busting services. They post spies in coffee shops near places of employment.
The world needs more unionisation in general but definitely in the games industry. Keep it up Bratterz! Solidarity with the Blizzard staff fighting for their jobs against corporate greed.
unionization doesn't work in todays World, there is now, always, a legion of people who will do the job for less.
maybe we could call it the Soviet Union. Nah that doesn't sound good, let's name it something more appetizing. I KNOW, European Union. We can pretend its less communist!!!
@@rigatonijacobs obvious troll is obvious. The EU is the most Neoliberal establishment on the planet you loon 😂😂😂😂
If you think a man madebbn unnionized government will work. I got a bridge in brooklyn for sale
@@andyrushent251 And the most incredibly broken, corrupt and completely useless neoliberal establishment on the planet. There's a reason why countries that can produce are leaving it, and the ones that can't are clinging to it.
As a shop steward in a more traditional UK union it's nice to see some actual push for unionisation regarding issues that matter to the workers.
It's the antithesis I've seen in other unions that have become ineffectual because they waste all their time arguing about issues that have little to actually do with their job as a union.
Diablo Immortal was a blip. What hit activision was the short term success followed by the long term underperformance of Call of Duty's battle royal mode.
K19 Many companies got hit mid 2018. Blizzard was just one of many. Had nothing to do with company policy.
@@ETBrooD interesting, I wonder why that was?
Brilliant, Bratterz. Absolutely brilliant work. The entire video was super well done, from information to animation, all great. I love the angle your channel takes - really filling a niche not really covered much.
Great video overall, and it's nice to see that at least one part of the world has some form of protection against these layoffs, but I don't think you should assume older employees just don't want to rock the boat because they're comfortable; I've read more than a few statements from older developers in the US that are primarily worried about their families. If they make themselves a target and get themselves fired or, less directly, are put in work environments that force them to quit, they're not as capable of supporting themselves or moving to another city for work when they have a spouse and kids.
The lack of worker solidarity, even within the same company, is really disheartening.
Wdym by that? All the workers and unions here seemed to be on the exact same page
@@lizardlegend42
It struck me as more of a general statement than a comment on this case specifically.
@@Gormathius then which company is he referring to if he's not talking about Blizzard?
@@lizardlegend42
"Within the same company" as opposed to worker solidarity across several companies. Again, it struck me as more of a general statement.
@@Gormathius a general statement of what? How does it relate to this story where all we saw was great worker solidarity.
Even if it's meant as a broad general statement, it's a non-sequiter at best.
I know this is a year late but I love that he shares his earnings from Patreon, I'ts great to see that he really feels he has nothing to hide
Wow, this was incredibly interesting. I truly hope those people get fair treatment!
the effect of the amount of political and business campaigning against unions over the past decades is pretty dang evident in a number of the comments here, which is disappointing, but not unexpected. wonderful video as always, and good breakdown of the facts.
Eh, unions are just as capable of becoming the same soulless exploitative bureaucracies as the corporations they fight against. Government can be bad, corporations can be bad and unions can be bad.
@@Nukestarmaster but like corporations and governmemt, unions are also extremely neccessary
Blizzard is not concerned with maintaining what they had.
Old blizzard is gone.
Honestly these people should be getting out.
Really glad that you're using this channel and audiance to talk about the industry and labour rights. The visualization of the information was also really strong this week!
I'm still confused about where has gone all the money this people've made during this last 15 years.
Wikipedia: "The game had over one hundred million registered accounts by 2014 and by 2017, had grossed over $9.23 billion in revenue, making it one of the highest-grossing video game franchises of all time."
Chris saying fuck took my soul out of my body for a sec. Important video, nonetheless a fantastic one.
Thank you, for your great work! These videos of yours look great, sound great and tackle important issues in a very unique way. Keep on the good work. I like to believe, that gold always shines through in the long run. Maybe doing some crossover-stuff to raise awareness for the channel would be a good idea? With ShutUpandSitDown (how boardgames inspire videogames for example), or RPS/ Eurogamer or (insert any nice games youtuber here)...
This is what is wrong with business in general, not just the games industry. The constant desire (greed) for more and more profit. Where hundreds of millions, even billions of profit is not enough. I mean, profit is literally where you've earned more money than you've spent. If you've LOST money, sure make people redundant. It sucks (I have been made redundant once before), but I guess you have to protect the future of the company. If you've made a small profit and think things could get worse, maybe. But not when you've made massive profits like this.
Great work as always Chris.
Excellent video as always Chris!
