Doom studio id Software forms Union

[erek]

"From the onset, this union will look to protect remote work for id Software employees. "Remote work isn’t a perk. It’s a necessity for our health, our families, and our access needs. RTO policies should not be handed down from executives with no consideration for accessibility or our well-being,” said id Software Lead Services Programmer Chris Hays. He also said he looks forward to getting worker protections regarding the "responsible use of AI."

Workers at id began organizing around 18 months ago, according to a report by Aftermath. Things sped up after Microsoft closed several Bethesda studios in the middle of last year.

"We look forward to sitting across the table from Microsoft to negotiate a contract that reflects the skill, creativity and dedication these workers bring to every project," said CWA Local 6215 President Ron Swaggerty."

Source: https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/d...y-of-employees-voting-in-favor-164808829.html

 

[arestavo]

So one could call it... an unholy union?

(grabs a space marine suit)

 

[Lateralus]

When asked what he would do if presented with a contract that didn't reflect the skill, creativity and dedication of the workers, CWA Local 6215 President Ron Swaggerty said he would happily

Spoiler

until an agreement was reached.

 

[uOpt]

Is this the first Microsoft programming part with a union?

 

[Armenius]

RIP.

 

[Unabomber]

Having known a couple of folks who worked for iD software in the 90's, this is a far cry from what they used to be.

Back then, they said that iD software was the most amazing place to work, and you would have to be foolish to unionize.

They both agreed that the downfall started after Quake had been released, and that there was a lot of in-fighting and squabbling among the powers that be, but the company was still quite productive.

 

[1_rick]

"Remote work isn’t a perk. It’s a necessity for our health, our families, and our access needs.

What a crybaby wuss. I mean, I like working from home, too, but I wouldn't want to tell the world that I feel it's a necessity for my health.

 

[DukenukemX]

What a crybaby wuss. I mean, I like working from home, too, but I wouldn't want to tell the world that I feel it's a necessity for my health.

Depends on his health. Some people may not be able to get up and leave from home so easily due to debilitating health problems. I never saw a reason why someone couldn't just work from home if their work could be done from home. Less people commuting to work means less cars on the road, means less traffic. This also means less pollution, less wear on cars, less tolls for bridges, and more parking spots for others. For the worker it also means not wasting time commuting and a lot less money spent doing so.

 

[horse]

Does id even really exist any more?...because I don't think it does. It's just like a logo on a box any more. It's all out sourced bs game development and it's mostly bethesda and microsoft dogshit and a few surviving id employees which apparently equals an id game :~

 

[Mchart]

Does id even really exist any more?...because I don't think it does. It's just like a logo on a box any more. It's all out sourced bs game development and it's mostly bethesda and microsoft dogshit and a few surviving id employees which apparently equals an id game :~

They do. But they won’t last with this, and the latest doom didn’t do well either. At some point soon they’ll go under. I don’t think the engine tech will live on either as they’ve never really been successful on licensing it out beyond the glory days of the Q3 era. Indiana jones was super impressive though tech wise.

 

[KazeoHin]

The best games come from studios that don't need to unionise.

The studios that do need to unionise don't make anything worth workplace abuse for.

I'm all for unions and collective baegaining. But in a creative industry, if workers feel that the result of their work isn't worth the conditions of their labour, it's probably a studio that isn't worth existing.

 

[sharknice]

The best games come from studios that don't need to unionise.

The studios that do need to unionise don't make anything worth workplace abuse for.

I'm all for unions and collective baegaining. But in a creative industry, if workers feel that the result of their work isn't worth the conditions of their labour, it's probably a studio that isn't worth existing.

Agreed. The best studios aren't owned by megacorps like Microsoft. If you work at a megacop it's probably good to unionize as a game dev.

There aren't even enough game jobs for a third of the college graduates studying game development. It's a terrible profession to go into right now. It always has been a pretty garbage job being a game dev at a megacorp, but it's especially bad right now.

Even if you go the indy route the market is super saturated with games. There are over 10,000 games releasing on steam every year. You not only have to make an awesome game, you need to have extremely good marketing and hope you get some lucky exposure. Half the games on steam don't even make their $100 fee back. Less than 10% make over $100,000. If you factor in how many people and how long they're working on the game there's only a tiny amount of people that can make a living doing it. You better be doing it for fun if you do it.

 

[DukenukemX]

The best games come from studios that don't need to unionise.

The studios that do need to unionise don't make anything worth workplace abuse for.

