Rockstar still hasn't offered a convincing reason for firing over 30 GTA 6 developers
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/rockstar-still-hasnt-offered-a-convincing-reason-for-firing-over-30-gta-6-developers/
515 points · 49 comments · view on lemmy.world
49 Comments
newthrowaway20@lemmy.world · 119 pts · 247d
Nope. But they did delay the game again and they pinky promised they didn't fire these people to union bust.
rumba@piefed.zip · 34 pts · 247d
I do worry about the longevity of unionization in the gaming industry. There's a lot of churn and high demand for the positions. There's remote work now, scabs don't even need to show up to cross the picket line.
Katana314@lemmy.world · 34 pts · 247d
I mean, when they work indie, they don't need to unionize.
We probably won't see unions; just a collapse of AAA. The Game Awards this year was a joke with only about 3 big contenders, and most were regarded as "indie".
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works · 18 pts · 247d
There are only two types of games nowadays. Everything that isn't AAA is labelled "Indie", even when they're with major publishers and have three dozen devs and a hundred externals.
Katana314@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 247d
Right, but if you try to follow a more strict definition that mostly follows 2D games developed by a single person, even their publishing framework ends up encompassing dozens if not hundreds of people. It’s become hard to make that definition strict. At the very least, very few notable games are made by the really big labels: Ubisoft, 2K, EA, etc.
ripcord@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 246d
What about the biggest game publisher, tencent
Rhoeri@piefed.world · 29 pts · 246d
And they don’t need to. Just like we don’t need to give them a reason why we’re not going to buy their shit any more.
Squizzy@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 246d
Cant imagine its the case that they dont need to, only some shit hole country would not have basic employee rights
ieGod@lemmy.zip · -7 pts · 246d
You can't exactly force a company to employ someone. Even in a pro-labor-rights country the employer would be free to terminate. The termination would come with all sorts of employee benefits of course.
6nk06@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 246d
That's false and you know it. Or it's a lie for some reason.
ieGod@lemmy.zip · -1 pts · 246d
Honestly curious why you believe otherwise. Termination without cause is absolutely allowed, and again, comes with legal provisions for the employee. In Ontario, Canada, for example, this manifests in severance pay.
I'm not super well versed in EU practices so perhaps it's even more strict but fundamentally if a company cannot afford to retain an employee they must have the ability to let them go.
anomnom@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 246d
Germany is famous for employing people part time, and then the state compensates the employees when not working. This is done to keep people that the company otherwise couldn’t afford, employed.
6nk06@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 246d
Forbidden in France and I guess most of Europe.
If a company cannot afford to retain employees, it's a very long process with lawyers and you dont get to choose who leaves.
Squizzy@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 245d
This is uninformed bullshit. You are wrong and talking with authority on something you clearly know nothing about, I can only assume you live somewhere without employee protections and rights.
gravitywell@sh.itjust.works · 26 pts · 247d
I know why, its this one really cool trick for increasing shareholder value. Give it another quarter and that line will be going up up up!
statelesz@slrpnk.net · 25 pts · 246d
Note to self: don't buy GTA 6.
raicon@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 246d
I know a place where it will be free
PoliteDudeInTheMood@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 246d
But we still have to wait for a year after the console release. So they can make money off everyone who won't get it for free
hancock@retrolemmy.com · 1 pts · 246d
Dont do it, if you play it youll talk about it, interact with things thatll make it popular. Ignore it completely
Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 9 pts · 246d
I made that note when gta 5 killed off the storyline expansions.
I was never interested in world of war craft with cars.
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 246d
It would have been good if not for horrible load times, hostile balancing, and a live service slow grind model built to sell in game currency. The soullessness of it is why it was bad.
echodot@feddit.uk · 2 pts · 246d
Don't worry you won't be able to it's never getting released.
scott_the_sloth@lemmy.today · 20 pts · 247d
Cunt company with cunty business practices
ripcord@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 246d
Oh, fucking fuck off with your "deeply concerning", Starmer. Fucking useless politicians. Actually do something.
LostWanderer@fedia.io · 13 pts · 247d
They never will give us a convincing reason for those firings; which is why we shouldn't buy Rockstar Games and support the devs if they set up Go Fund Mes!
Sneptaur@pawb.social · 11 pts · 247d
This has become standard practice in this industry now. The play is to work for indie companies or bust.
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 246d
And as a gamer, don't stand for it. Be more aware and stop paying for bad behavior.
And stop kids that don't know any better from getting sucked into it, too.
Sneptaur@pawb.social · 1 pts · 246d
I just buy whatever games come out that strike my fancy. It's an industry problem that can only be solved by unionization.