One of the many things that I love about living in this country is the strong worker's rights. It's very popular on the net to describe the French as lazy because they have negotiated these rights over the years but the truth is that most people work extremely hard and while the standard working week is 35 hours, that's a minimum for full time work not a maximum and it's frequently exceeded.
I live in Brittany where many people work shifts in meat production factories, often opposite shifts to their partner to cover childcare. Everyone knows someone who works in meat production here. You will find people with degrees on the factory floor because there is nothing else. Unions protect these workers and they protect those in game development. They helped me when I worked in corporate IT back in the UK and our company was sold to a multinational and put through round after round of rendunancies - I was a member of UNISON.
If you ever need help with French or survival tips while in Brittany, don't hesitate to get in touch!
That blizzard employees on one side dont get union protection but the French one does so neither should have them is such a child like idea...
On a technical/aesthetic note, Anni's animation was spot on. Outstanding and exceptional.
I would like for trends in companies to be examined of people in sales/marketing, being promoted over those in the actual creation of said games and the ramifications of the developers, coders, artists, writers, etc. I'm a technician but it's an underlying trend that might be an overarching issue thats causing the sort of AAA stagnancy we as gamers are seeing right now. Just a thought, don't know if its valid either. Just something to look into.
By promoted I mean representing all the departments equally in the upper echelons of whatever the company is. Seems sales is driving the car more than the development team.
Good timing RUclips recommendations! Important to remember decisions like this in light of Kotick/Activision-Blizzard's current behaviour
Record results at the cost of human dignity great work Activision I hoped Blizzard did the same as bungie but with wow subscriptions it seems pretty difficult.
They can't. Bungie was a subsidiary - Activision and Blizzard MERGED. They are the same company. one cannot leave. It's over.
Blizzard can pretty much never ever become independent again, it would mean that the board of directors for "Activision Blizzard" would sell their own IP... to their own ... Employees... Wat? They will never sell their IPs to anyone unless the franchises start tanking hard and become a liability for them. And then they would sell it to an external company who'd pay them some good cash for it.
It was over for Blizz the moment the merger happened. Me and many like me knew this would happen, even back then. We wrote angry forum posts about it, saying it would poison and corrupt Blizzard. Kill it from within.
Welcome to the current year.
@@grumpycup4762 yeah i know that most likely blizzard will never be what it was again , most of its veteran programmers left by now but in comercial societies where there is a merger there can always be a split too, it depends on the terms agreed upon in the merger so I would never say never but it seems very unlikely now that even bungie left off.
I think the only way unionisation can progress to a point at which the big publishers & studios have to listen is to start small. Get employees at smaller studios to fully unionise & the union suddenly gets some clout once bigger ones want to buy them up & absorb (or sack) those employees. It's incredibly frustrating that it's such a slow process, but I hope that more of the actual workers will see the benefit rather than having a go at those with protection.
Great video, easy to digest. Wonderful graphics!
Deleted Blizzard launcher forever
Let's hope more people see the importance of Unions.
Mass unionizing is what's needed to actually make a change happen in the electronic entertainment business.
I bet that 8% was so he could get a big fat bonus, that food ordering bit at the end would also be me.
Like how the "polite" English term to fire is "let go". What if I do not want to "go"?
This is hitting different these days
I see you are working with the most current maps of the world. 4:20
We all had a meeting, Chris and we agreed, that you are the best human. Thank you for your service.
Lol. This is happening to Woolworths in Australia, giant supermarket chain who’s CEO makes 8m a year. All these department managers got made redundant, even the department 2IC’s. Departments being merged, but with one manager. All in the name of “evolving to meet customer needs and keeping up with retail”. Everyone’s blowing up about it, and turns out the union knew all about it. Everyone’s leaving the union because of it, with another union stepping in.
The quality of your videos exceeds that of so many with more subs. Keep it up! Subbed and dinged
Great job on the video on such an important topic guys. It was also great to see Cork get mentioned in the video - we don’t get much attention. Everyone always thinks of Dublin when they think of Ireland. I just hope next time there’s layoffs at Blizzard it’s not the guys here in the Cork office on the line. If they haven’t already unionised, perhaps they should.
Current Triple-A game dev is an unsustainable system stretched close to breaking point. Either employee or the client has to be willing\forced to compromise their monetary interests for there to be "profit" for the employer:
Vulnerable people are "whaled" with the help of psychological manipulation, staff are "crunched" in hopes of keeping the fickle consumers satisfied... All while shareholders demand profit growth and the average consumer wants more for less. And on the backdrop -- inflation that eats at everyone's margins.
Who breaks first?
Brilliant video. Thank you for covering such an important topic in such a thoughtful way. Also massive props to Anni for the, as always, beautiful design.
