Rockstar Pays QA Fulltime | Games ReCAP Episode 034

[Music] what I was gonna say we are here every morning 10 a.m. Pacific time who are we exactly I am Brandon fan I'm Larry Charles other half of the team welcome to our show every morning we try to find the biggest news from the game industry and we break it down and we give you the game which the game developers perspective I guess yeah we are game developers gaming daily game news and to kind of go over the pre-roll obviously you are watching us live if you're not you should tune in to our tweet twitch TV twitch.tv ford slash blue underscore champs or watch us after the fact on youtube.com for slash blue champs support us in any way through patreon to kind of get this show as an audio

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they sell billions and billions of dollars GTA is testament to new era Rockstar where they're over a hundred and twenty million copies when their online presence is happening every new drop with the casino thing update happening a couple weeks ago you know yes oh man because uh shortly EA wives there was a rockstar wives and then after especially Rockstar releasing Red Dead you know the same thing happened again and they did respond publicly but now they are actually making changes which of course through outside pressure when people do publicly respond you not a lot of people follow through right we're still waiting for rights impending

response yeah we never know right it takes a while to stop grabbing balls and asses so a men hide your wife oh you both can get it raping everybody out here so let's break down this article initially when Larry why don't you kind of give an over to your what this sure so we all know that Red Dead Redemption and sold the gangbusters their online may not be doing as well as GTA online alright but grant the thought of five also still very well and great than four out of five online is doing very well because of how often they want to release content through these channels they have been obviously known to push the metal of their employees hard not just the developers but or I don't want to say like that not just the content creators but also the content verifiers like with the QA department yeah so silver lining that we're starting to see well before I get to the silver lining a lot of news came out about the work conditions about they're like hey you're gonna work your ass off for this project

but you're also very temporary you're not gonna get benefits you're not gonna be part of like a bonus pool or anything like that you literally will just get paid dollar per hour and then when we're done with you good riddance yeah that doesn't look great when you're making so much money that you can't count and like you you have all the resources to not treat people this way but you treat people this way right right that only looks bad upon you so Rockstar looks like they're they're realizing you know like any people are hip to us doing things wrong we don't need to be so aggressive and predatory towards these capital gains yeah let's try to make this better for everyone so that we can stay in business longer as you see in this article months after labor controversy Rockstar converts game testers to full time that's crazy man the QA department in every game studio is the most overworked undervalue underappreciated and underappreciated overlooked also an overlooked rating so that's great that they're converting

like a huge part of the department over the full time but we've been in situations where we've been working overtime right on an hourly basis right so I kind of question you know though this is a positive I don't want to take any swipe on that if there was any motivation other than as in the old like hey this person was getting let's just say $15 an hour but once they hit overtime they were getting like 26 and then once they're 22 something like that and then once they hit double time they were getting 30 yes so let's just make them $15 an hour forty hour right full time right so the key idea apartment is known are known for working overtime and they are easily there twelve hours plus at any given time in the game site go so I kind of question wasn't all in good

merit yeah and so in the end you know it's an accepting right do you want to be full-time or not but it's up to the the person an individual to I will say the good thing the silver lining even if it is that you know they are guaranteed whatever their hourly rate is and they signed for but they also get the benefits and bonus and they don't have to pay from their double time or half-time or regular time to go for to go by the insurance or to go by the vision there to go by the you know even mental health you know if they if any of those people needed a therapist or for whatever reason man so at least knowing this I think that if they are all just getting their base rate for 40 hours like that probably sucks because they're you know now that you're full-time they're just gonna expect you're gonna be putting in this extra time yeah yeah that is the first trick of like salary that like kick me in the butt like hey your salary so all the extra time that you work is just covered in your salary yeah but your salary is negotiated that you're eight hours a day rate yeah you're potentially 15 to 16

hours a day you know double time half time rate right I hope that's not the case yeah I hope so too I hope that this isn't like that statutes and made a convincing argument we converted 30 plus QA testers who are averaging 10 hours a day right we would save this much amount of money over time yeah that we're guaranteeing that they're gonna work these hours because once you're full-time you don't get overtime anymore yeah it's gone you just you just work yeah you just literally just if you worked 25 hours or if you worked 10 hours you get paid the same mm-hmm so let's read the rest of this I hope that's not the case but that's those are my initial thoughts when I heard about this workers at Rockstar link in the British Studio that does the lion's share of testing for both the grand theft auto and Red Dead franchises are being converted from contractors to full-time employees three sources

