hat’s the first thing that comes to mind
when you think of the games industry
and its working conditions?
Is it something that benefits workers,
or is it something that benefits the companies?
When I first started working in the games industry,
the way I was treated wasn’t often something I thought
about. I was making games and living the dream!
But after twelve years in the industry and a lot of
horrible experiences, it’s now hard for me to stop
thinking about our industry’s working conditions.
It’s not a surprise anymore when news comes out
that another game company is treating its workers
poorly. In the past year alone, we’ve heard terrible
stories about Rockstar, Riot, Activision Blizzard,
NetherRealm, Telltale, and ArenaNet, to name a few.
When I see articles about companies mistreating
their workers, I’m reminded that almost everyone I
know who has been in the industry for more than five
years has experienced excessive overtime, been laid
off, or had an abusive boss. The ones who haven’t
had those experiences consider themselves unusually
lucky. It’s pretty clear that it’s not just one or two game
companies that are treating their workers poorly – it’s
the majority of the industry. This is a systemic problem.
So what do we do? We can try individually asking our
bosses to give us a raise, to stop requiring crunch,
to not lay us off, and to treat us more kindly, but in my
experience that doesn’t really go anywhere.
Even if your boss is awesome and treats you well,
gives you a raise, says you can stop crunching, and
guarantees your job will be around in a year – that still
leaves the rest of us out in the cold. To use an analogy,
a single person can’t stop the climate crisis by changing
their purchasing and eating habits. One person alone
won’t stop companies from continuing to destroy the
environment, just as one person alone trying to change
the games industry won’t be enough. The only way
W
A Call For Unionisation
we’re going to get industry-wide change is collectively,
by working together to make all companies improve.
So what does collective action look like? It’s workers
getting together within their companies to figure out
what they want their workplace to be like. It’s workers
within a region deciding what their slice of the games
industry should be like. And it’s game workers uniting
across the world to push for the games industry to
become what we know it can be: an industry that
welcomes everyone, treats its workers well, and
allows us to make the games we all love. That’s what a
unionised games industry would look like.
In March 2018, an international Game Workers Unite
movement took off and helped gather workers in the
UK to start discussing changes they wanted to see in
the industry. Last December, we created Game Workers
Unite UK, the UK’s first game worker union, as a branch
of the Independent Workers of Great Britain. We are a
worker-led, democratic organisation that is campaigning
to end the institutionalised practice of excessive/unpaid
overtime; improve diversity and inclusion at all levels;
inform workers of their rights and support those who
are abused, harassed, or need representation; and
secure a steady and fair wage for all.
In the five months since we formed, we’ve educated
game workers about their rights and helped several of
them secure redress from companies that mistreated
them. By unionising, we can protect individual workers,
collectively bargain at each company, and coordinate to
improve the industry as a whole. By banding together,
we can be a voice for people who don’t have the
power to stand up for themselves. The union is for the
workers, and the workers run the union.
We have an opportunity to improve the games
industry for ourselves, those who work with us,
and those who come after us. Come check us out
at gwu-uk.org, and join the union to help make this
industry a better place for us all.AUSTIN
KELMORE
Austin Kelmore is
a programmer and
the Chair of Game
Workers Unite UK,
a branch of the
Independent Workers
Union of Great Britain.wfmag.cc \ 03