I love this channel and all the videos they make, but by far, the best part are the sponsorships. You guys make them entertaining every time despite seeing ads for dollar shave club, skill share, loot crate (does loot crate still sponsor people?), etc.
Keep up the great journalistic work!
In this episode: How do you make more money when you're already making nearly 2 Billion per year. I uninstalled Blizzard software as soon as it became Activision Blizzard.
Much praise to Anni and Chris. These videos are always timely, engaging, and visually lovely. ✨
The gist of the worker protection for these sort of layoffs is laid out in the EU Directive on collective redundancies (98/59/EC). europa.eu/youreurope/business/human-resources/employment-contracts/redundancies/index_en.htm
Hence, not only France has these sort of protections in place, all EU workers should have a similar variant of it. Of course, if there are no worker representatives to meet with, then there can be no collective bargaining. Even the UK (for now) and Ireland would have it, though I'm sure the UK did the absolute minimum for the workers in their national legislation.
All workers in big tech and AAA games should unionize. It will end those companies much faster 👍
How can Activision expect creative people to want to work for them when they are punished for making money? These game companies will eventually bring about their own downfall once they run out of old franchises to milk. Blizzard is already running pretty low on good will from gamers.
Fantastic work! Thank you for covering this.
A lot of younger people wanting to get into the industry see the union as barrier. Employers prefer to hire people outside of unions (obvious reason)
So finding support for Game work unions has been very hard.
It's illegal to do that in France, so that not a problem here. Unionize, your future self will be thankful.
The best way to protect ours rights is to organize, strike and make ours fights known as widely as possible.
Laws are useful, but shouldn't be the end goal.
Holy shit French labor laws are great. I had always assumed so but not known in detail...
Maybe they are not game developers, but you should make a video about the CGI designers of the Sonic movie. In a short time they have to change the model of sonic in an entire movie in a short time which will result in a hard crunch.
Hey man, really good video, i enjoyed it!
However, i'm having trouble understanding the line of reasonning you had when you said (more or less) "Maybe no-one should have gotten the opportunity to collectively negociate, or maybe everyone (as in, everyone in the world) should have"
For me it felt like you were saying that all of the employees of a company should be treated the same, no matter the country they are employed in.
In other words, it felt like you said that the way the company wants (or should) treat its workers should Overrule the labor laws in whatever country the workers are working in.. and i have a problem with that :)
Still, the way you said it still conveyed the fact that you want workers in the gaming industry to be treated fairly, but i thought i had to point out how this wierd line of reasonning resonated with me.
Have a good day!
This is such an important topic and needs more eyes 👀 I will look into how I can support the movement in the UK.
People need to feel safe in their job and receive fair treatment if that job is no longer there for them.
I'm surprised that they're adding people to the Cork office, I worked next to is for 4 years and it's absolutely teaming with people already.
Congrats on 50k!! 💪 💪
It gets worse, somehow.
Games industries everywhere should unionize but people are just too scared of losing their jobs or reputations for even mentioning it, it is sad. As if what our ancestors have bled and died for was for nothing. In terms of creating Unions and protection from the corporations that care nothing for people, unions are the only protection we can have and law created by the governments. Fellow devs esp. in Canada time to do it.
Loving the production quality, and with only two people! You deserve more views!
4:32 why is Valentia Island there LOL
Unfortunately Blizz took a little too much note from their old RTS cheatcodes. Specifically greedisgood.
can I ask? what is the title of music that is use in the end credits? thanks
I am surprised that a lot of multinational companies still want to be in France. Frenc employees must be really special and especially talented.
Man this feels kind of prophetic... it's sad how the industry has come to this
nah they wanna fire them cause they aren’t sexual harassers like the rest of them
100 years on the day after the Verseilles treaty, how appropeu.
@@loveblanket6512 The city and the date, It was signed june 28th 1919, this was published june 28th 2019, enjoy the happenstance, you joyless miseryguts!
How "à propos" :)
@@Allyouknow5820 Gezundheit!
I guess that's not a coincidence - the map shown at 4:20 pretty much shows borders from a hundred years ago
Fantastic video, as Mr Toolkit said above, important work! I knew a little about the layoffs, but I didn't know this much.
Keep doing the good work Chris and Anni!
It's the old story.. fire to rehire cheaper... and that should be globally controlled and forbidden..
If somebody is willing to do the same work for cheaper, the business owner has every right to take advantage of that.
@@Owlero not if it is artificially designed by the business owners
globally? and who'll do that? your New World Order EU super-state?
@@ViewTube_Emperor_of_Mankind "artificially designed".
What does that even mean?