familiar with the studio have told could talk you the movie removed the uncertainty of working on temporary contracts I mean that's a plus a positive turn at a company with notoriously artiest working additions the changes were set to go into effect on August 1st according to the sources it's unclear how many people this affects not whether it extends to temporary works at other rock star studios we hope to get more details nevertheless it appears to be an improvement at a studio where full-time and contract workers helping make rockstars biggest gains felt the brunt of the company's conch crunch culture there was an article last October that we talked about about that and a Lincoln employee had told us that the testing team had been working manager over time for a year and rocks are confirmed the testers have been asked to work on evenings and weekends the contractors had a rough see this is just opening up what was reported with your Gil yeah this doesn't stop the

crunch culture right no it doesn't it doesn't it just stampers the illusion of it right so I don't know how I can look at this news is like a positive step well the cool the key thing is yeah the temporary to contract there's a little bit more stability yeah I will say this if the the we don't know what these people are being paid they could have been given some sort of a race like some sort of middle ground like hey we know that we're gonna ask you to work extra time but we also know that we're gonna make you full-time and give you benefits so if you used to make 20 you're now gonna make 30 yeah like that that will be great we don't know I haven't seen any of these contracts posted but I would I would hope that this is like a full-on positive shift because the this company generates so much digital revenue yeah right with like again it's it's not a physical product no warehouses no employees guarding no you know trucks to load like none of this extra stuff and they just make a killing hand over fist now I know that they

could afford to make to do right by their q18 come on yeah like no matter how much it's gonna cost them I know they can afford to do right you know so they can afford to do right so much that it's probably almost negligent where they would say like we could double the salary of everyone there everyone that rockstar still gonna get their Lamborghinis or Ferraris or whoever gets those brass bonuses yeah they're gonna do just fine Yeah right um but I feel like it was justified because of the financing for them to look at that group of people over there that's crunching mandatory hours these are the certain amount of hours these are like a trackable number that we can project and have foresight on if we converted half of these people into full-time this is how much money we either am saving or paying just a little more and get the good price does it feel like a deflection all that this might be more for the

press and less for the people I think it's more for the because it's in responsive the press yeah this isn't an internal movement right so of course it's a response to the press in the pressures and they went back to the roundtable and was able to figure out a way that pleases both sides gonna take a quick moment to shout out Kent in real life who just subscribed with twitch Prime thank you very much we are halfway to a Subway sandwich so brother we appreciate it or a sister I'm assuming brother cuz I see Kent Kent in real life you know yeah thank you so much that's awesome welcome to the team so going back to the article katana chaos reported weren't a lot of cell phones at their desks instead must keep them in lockers this policy a source Snell tells us has been good rescinded one source told you last week that attrition at Lincoln has been high speculated that impact that a negative press about rockstars labor practices that year may have combined with a high

level of worker burnout to result in this Polly change of course rockstars axial experimenting with flex time to those sources said allowing workers to shift when they do their sign work hours what do you mean my name is I'm so dumb where I when I read that sentence I just imagined I'm being able to move in their chair no it's like let's say you can't work a Thursday so you pick up this right right just switch switch days right like they do in the restaurant industry all the time it's crazy that they are just now allowing that well its I'm sure it's a big enough team that it makes sense like I can't imagine that they don't have people in a seat every single day right like some people probably have like a Tuesday through Sunday schedule I said and some people had like a Monday through Friday some people have a you know Wednesday through Monday or some [ __ ] I don't know yeah such granular changes to workplace policy are seldom made public nor covered in gaming news but in recent

years journalism activism and at times a mix of both have brought greater attention to the taxing labor involved in making the game so many people enjoy last Friday it was even the topic of a Netflix in it no I haven't seen it but it's been going wild on my feet I've been tagged like three four times oh yeah yeah they pretty much research team did lunch so that's what's great right we're having our 200th episode it actually came out today all right talking about talking about the differences that we've seen from four years ago to now yeah like things like this kind of outing what the game industry is about yeah it's trending dude yeah isn't that crazy we're four years ago when we started it we were I would like to say the first to broadcast this type of thing yeah right yeah before kotaki we can't protect you like Pataki was smart like they've always had their consumer based games neighbor a