I'm all for unions and collective baegaining. But in a creative industry, if workers feel that the result of their work isn't worth the conditions of their labour, it's probably a studio that isn't worth existing.

Some of the best games were made by people who were a team, less than the fingers you have on your hands. id Software's original Doom was made by five people. Who were four people going to unionize against? John Carmack? Minecraft was developed by Notch in his spare, by himself at home. Today, Minecraft is worked on by several hundred people. Toby Fox made Undertale alone in his home. Silksong was developed by 3 people who mostly worked from home. On the flip side Red Dead Redemption 2 had a team of 1,600 people. If people want to work from home then let them. Some of the best games were done this way.

 

[Ihaveworms]

They are doomed.

 

[Mchart]

They are doomed.

They’ve been increasingly irrelevant since Rage and Carmack leaving. Doom 2016 was a really good game though, but everything after has been pretty subpar. The latest doom was really disappointing IMO.

 

[DukenukemX]

They’ve been increasingly irrelevant since Rage and Carmack leaving. Doom 2016 was a really good game though, but everything after has been pretty subpar. The latest doom was really disappointing IMO.

I personally really liked Doom Eternal. Haven't tried Doom the Dark ages. Waiting for that game to go on a deep sale.

 

[sharknice]

They’ve been increasingly irrelevant since Rage and Carmack leaving. Doom 2016 was a really good game though, but everything after has been pretty subpar. The latest doom was really disappointing IMO.

I miss the days when they pushed hardware to it's limits. Doom 3 was the last time they really did that. The dynamic lighting with self shading shadows blew everything else away at the time. It even had ultra high texture settings that required more memory than the current gpus had at it's release date.

Now they aren't doing anything impressive graphically unless you have low end hardware. They really focus on optimization and completely ignore high end. It's great they prioritize optimization in a time it seems like almost no developers do, but it doesn't really do anything for me when the game looks multiple generations behind in graphical detail.

 

[Mchart]

I miss the days when they pushed hardware to it's limits. Doom 3 was the last time they really did that. The dynamic lighting with self shading shadows blew everything else away at the time. It even had ultra high texture settings that required more memory than the current gpus had at it's release date.

Now they aren't doing anything impressive graphically unless you have low end hardware. They really focus on optimization and completely ignore high end. It's great they prioritize optimization in a time it seems like almost no developers do, but it doesn't really do anything for me when the game looks multiple generations behind in graphical detail.

They helped machine games a lot with Indiana jones on the technology side. That game looks fantastic for how well it runs, and demonstrates that they still have good technology.

 

[sharknice]

They helped machine games a lot with Indiana jones on the technology side. That game looks fantastic for how well it runs, and demonstrates that they still have good technology.

Looks good for how well it runs, but looks like a last gen game.

 

[DukenukemX]

I miss the days when they pushed hardware to it's limits. Doom 3 was the last time they really did that. The dynamic lighting with self shading shadows blew everything else away at the time. It even had ultra high texture settings that required more memory than the current gpus had at it's release date.

Crysis was the last game to do that. Damn game started the meme, "but can it run Crysis". Doom 3 was certainly more exciting for me than any other game, but that's because the leaked Demo was more awesome than the actual game. John Carmack did not have a fun time with ATI when they leaked the demo. Then had Creative holding John Carmack hostage if Doom 3 didn't get EAX audio implemented. Creative had patented John Carmack's own technology before he did. Doom 3 had a lot of terrible things going on around it.

Now they aren't doing anything impressive graphically unless you have low end hardware. They really focus on optimization and completely ignore high end. It's great they prioritize optimization in a time it seems like almost no developers do, but it doesn't really do anything for me when the game looks multiple generations behind in graphical detail.

That's the most impressive thing about recent Doom games in that they perform really well. The graphics look good to me but a lot of times what looks like poor graphics is just poor art work.

 

[Armenius]

Agreed. The best studios aren't owned by megacorps like Microsoft. If you work at a megacop it's probably good to unionize as a game dev.

There aren't even enough game jobs for a third of the college graduates studying game development. It's a terrible profession to go into right now. It always has been a pretty garbage job being a game dev at a megacorp, but it's especially bad right now.

Even if you go the indy route the market is super saturated with games. There are over 10,000 games releasing on steam every year. You not only have to make an awesome game, you need to have extremely good marketing and hope you get some lucky exposure. Half the games on steam don't even make their $100 fee back. Less than 10% make over $100,000. If you factor in how many people and how long they're working on the game there's only a tiny amount of people that can make a living doing it. You better be doing it for fun if you do it.