Have fun working for peanuts,dip shit
Even without recognition and access to collective bargaining it's absolutely still worth being in a union.
the people in france have it right, every country in the world should be making a stand against companies like this, that report record breaking profits and then want to mass layoff. personally if i was the goverment i would pass a law saying if you want to mass layoff your ceo and higher executives should have to lose a percentage of their pay and be forced to use it too see how many jobs could be saved with a minor pay cut to these rich dinks.
I really, really love the art on these.
Really grateful and excited i found this channel
The only way that unions work and get off the ground is when the workers give a shit about each other. And the game industry in NA just seems like everyone is on a rock, only caring about themselves and not giving a shit about things that don't effect them until they're the ones being laid off for unfair reasons.
People need to wake the fuck up and realize there's power and strength in numbers and to protect each other, because one day you'll need that protection too.
Watching this after the disaster of a year 2023 has been (and 2024 is shaping up to be) for game developers is crazy. How a lot of these developers didn't even get a heads up about the layoffs until they were unceremoniously kicked out, how pretty much every game company raked in massive profits and how the year was marked with some of the biggest acquisitions in business history and yet about a THIRD of all employees in the game industry were either laid off or knew someone who was. An absolute disaster that seems like it's becoming the de-facto status quo now, being challenged less and less and being accepted as just the reality of the current scenario. As someone who once dreamed of being a part of this industry, it's borderline horrifying.
I hope this past couple of years are covered in a lot of detail and the shittyness of the higher management and their practices is brought to light and most importantly- some important actions are taken so that developers can actually have decent job security for once.
The people who work the hardest are the ones who are screwed over the most. It sucks so much.
Why anyone supports or plays their shit, when they keep showing us their true feelings and motives, is beyond me.
There are WAY too many ABSOLUTELY EXCEPTIONAL indie developers that could use even a fraction of a % the player base. Play what you like, but also play responsibly and don't support people like McNamara (Bondi) or Blizzard when they're busy screwing with us. Sometimes they need to be reminded who actually holds the (sometimes unfortunately, collective) power!
Your work is brilliant, thank you for making this!
My friend got a job working for Blizzard in the States last year. I really hope he doesn’t get hit by these layoffs.
I hate to be that person, but your infographic at 1:00 is wrong.
Instead of the radius of the CEOs circle being 300x larger, it should only be sqrt(300) (approx. 18) times bigger.
its record results from the in game shop. Meaning turn key profits. Meaning less skilled labor than their game production.
This all means you need less people to make a profit.
This is all short term, micro transactions and shoddy content from Blizzard is driving people away and they are inflating their numbers by borrowing from the next quarter.
Unionizing will not help, the company is not thriving. I don't get why people think they are guaranteed a job. If a company doesn't want to hire you anymore they shouldn't have to. If my neighbor gives me money to mow his grass I can't just mow it every week and force him after the first mow.
Don't like Blizzard business practices? Don't buy from them. I sure as hell don't anymore.
Isn't it ironic how Game Worker's Unite has a hand with a gamepad as their symbol instead of keyboard or pen-tablet.
No game has ever been created with a gamepad. Even those games which are played with gamepad aren't made with gamepad.
Easily parsed semiotics beats accuracy, I'd say. A keyboard or mouse could be anything, a gamepad is obviously about videogames. The clenched fist is standard union imagery.
From Pantsman sidekick to this. Great job Chris !
I just didnt understand how US law is so unappreciated towards labour rights. In my country, that still count as developing one, wouldnt allow more than a year contract for labour with mandatory national worker insurance system. Either they have to look a new one after the contract expired, or they should employed the worker with all benefit intact.
I just don't understand the value in hiring a single executive for that amount of money, with the same money you could almost develop a whole extra game product..... where is the logic? What magic does this guy have that warrants a $30million paycheck?
This was a simply fantastic video, with great, honest, clear reporting. Well done PMG team.
Great video as always!!
French state labor laws here were more important than union deals.
They exist because of unions. The unions also represent the workers legally here. Would you want to have to deal with this sort of thing on your own lonesome? No colleagues to back you up, no heavyweight organization looking out for you, no legal expert who handles your case as a matter of course? I thought not.
You can't really separate law and unions here.
@@Whitecroc You should be protected by laws, no matter if you are a member of an organisation or not.
Once again, top tier journalism. Thanks guys! :D
Nice are style direction of the video. I really enjoyed it!
Very proud of myself for never spending 1 cent with this company. (ps: I did play a pirated copy of warcry 3 back in the days tho lols)
Got a distaste for their ability to understand their loyal customer base. This is just enforced by general distaste for their constant hunger for money.
Rewatching this video now that we're here again...