consumer base they had Jason they had Jason and so they always had that strength but I didn't think they went hard until like a year and a half yeah yeah a year and a half ago a tonal shift the responses were great both on the gamer and game developer consumer level whatever were sharing the articles which also told them we need to go in this direction yeah because it's weird right it's a weird place over there Kotaku is the leading platform for for a lot of this Audi news yeah but every other post is like about Japan coach you're it's something like telling cork enos right so it's like a mixed bag of journalism over there yeah but I'm happy to see how game developments caring about games accountability and an accountability is is actually click bait worthy now well there's the game development community or not even the development the consumer community is so large yeah like we're I

never thought in the Mario days I would ever hear somebody talking about 300 million people play a single game together yeah like I mean take off like chess check like the traditional like sports soccer like those sure hundreds and millions of people play soccer yeah but what I'm talking about is like video game yeah I never thought in like my early days even as I was like a young teenager that I would ever hear 340 million people playing League of Legends yeah whatever game you know what I mean crazy yeah it's crazy the numbers that some of these games forty million copies of a sixty dollar game sold yeah and grant that thought oh and like you know half of that call of duty and just it's insane so there's a lot of people who are interested in what we do mmm-hmm the way that information is spreading so fast and so furiously these days yes it is very easy to see like when an audience cares or is angry or is like protesting or is like you can get immediate feedback if your company is doing the right or the wrong thing yeah because it's very free and it spreads like wildfire if you have a poignant point that you share with the Internet you know it's so hard it's getting more and

more difficult to do bad business right to be unethical in business you know and I am I'm honestly so happy because it shouldn't be bad business like you shouldn't be like damn it we have to treat people like people again right like we're gonna have to pay these people fairly oh my god are you you know how much we're gonna lose like that attitude has to die and be snuffed out completely Yeah right like being a leader being being somebody as an executive level employee at a company your goal shouldn't be to like screw everyone at all costs for the bottom line and it should be how can we make sure that everyone has taken care of so that this plane can fly as long as possible right so that we can make revenue as long as possible alright we need to bring back somehow some way that idea of a sixty year company right right GE since it started like it's a generational company they're talking like grandfathers and fathers and sons all have gone to and through GE mmm-hmm name a videogame company that's done that yeah we're not there yet but we could be like we definitely make

a lot of money in the game industry there's a lot of people interested in buying games right being part of this so I am gonna toot the horn of bring back ethics yeah yeah it's a top-level business and execs like bring it back hardcore yeah do you feel like the executives are now seeing this tone of shift and being a lease more careful about decisions being carrying out as business like business as usual today I see the opposite thing happening first I think shysters will try to be more slick first before they try to be accountable right right so this move right here is kind of like I really like this right but I can I could I would side more with it's probably shyster more than it is accountable I don't know and I'm not gonna stand on that but that's just a gut feeling because I feel like if you identify that a person is like already like me like three four five six seven bad decisions right and let's say it's habitual yeah then you would be wise to assume that the next move that they make

would also be in that grave or negative area yeah can people change sure like it will take an event then creates like that incentive or that catalyst to lander both luck yeah yeah I'm gonna go to jail if I keep this up I know what I mean and that really has to hit home man it can't just be like all but but my lawyers will give me like yeah it has to be like like some soul-searching life-changing thing you know to me all right so and you look at Activision right now yeah have you heard the article about them being in hot water for like five billion dollars worth of like shuffle money okay so this because they're back to being owned by Bobby Kotick and company alright so full disclaimer again these are articles that we read all the time and so I'm now trying to reference memory but from what I was able to gather it seemed like there was about 5 billion dollars worth of taxable revenue that basically got shuffled and snuffed into not being taxable so that the company could just completely hold on to it 5 billion dollars a lot of money that should have been taxed it's a couple of Duty games case man that's that is

significant cheese and that the government needs to know about yeah and you know you start doing like this is pretty recent no this varies like two days I think maybe even a day ago yeah that's who's I think that's probably about 800 people's worth us out this is what I mean man that's like the cream gets greedy yeah this is a reason why an Activision always the poster child when it comes to evil corporation right if it's either of just trying to squeeze money at the consumer with more loot boxes doubling down with FIFA or Activision having extreme amounts of profit and making it sweeter for the stockholders by laying off a lot of people so like imagine that door right like like you said like the quip that you said that's 800 people salary them saying they had a record year right now but then five billion extra dollars that wasn't reported properly to the government or to the shareholders right this this is like I want mom that wasn't that wasn't

