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World of Warcraft Dev Team Unionizes, New Union Consists of Over 500 Members | MMORPG.com
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World of Warcraft Dev Team Unionizes, New Union Consists of Over 500 Members | MMORPG.com
The entire World of Warcraft development team has unionized at Blizzard Entertainment, the CWA announced today, bringing over 500 developers into the new wall-to-wall union at the studio.
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Yup, has nothing to do with fair pay and benefits.
Unions are the scapegoats for a corporation. They can negotiate crap deals while selling rainbows to their employees. Ask about the last best offer.
Unions are political. Even though the employees are not. Typically, they do not have the same leanings.
Unions are corrupt. Union leaders are hauled off to the slammer all the time.
Unions are sylphs. The union leaders make almost as much as ceos and do nothing. They have no product, they aren't lawyers, they aren't businessmen. They do nothing but leech.
Corporations like Microsoft can use unions at will to do their evil. If you have a dei crisis, you blame union policy. Safety issues? Union policy. Underperform in a quarter? Union greed. Mass layoff? Union rules. Need to jump state for tax breaks or to pressure your current state? You guessed it, greedy unions.
And yes. The unions protect some of the worst and the best employees in the workforce. And what I have seen of Blizzard lately, they need to fire everyone and start that union fresh.
Edit: Apologies, I had to come back to once again say, Diablo 4 sucks worse than any game ever made. The developers, programmers, managers and CEO should give their titles and wages to the janitor, because he could have made a better game.
I don't see anyone left that is valuable. Customer service, they need to fire all of them. Designers, no one left. Coding, look at WoW today and the issues D4 has. The management. Not one of those people are fit to run a lemonade stand.
Maybe, some of the asset people, but I think that is mostly AI now. The cinematic people... Hell no. The voice actors, okay. Story writers.... nope.
Good for the team and hope they get everything they ask for!
Fuck the morons on mmorpg and have fun thinking you’re a capitalist with zero fucking capital dumb fucks!!!
Live better work Union!!!!!!!!
Microsoft? 1 post. This won't last long. See ya. Also, I fixed your post.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Getting a bit political, lets keep it to the gaming.
I assure you that everything you wrote above is incorrect. I literally negotiate with the Teamsters and have come to many agreements over my career. I'm fairly sure that I know how they actually work, much better than you ever will. My experience is closer to what Emperorhades posted. That said, you can't really paint all unions and even chapters with the same broad brush. They have a place in society but they aren't always angels, nor always devils.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Leave room for better and newer developers and companies. What they prevented capitalism from doing with socialist intervention, prevented much needed bankruptcies with the bailouts and rates fixing, they will acomplish doubling down in socialism.
Sorry but the "WoW is dead" gong has been ringing for over a decade, and yet here we are with the next expac about to release. I promise you five years from now they'll still be going. As long as there's a market for theme park MMOs, WoW will be online. I'm not a fan of the game and haven't played in years, but I also recognize after the number of people who have declared the game dead and have been proven wrong that you're just yet another name in that very very long list.
I personally enjoy the time i am having with WoW right now and will give the next expac a chance.
...I am pretty sure i am not the only one.
Firing everyone would effectively end the company because all the subject matters expertise just walked out the door. It would take 6 months to hire a new team and have them dig through all the code and assets just to figure out how to build and deploy an update. The fans of their games aren't going to tolerate the kinds of blackout period.
I'm sure you'd be fine with that outcome, but I'm pretty sure the CFO, CEO, Board of Directors, and shareholders at Microsoft wouldn't be too keen on lighting billions of USD on fire like that just because you don't like any of their current products.
So .. yeah not going to happen, sorry.
They just need to revisit who is in leadership and make adjustments. Getting rid of Kotick was a huge step forward, but companies of this size take time to change course even after people leave the building. It's an entire culture shift that needs to take place.
They lit billions on fire when they bought Activision.
I've personally never worked for a union, but I will be able to retire early and comfortably. I very rarely have worked overtime. In my entire 25+ year IT career I've only been out of work involuntarily once and that lasted 2 weeks and I had another job. l The trope that all executives are evil and concerned only with profits at the expense of their employees is just as false as the narrative that all unions kill jobs. The place I work now, which I've been at for over 10 years, is very supportive of work life balance. Has generous remote work policy and PTO.
The idea I make some tiny salary and lick the boots of my corporate overlords is comically inaccurate.
I also am genuinely confused if people think more of Blizzard's revenue windfalls should go to the CEO or the shareholders as opposed to the people who create and maintain the game. Without being controversial there's countless economic studies pointing to a direct correlation between the decline of unions and the growing income inequality. Historically employers are not giving a greater percentage of the profits to their workers. They are keeping it for themselves. All the while they have convinced the workers this is the best way to do it.
This is just factually wrong on so many levels. Many unions don't have pensions and the ones that do, a lot of people don't bother to pay into them. Having to drag along the under performers means that you often require more people and no matter how well you neg a CBA you're not getting the high pay because of the cost of these people. Because the CBA forces pay you have a harder time attracting actual good people because they can't get paid what they are worth, just what the entry level CBA. People leave union shops because they can't negotiate raises and often get better jobs at better pay in non union shops. I have yet to meet 1 union steward, treasurer, etc that wasn't just a lazy POS that uses the "I have union work" excuse to get out of what they should be doing. Along that line I have yet to meet one member of the union leadership that cares about ANYONE other then themselves.
I could go on. I've been in 3 unions in my life and I avoid them like the absolute plague now. Anyone that thinks otherwise either hasn't ever been in a union or is just brain dead lazy.
So double down and tank the company you spent billions acquiring? That's your solution? Pure genius for sure.