FromSoftware works for the largest media conglomerate in Japan, by the way, Kadokawa Corporation. Sony became majority shareholder in that conglomerate in 2024. FromSoftware is considered one of the best developers out there right now.

 

[Aurelius]

Unionization is fine. It's that it's often important precisely because the development team is worried leaders will either push a game in the wrong direction (such as pay-to-progress or other unsavory mechanics) or treat the team badly — the classic examples are mandatory crunch time or purely profit-driven layoffs.

As for id Software, I'm not mad that it isn't like it was in its glory days. The team behind Wolftenstein, Doom, and Quake was a small bunch of scrappy indies. Even if the studio had stayed small and indie, the fact is that a developer in their fifties is going to have a different set of priorities. They're not going to be the sort that eagerly works 16-hour days and comes out of left field with wild ideas. They want to get back to their families. They have legacies to maintain and expand. So it's not surprising that the originals gradually drifted toward other companies and projects... that's how life goes.

 

[DukenukemX]

As for id Software, I'm not mad that it isn't like it was in its glory days. The team behind Wolftenstein, Doom, and Quake was a small bunch of scrappy indies.

Maybe not Wolfenstein games. Youngblood was awful, but so was New Order and 2009 Wolfenstein. They were too woke. The only Wolfenstein game I liked was Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

View: https://youtu.be/ljwv35SyMHk?si=j4dHLSdaHHEA6TAK

 

[Aurelius]

Maybe not Wolfenstein games. Youngblood was awful, but so was New Order and 2009 Wolfenstein. They were too woke. The only Wolfenstein game I liked was Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

View: https://youtu.be/ljwv35SyMHk?si=j4dHLSdaHHEA6TAK

I'm talking the original Wolfenstein 3D, as those newer titles were developed by MachineGames. As it is... both New Order and New Colossus were actually well-received, and being more inclusive didn't hurt them one bit.

 

[Twisted Kidney]

I've kind of fallen off with them since they started putting way too much lore into their Doom games.

I was absolutely fine with: "Demons exist, Doom Guy does not like demons existing."

 

[Lakados]

I don't blame them for wanting a union.
Traditionally, game developers are in a perpetual state of looking for new work, as most get hired mid to late into a project, to get let go shortly after the first major patch (the time the game should have actually launched), the studio only keeps a handful of the core staff for ongoing maintenance before shifting them to the next project.
It's not a fun experience, and the work environment around game development is why I got out of it, and I can 1000% see it from their perspective on why they think a union would solve the problem.

But I have worked now from the other side long enough to know that the fundamental development cycle is the thing that is broken and needs to be changed, and unionizing won't fix that. Microsoft and the like will happily let them unionize, and they won't fire them, but they will gradually decrease what that studio is involved in, slowly pushing them into the background, having them "assist" other studios that aren't unionized. While they "downsize" the union studios to better align with the workload until they are left with a skeleton crew that does little more than the background work for other studios.

 

[TrunksZero]

I don't blame them for wanting a union.
Traditionally, game developers are in a perpetual state of looking for new work, as most get hired mid to late into a project, to get let go shortly after the first major patch (the time the game should have actually launched), the studio only keeps a handful of the core staff for ongoing maintenance before shifting them to the next project.
It's not a fun experience, and the work environment around game development is why I got out of it, and I can 1000% see it from their perspective on why they think a union would solve the problem.

But I have worked now from the other side long enough to know that the fundamental development cycle is the thing that is broken and needs to be changed, and unionizing won't fix that. Microsoft and the like will happily let them unionize, and they won't fire them, but they will gradually decrease what that studio is involved in, slowly pushing them into the background, having them "assist" other studios that aren't unionized. While they "downsize" the union studios to better align with the workload until they are left with a skeleton crew that does little more than the background work for other studios.

It could also help ID long term. Part of why ID is such a prize of a company is the IDTech engine development side of them. And despite them getting forced out of wider licensing of it, they have managed to keep at making some pretty well oiled and optimized tech.

 

[Lakados]

It could also help ID long term. Part of why ID is such a prize of a companies is the IDTech engine development side of them. And despite them getting forced out of wider licensing of it, they have managed to keep at making some pretty well oiled and optimized tech.

Yeah.... But they do it too; ID constantly shifts between 50 and 300 employees, so I am sure a good portion of those 50 make up the core team of engine developers, the other 250 are in a near constant state of updating their resume.