properly reported to the shareholders as well you know what I mean because that's right so all those all those important like I we gotta let you guys go man yeah it's just it's tight around here yeah don't look at my new language just understands the lease it's not a brand new model I actually bought used so you know that should let you know yeah but like we're very conscious about ham spend money around here it is Christ yeah I'm sure right at this point people are more at least taking more seriously talking to the PR forum right before they make any like public action yeah I think that is always happening because there's a lot more sympathy now yeah I just I want the accountability I want more than anything for a company to just be like this is the right thing to do let's who cares what it's gonna cost us we're not gonna go out of business because we made sure that the first line of defense QA yeah like can live and like enjoy their life so therefore they can show up to work and do great work yeah you want your games to not be buggy

you need two things to work well the people who fix the bugs and the people who find the bugs yeah both of those are important to me yeah super important yeah I mean the end product is better for that reason I don't know I guess you can chalk this up with the Rockstar overall is a positive you know right because the Activision I mean activism and the journalism was able to push a major company to make better decisions right so that's a win overall it's a win the only question is because of the like was it like a a budgeting choice overall right because they looked at this amount of people it makes sense for us to pay maybe a little more or save a lot right who knows but I would imagine they're not giving everybody a promotion right for hourly rate they're mostly at telling them like hey you're full-time employee yet benefits now and we're paying you the

same as before yeah and I'm sure that that spark yeah I was a I was like like a junior designer at the time so it was non full-time but paid hourly yeah and we're getting towards the end of the project so now like my hair leaders are like I'm doing 65 70 hours maybe more yeah because once you hit 12 yeah you're getting double time yeah and they didn't want to pay double time so you're just not supposed to report it that's the kind of thing happened twice in my life right right so then this all of a sudden like hey Larry get some great news we're finally promoting you okay cool so what are we talking all right so your salary is gonna go up by like $1 all right but you're full-time now so you know congratulations and I was like the amount of money that I'm losing because I know my workload in going down yeah yeah I was like the amount of money that I'm losing in this deal because of partner what do you call it half-time in double time yeah yeah I was like this is the shittiest sheisty is deal ever in my life okay well you know it's Friday 5 p.m. we really hope you think about it

you gotta let us know by Monday morning no time to do business or anything yeah yeah we all know yeah I left yeah as you should and like overall we always preach about the problems with the industry and overall the power lies within the individual yeah you can look and turn away from these deals and never feel trapped right even though if you do feel trapped he does you don't show that you're trapped don't write always show that you have choices because overall you're more attractive as a great example but like you can't go to the negotiating table and let one person speak the whole time it's not a negotiation it's it's telling me what I should be doing it all right it's an order it's an assassination on your character right so the best move for any

game developer or any gaming consumer that cares about what's going on is leave the power within the game developer right don't stay at a place is toxic or treating you like that who undervalues the workload and tries to con you into a bad deal yeah but it's so telling it's so telling for me the things that people do yeah so like for example if someone were to be like hey Larry look we're gonna give you where you're gonna go from 28 to 30 dollars an hour you get no overtime anymore but you're gonna get the benefits still same workload I look at that as like man you guys you're you're trying to tell me that this turd is actually escargot yeah if I see I now know this about you like I know exactly the kind of decision right also how you even view me yes the amount of respect that you have for exactly like okay why why would I trust my future right here why would I trust

me trading life and time that I will never get back yeah this is not mutual benefits very sad yeah it's very sad because I would like to hope that lease the majority would see that as a bad deal but I would feel younger developers would believe in to the employers want to work yeah yeah yeah and buying into it thinking that they have your best interests man please mutual benefit is easy to discern from a contract no matter what you get you should feel at least even if they're playing hardball you should feel like they're playing at least respectful hardball it should feel you know like it shouldn't feel like disrespect yeah you shouldn't feel like a blatant like haha he's gonna take this yeah yeah yep well I would rather struggle I've lived as low as you could possibly live so I'm not afraid of the bottom yeah and so much so that I'm not afraid to tell you no to your [ __ ] face cuz you're disrespecting me last number