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 246d
I'm not sure even that would fix it. It's clearly a capitalism-needs-to-learn-what-actually-makes-games-good problem. Unionization might be the real-world fix, but I'm worried that, even with that, getting a company to create unique games that are fun and high value to gamers could be out of purview.
It's a money-people in charge problem, the same way that money-people are in charge of things like healthcare. I'm really not sure that unionizing a publicly traded company will have more effect than just changing who is being told what medical procedures are authorized, or in gaming's case: what decisions to implement to make the investors more money.
And now that this structure has been in place long enough and has gotten so ingrained in the surrounding structures, like education and standard business practices and expectations, and also in culture, it's going to take more than unionization. Maybe if the whole industry suddenly unionized and had a very clear goal of telling the bean counters to collectively fuck off, but good luck with that happening. We'd all like to see that happen.
lechekaflan@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 246d
It's always the fucking suits.
DupaCycki@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 246d
Personally I was never interested in GTA 6 to begin with, but this cemented my decision not to buy it under any circumstances.
FatVegan@leminal.space · 4 pts · 245d
I kinda was. But now it has been so long and the more that i think about it, the more i realise how much i hate what they did with gta5, or gtao to be specific. I hope to pirate it to fuck around a bit, i do not plan to give them any money
GladiusB@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 246d
And they never will
Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 247d
Maybe the reason is theyre terrible shitty people and rockstar doesnt wanna ruin their chances of a new job
/s
e8CArkcAuLE@piefed.social · 2 pts · 246d
maybe they had mapped out and developed this storyline about a weirdly orange-coloured real-estate tycoon that lives in a Mediterranean style villa called “Lago-a-mar” but somehow they had to throw all that out and start all over.
the unionbusting is just a coverup!
Amoxtli@thelemmy.club · 1 pts · 247d
Because they cost money.
BotsRuinedEverything@lemmy.world · -8 pts · 246d
Because GTAV made over $700 million last year on 12 year old ip. They are in absolutely zero rush to release a sequel that may or may not flop in an era when it's clear that 90-100% of programming jobs will be eliminated within a decade.
Every programmer they replace with ai now is one less bonus to pay out after release.
echodot@feddit.uk · 16 pts · 246d
I'm guessing you haven't actually seen the output from AI because you absolutely cannot replace humans with yet
Kolanaki@pawb.social · 5 pts · 246d
That's exactly what we keep yelling at the companies that keep trying, but some of them don't listen, fire their staff for AI, and then regret it a few months later.
Just because it is incredibly awful does not mean stupid fucks in charge of companies won't do it.
echodot@feddit.uk · 1 pts · 246d
Yeah my company is going through this at the moment. I'm super duper hoping I get fired because I've worked for the company long enough that I'll get an a bit over a year worth of severance. That's just about long enough for them to realise that they actually need us and then they can rehire us back at a higher rate. As per established process.
It's going to be excellent.
BotsRuinedEverything@lemmy.world · -5 pts · 246d
So you think that 90-100% of programming jobs WON'T be replaced by AI within a decade? I realize there are limitations but I think exponential growth is difficult to see within the first three years. We are currently in year three.
echodot@feddit.uk · 9 pts · 246d
No I don't. I'm sure C suite executive think that's the case, but every time they've tried it they've always had to back pedal and hire the human staff back.
Flamekebab@piefed.social · 1 pts · 246d
Stop, stop, I can't breathe!
rmrf@lemmy.ml · 7 pts · 246d
Do you write code?
Flamekebab@piefed.social · 2 pts · 246d
If so, is it any good?
I imagine if one writes janky spaghetti then it's easy to think that LLMs will result in redundancy. My experience is that they're like having an over-enthusiastic junior who doesn't learn. Useful when one can't be bothered to write something with very limited scope but is quickly out of their depth on anything involved.
rmrf@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 245d
Yeah. AI 100% makes me more productive and by a good bit. I used it to write a section of code today to export all the information my program gathers about a system to a json file. Woulda taken me 20 minutes but chatgpt did it in seconds.
It also, in the same snippet, introduced a breaking change I didn't ask for in the original code. I only copied the json part; I just happened to notice the change in the code it wrong. It added a fork bomb lol
Flamekebab@piefed.social · 3 pts · 245d
That's the thing though - I find that what it saves me in time writing it costs me in reviewing. I hate reviewing.
rmrf@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 244d
I've cut down on that by only giving it tasks that are reviewed automatically.
"Spit this into a json"
It gives me the code, I continue with my program knowing exactly what is where in the json and if I get a parsing error or something I know exactly where to look. TBH, though, for things like that I must have an error rate lower than 5%
Ask it to configure a reverse proxy for a cors sensitive application, though, and I think I'd rather die
Magnum@infosec.pub · 1 pts · 246d
Maybe 0 - 10%