excuse my language if any young kids are watching you're always up front right where I kind of like with an employer I would try to skirt around a compromise like a [ __ ] you with a backstab you're probably better at it than me man I give you credit I think you're like there's a problem here's the problem let's talkin about like all right I see you screwing me all right I took the Montecristo around right it's like I will screw you when you leave because I'll play I'll play like the victims oh oh I guess this is something I got a look at an exam and I'm thanking I'm thankful for you considering this let me think I can you keep that off and I had that look like you're like on every resume side yeah yeah and think so I have about a week and a half because that's what I promise not judging right so there's two ways to go about it and there's there's no wrong way right i think both methods is valid

you're you're you're respecting them enough to give you them your honest thoughts and reply right and I think that's very commendable the same time the other ways to kind of skirt around it is to allowing them to feel like they're in a power position yeah so they feel good no matter what so that's actually how I played it with spark at that time I I was not afraid to say no yeah but if I was in a position where I couldn't say no I then knew that like well they know that they're putting me in at effed up situation yeah right and they think that I'm just gonna take it right I'm gonna take it until I have my exit rate so okay cool yep I saw yeah so I signed the deal because I was already talking other companies I had a feeling smart yeah and then once I got an offer from sledgehammer I mean the sledgehammer excuse me the sledgehammer offer was better than yeah I just see that's the that's the Montes approve that message dude it's like five days that's the Montek crystal it's like hey you you

don't care enough and value my my time and effort time and efforts in the project so why should I respect your crappy deal I was here for those five days that's that's the power of the at will that's where I feel when the argument against that will is I don't think fully fully honored right that will is beneficial on our side in a way although if we really look at the terms the determining factor is mostly at the employers right if we look at a percentage of layoffs it's not the employee deciding it but it there is a measure where we are free to leave when we want to I wish at-will was at least gentleman's agreement two weeks both ways yeah we put we have to put in our two weeks notice you know a lot of the company was like you know hey yeah so we're gonna be terminating your

employment in two weeks regardless of if you stopped working that exactly here's at least two weeks worth of yeah yeah it's very informal the way we do things because people who leave within a week to go and then I get all pissed off but it works both ways it's very we talked about MBA or invisible walls a few weeks ago about the idea of coming at it like a business because going to your employer your future employer you are yourself a brand right you are representing your business and what you can bring to help with the company and that should be the way it should right because as soon as you answer to the boss right the boss the boss rose you're in deep waters yeah because now it's a different dynamic because how many times have you worked in a place where the boss feels like they own you right and as soon as you get outside the bubble you the power is all fakery right

it's only within these walls that you have any influence in my life yeah but as soon as we walk on the street we're equals again right but they think that is the dynamic that you feel within an office yeah a lot when you work in these working conditions I agree like I've always I mean I understand how the hierarchy works for me the only pressure was just to make sure that I got along with everyone and I did a job well right because no matter what how long my tenure would last in any company I wanted to leave knowing that the people that I was there with would at least recommend me on LinkedIn that's like my I don't want to call it like my goal I don't go to a company to just be like oh I want LinkedIn recommendations but I mean that like just as a reminder like a little keepsake momento that I have on my desk is like hey Larry remember yeah always make sure that when you leave a place the people that you worked with would at least recommend you on LinkedIn right now because that helps me to always try to make better decisions to try to be a lot more personal and like develop relationships but it's not fake it's just I'm

concentrating on trying to make sure that I add more than I take when I go into any sort of situation and so yeah and why I say the hierarchy is because like of course if a boss like hey Larry I need you to do this yeah that's like oh that's coming from pretty high up the chain yeah yeah I better consider how I need to get that done right yeah you know what I mean yeah but I don't feel like I'm being owned yeah yeah because it was like hey Larry we need you to take one for the team go down in that warehouse where all that water is and we need you to yeah s-some be yeah you know and I'm like okay well I'm gonna get him a car yeah going straight to my lawyer's office mm-hm and then we'll be in touch yeah but this is where it gets really muddy right because we're at a place where bigger companies mean want and in contract owns 100% of what you do outside of work yeah and that is insane right that's that's where we are not being represented enough to combat that measure in a contract so many of our friends at these huge companies cannot

work on personal work because in contract whatever company they work at owns that and it's you can't start work without that I think that needs to just be made illegal as a practice it sounds illegal right but because essentially crew any creative output that you ever have even if you work within the constraints of an eight-hour window you're completely disowning your own content that's not fair that's insane really is that true with any other industry out imagine [ __ ] like that probably tries to fly in the music industry as well like hey you know Taylor Swift's now that you're under our record contract anything that you write at any time any musical related thing that you do any I'm sure people will try to pitch like I've heard a 360 deal but like I'm sure people just try to take everything right because why not yeah like let's just be honest if you are the company if you're the record label why not go for everything it helps you yeah right you have more control you have

less variables you have less risk less that goes wrong less that's happening outside of you that you don't know about where like you don't get Frank Ocean which is hey I've got one last album on my contract I'm just gonna make this [ __ ] yeah album yeah - like satisfy the contract and like the next day my real album comes out on my new deal so he actually did that there oh I forget what the timing between the two albums was but he dropped a like contract fulfillment album which was just like like you could tell like you it was barely trying yeah then he dropped the album album I think was blonde with the real songs like all the legit like where the money had actually been spent Wow and he dropped that on the New Deal or independently but there was like a two album like two day something something about that you can just go research it but Frank Ocean like kind of kinda did that I was like yeah that's what you're pushing for as soon as you like lock people's creativity in a box they don't want yeah that's what happens and creativity or creative

people are the last types of people that you want to put in a box it's like it's against our nature to follow the rules all right it's like we're different from other industries in that one it's like you have a chef yeah who works at your hotel ten hours a day yeah then that chef goes home and cooks for his family yeah should that chef get sued yeah no yes we no no no of course not but it's exactly the same scenario that's how it feels like that's what I am that's what I mean like outside of our creative industry like what what other industries are doing that it sounds so illegal it's like you're human right is being questioned no it's it's a basic human right where I mean it's an ethics thing yeah I hate it I hate if a company is I pay you X salary therefore I own your life yeah we own everything that you do I understand a non-compete like hey we're gonna give you Traci that I can understand that but it's gotten beyond that you know it's like hey I'm just wanted to teach ya what I've learned and explore we own

that that's crazy no we own that I have to get permission from you I'm will never attend I'm sorry we own that my Saturdays I made up a story to read to my son now we own that that's real mad crazy isn't that crazy so I hope like things change while things are changing we're we're finally being represented and actually seen as a threat yeah at the negotiation table and things like what's happening with rock star is telling - like how outside pressure you can actually change things subtle shifts are happening we do have a little bit of collective bargaining power right now it's called Internet's perception of your company right being tarnished so therefore what are you gonna do - so like that that is our union power right now because we don't actually have a games union we don't actually have a labor union for game developers but what we do have is like oh [ __ ] we're in the press we're in hot water and a lot of the people that we're gonna be selling

to have a very negative opinion of us right now yeah cuz of something so we need to fix that no that's really all the power that we have to lean on right now it's very hard to be a barely paid underpaid or just paid enough employee and then go on strike yeah because to prove your point you're gonna significantly hurt yourself yes right to go on strike four to three weeks four weeks to not do a job sure the company's gonna be like [ __ ] we're four months behind four weeks behind schedule or whatever whatever yeah all your bills are four weeks behind schedule if you didn't if you don't have the power to survive that now your ability to pay for food water sustenance and shelter is going to be hindered because you are striking against the company that provides those things for you through your labor agreement yeah and so it makes it very difficult makes it very difficult but I want to also advise that the same way our side isn't used to doing that yeah their side isn't equipped to handling that type of pushback really they have deadlines hence the crunch strikes will be over quickly if you I I feel like it would in a million

on the line yeah if people actually banded together they wouldn't wait for it to blow up right there would be immediately a negotiation because they can't risk creativity being pushed back because that is up yeah it's an ominous number already start with and you're putting X amount of numbers pushing it back it takes everyone or so much of every so close to everyone that it may as well be everyone right it can't be like oh like 40 of us walked out yeah right like a company can look at 40 out of 300 and come up with a replacement plan yeah they can't look at 280 out of 300 have walked out and we refused to work well I mean like look at the riot situation right it was a great walk out yeah right there's a good amount of hundreds of people going out to protest the mistake there was they said a one-day walkout right then where's the threat it's like we're not walking out until conditions are met no you guys have your one day thing we can

afford it we looked at the numbers like it was really weird it was the weirdest tech also tells us that game developers don't really know how to not to how to protest like you don't work with the company to schedule that in you know it's really inconvenient this is the best thing on a Friday yeah the day we're gonna give you guys time off anyway okay take the rest of the day off for whatever reason right yeah companies do that all the time they lose you know the whole team's worth of salary to man-hours work right four four six hours a lot of companies do that all the time on certain days but we got a comment here I'm gonna read it I keep telling you I used to do roofing and when I finished the job I would take pics from my own portfolio I showed my own manager and he got super pissed and ordered me to take them down because their roofs were technically the company's that is some horseshit cuz you

took the photos yeah to show your work you weren't taking the actual roof yeah like you didn't literally take the roofing job that you guys just did yeah you were like hey here's evidence of the work that I'm able to do that's some horseshit right there I hope if you still work there no it says used to do roofing yeah yeah it's the all owners slave mentality yes like how the way people are leaving how to prevent them from leaving let's take away the rights yeah right that's like a knee jerk type of reaction instead of like what's going on why do you want to leave I get to the crux a problem and figure out what makes your employees happy because that is the long-term solution right they're trying to ban daid and like restrict people from living freely and happy happily right it only hurts you it only hurts you in the long run because now you have disgruntled employees right that are looking for the next opportunity it's bleep - I'm not gonna pull actual math out of my butt but I'm going to like excuse me

verifiable math out of my butt what I will pull out is is this is kind of like how I feel about business ethics and like doing the right thing you can look at two years where you make 300 million over those two years yeah but then you've cannibalized your company you've ruined your integrity and then now you're like companies like dying sharply for the remaining eight years yeah or you could look at maybe making 190 250 every year right right mm-hmm maybe I need a probably better maybe let's let's call it a hundred million every year for ten years right versus 200 million every year for two years and then roughly nothing for eight years I mean I always will look beyond the like hey this is gonna be a great game this is a great opportunity for me to show that I've made 200 million here and then bounce which a lot of c-level execs have been doing they've been doing the shuffle of like I'm just gonna drive up your numbers no matter how I have to do it for like a year or two yeah so that I get my gold star and then I move on to

the bigger pot they're bigger poker table all right that is what I feel like is not that specifically but that is one of the things that's hurting our industry because it's making companies not look at like let's talk about sustainability longevity let's talk about being stable yes talk about being a cycle that works and continues to work because while we're growing we're reaping yeah growing and then reaping why not just reap reap reap right we're out of crop yeah we're out of business yeah yeah yeah it's a leaky bucket type of situation all right keep the talent to keep making your games yeah and again it's devaluing the talent mm-hm when you stop respecting the talent it's just exactly what we're talking about the NBA when you stopped respecting this talent you're not gonna have an industry right there trying to band-aid it and try to usher in like fresh out of college type of students to kind of fill in the seats yeah but I feel good in the last ten years the diminishing return is clearly happening

right the game cycles are getting longer because the mistakes are being accounted as a team for the very first times and just to the team for the very first time it's the same problem across any studios right within all these crunch culture horror stories it's the same story yeah where you know the scheduling at the very front wasn't realistic new futures that are constantly being tackled never been created before especially on an innovative franchise right are being realized that it's impossible that the timeframe before was ridiculous because it's being done by leads that haven't done it before and by teams that haven't worked with each other before and so there's a lot of internal politics in conflicts that comes with that what saddens me about the way that the game industry is being run on the corporate level by like my my term the neckties right now is that like

the neckties job doesn't change their skills transfer and so let's just assume you know what's the word I'm looking for here let's just assume the worst yeah the game industry gets ruined we get to a point where talent has been cannibalized they've all moved out you know nobody wants to make top-level big games anymore it's just the people who are like indie level doing it for fun doing it for passion but we lose all of our big all of the big projects are gone let's say dead and gone let's just jump to that day yeah the neckties can go like this well that sucks yeah off to Verizon all right off to you know circuit whatever like whatever big name company chain needs an executive needs a manager needs an operator needs a logistics person needs a finance person right they can just transition right over it's the people who had the specialized skills of being game developers who look around like well well that sucks now what yeah you know what I mean and that's that that part is what

saddens me the most is that like the people running the ship honestly are protected either way yeah they're gonna they can siphon out all the money and then when it's done hey you know here's your golden parachute and oh you looks like you're a free logistics manager well hey our company also has logistics come on over here hey you're a free CEO well we're thinking about doing this secondary brand under our umbrella we want you to run it now you're selling I don't know headphones whereas before you were selling video games hey but it's still sales I'm sure you can do this alright it's [ __ ] and it's hurting the industry in a big way like we I always compare it to the ps2 days like we had like it influx of crazy excellent games like that where they had to segment to the greatest hits yeah and there was hundreds of those games where developers were in smaller teams and they were able to pump out games even though with delays it was at

a reasonable time yeah and and be able to ship it out we had less and less than that with every console generation yeah I don't see that improving instead the opposite is happening the games that are being made are taking longer the budgets are getting bigger and they have to sub substitute DLC models this is where all the problems are coming from no ways to squeeze more money out of the same consumer instead of growing the market right and we're kind of relying on other industries trying to figure that out thankfully because us being creative we are creative in figuring out solutions for ourselves and although it means like killing one of our key business which is again yes even Nintendo acknowledges or PS Sony acknowledges that the console business is a very niche market of the game mark Joe but I feel like a lot of that has to do with us cannibalizing ourselves and not

being able to showcase how fun these hardcore games can be how relative it is right we just constantly went back to the we're doing a lot of to the corpses we're doing a lot of reiterating instead of iterating these happen what I mean by that is like there's a lot of new Call of Duty new Assassin's Creed new Saints Row new blah blah blah versus cyberpunk 2077 or whatever or like we're seeing a lot more redo the safe thing and a lot less of let's try the new thing yeah I will say this though like I still just believe that one of our I don't want to call it a problem but just one of the things I'm observing about the industry right now is it's so easy to find games no matter if you have console or not right like there are so many different games on different platforms vying for your attention with low barriers of entry like I'm for damn sure can see why it's it's hard to say I'm in the console business because the console business isn't the only gig in

town anymore yeah right before we had you either had a Super Nintendo or Sega or you went to the arcade like those were your options kind of thing the NC games like okay sure like that too but like when we're really talking about the golden era of consoles you'd like had which of the console major consoles am I gonna buy or am I gonna go to an arcade that was it mm-hmm now it's like I'm gonna play my cell phone I don't play my computer yeah am I gonna play in my Tesla yeah am I gonna play on my handheld we're gonna play on my console yeah am I gonna play my VR am I gonna play am I gonna go to this it's like games are everywhere yeah everywhere not everywhere that's just what it is yeah and it's it's a lot to think to the smaller developers constantly innovating and going across to these different platforms other industries chiming in wanted a piece of it with with the VR market with all the phones with everything that are letting people experiment games yeah but we're talking

about the console makers in the first party developer is that finance the third party developers yeah if we had been left to our own device we would have continued that ps3 era of studios shutting down we were saved and I don't think that gets written enough about how we were saved during that era with the iPhone coming out and all that stuff it was a bailout yeah that constantly gets a more there was there's a place for that mid-level game idea Yeah right like you had mentioned Greatest Hits earlier and I'm not gonna lie that that was one of my favorite things that happened in games be like what 1999 yeah jet moto - yeah yeah it's so excited but I still bought like I love the like hey here's the remastered collection less price but you're getting more content even right I know the game is older but by the Batman Arkham collection 429 and you're gonna get two great Batman games yeah I love that yeah

but I also loved like the mid - your game - like not sixty our like next-gen graphics pushing likes huge mega adventure yeah but the like this is something that we believed in that we tried and we thought it was really dope like yeah or is blind for it or hell-blade right you know any of those games that come out life is strange yeah in that like I call it like the mid to your level dan I'm so glad that there's a place for those experiences now because you get so much innovation in so much risk but you also get the Polish right and that to me is like the that's this that is my perfect that is my perfect target spot is I'm getting something new something very different yeah it might not be super long yeah but I'm also getting polished yeah well yeah I'm so happy for Steam and so happy for like ID at Xbox and like all the places where a team are like ten folks who like really like working with each other can still make content and make money right yeah and that that's overall what we want to get to right so Rockstar pay those people those monies get pressured by outside influence we don't care how you

tend to get to that conclusion to get to it and overall we have lots of things to look forward to so that ends today's broadcast we are ending with games recap today thank you for everyone that's tuning in I want our twitch.tv forward slash blue and score champs please catch up with our other episodes that you've missed any on our youtube comm four slash blue champs thanks everyone for subscribing thanks for everyone supporting us on patreon we are going to return on Thursday because I'm going on vacation tomorrow get out here and we're gonna do it our first remote real live conference we're gonna see how that works so Thursday 10:00 a.m. we'll be back with games recap for the rest of the week Fran Smith Larry what do you think I'm gonna be like that properties like delayed look I have a nice sandy beach behind you wanna do too so thank you everybody for tuning in and watching and see you guys next time peace

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