March 8th is the international day for womens and gender minorities rights. It’s a celebration of historical and ongoing fights of feminist struggles. In video game, where sexual and gender based violence thrive, these fights are necessary.

Everywhere, the far right is gaining power to impose its project of reinforcing patriarchal, racist and capitalist dominations. Everywhere, it’s attacking our rights: reproductive rights, women’s rights, queer people rights, POC rights, children’s rights, workers’ rights, health and education public services. The sudden rise of fascist ideas and their constant normalisation in the public discourse directly threatens our lives.

In the United States, the Trump administration is destroying trans people rights and creating concentration camps for the undocumented immigrants. In Italy, the Meloni government removes parental recognition for lesbian couples. In Argentina, the Miley government shuts off the undersecretary’s office to the protection against gender violence. In Afghanistan, women are made prisoners in windowless rooms. In Sudan, rape is deployed as a weapon of war. In Palestine, Israel is perpetuating a genocide against the entire population. In Germany, the vast majority of men vote for a nazi party.

The video game industry is not foreign to the constant progression of the far right in the world. Players are radicalised through gamergate that tries to come back by, harrassing players, streamers or workers, in particular when they’re trans women. Our bosses don’t say anything against far right ideas, sometimes even support them!

Our bosses and companies play a crucial role in promoting and normalising fascist ideas, by protecting perpetuators of sexual and gender based violences, discriminating against and exploiting women and queer people. We, video game workers, are concerned and we won’t let this happen.

Video game workers demands are simple, and it’s mind-boggling to even have to formulate them:

• companies management must truly listen to workers, thus take seriously their representatives and respect the negociations ;
• tangible data and information collecting processes must be implemented, in order to then give them to workers representatives ;
• this second item must come with publicly providing statistical and non-personal data, in particular for salary grid implementation ;
• to prevent workers being silenced, real warning, reporting and internal investigation processes must be created and include workers’ representatives

In summary, to be clear: we demand our managers and company leaders to stop pretending to care about marginalised people only to use them as a stepping stone for the their company image, their career, or to maximise profits.

As we stated loud and clear in an assessment about our industry and our role, the fight against gender oppressions will go through unions. This statement comes from the fact that our rights are conquered only by fighting.

Unions are fighting spaces for women and marginalised people rights, whether it’s by creating choosen diversity spaces, by assisting victims of sexual and gender based violence in the workplace or in study areas, by forcing company managers to give back power to the workers, by enforcing equal pay, by assuring stable careers to precarious peoples, or even by undermining abusers authority and powers and of those who protect them.

Against the far right and macronism extreme economic liberalism , we demand dignified life for everyone, through the feminist strike!

Consequently, the Syndicat des Travailleurs et Travailleuses du Jeu Vidéo call for a strike in video game on saturday, the 8th of march 2025. We call for video game workers, unemployed people, retired people and students to mobilise in their companies and to join the mobilisations that will take place everywhere in France that day.

We remind that this call covers STJV purview in the private sector, and thus concerns everyone employed by a publisher, distributor, video game creator or services provider, regardless of their position or status, and regardless of the company’s domain of activoty (games, consoles, mobile, serious games, VR/AR, game engines, marketing services, streaming, derivative products, esport, online content creation, etc.), and all teachers and professors working in private schools with video game related curriculum or courses. As it’s a national strike call, no process is necessary to be on strike: it’s enough to not come to work.

The STJV has called for a general strike in the video game industry in France on February 13, 2025. After a first article explaining why we are calling for a strike, here is an article to provide details and arguments for each of our demands.

Demand 1: protecting jobs and making decision-makers accountable

Preservation of jobs, the cancellation of layoffs and the accountability of decision-makers who must first make sacrifices themselves when their companies face difficulties.

Layoffs have no justification

We know that it is not possible to avoid all of the current layoffs, but we assert that all of them are illegitimate: either because they could have been avoided, or because they are simply not necessary.

All layoffs can be avoided with proper planning and management. Layoffs are often just a tool for lazy bosses who don’t really want to manage their business. Workers are not variables to be used for financial adjustment.

Also, the necessity for layoffs has yet to be proven by companies. Yet they remain opaque about their finances, their partnerships… It is precisely this lack of transparency that, to this day, makes it impossible to justify most layoffs.

In some companies, we are dealing with managers who have wrongly concluded that layoffs are necessary, merely because they don’t even know how to work out their own financial projections.

Many bosses could fight against publishers and the groups they belong to to prevent layoffs in their companies, but they would rather fire workers and destroy their lives in the process than risk a disagreement with their employer friends.

Why do layoffs never affect bosses?

Every time companies bring up layoffs, the possibiliy of laying off bosses and directors, to lower the wages, to cancel their bonuses or advantages is “strangely” always absent from the conversation.

We have already seen bosses earning half a million euros per year telling workers they should be happy to not be on the minimum wage, and that it is necessary to fire the poorest workers. If it really is so necessary to tighten our belts, then bosses should sacrifice themselves at last!

This is all the more true given that publishers and groups have money, and bosses also have assets (luxury cars, boats, townhouses, mansions, summer houses…). Why should vulnerable workers lose their jobs to allow these bosses and shareholders to maintain their obscene lifestyles? They should put that money into saving jobs. Let them take responsibility and not brush off problems at the expense of workers. Let them finally be accountable.

Fatalism only benefits bosses

It’s not right that workers should have to pay for the mistakes made by the people who took stupid decisions without even asking for their opinion. Without being overly optimistic, being fatalistic about layoffs only benefits companies, which can then continue to increase their profits at our expense without encountering any opposition. The less we defend ourselves against layoffs, the more companies will fire workers without justification.

Demand 2: transparency about company finances and profit sharing

Companies’ full transparency about their financial situation and economic health, so that workers can plan their future, and profit sharing with workers.

We need to know what happened to our surplus value

The intentional vagueness surrounding companies’ finances and economic health and perpetuated by employers is preventing workers from planning for the future. Without knowing the state of a project’s finances, how can we guarantee our economic security and protect ourselves and our families?

Workers must have the right to check that the economic management of their company is sound, that there is no embezzlement, and that it will actually be possible to finish the ongoing productions and keep their jobs afterwards.

Profit-sharing is basic

Today, companies’ financial results only have a negative impact on workers. When a company loses money, workers, far from getting a raise, can be laid off; on the opposite, when a company sees its profits rise, wages remain unchanged. Where losses are collectivised, profits are privatised.

Yet it is thanks to the industry’s workers and their expertise that games are being released today. It is therefore legitimate to demand that good results be shared between all those involved in production, and not just those who have the means to line their pockets on the backs of others.

Demand 3: work reorganisation and the reduction of work hours

Consideration for work-related health and personal life, through work reorganisation and the reduction of work hours.

The video game industry is notorious for its deplorable working conditions

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of distressing accounts about various companies and schools teaching videogame trades, thanks in particular to press investigations on the subject. We all know the grim reality of the industry, confirmed by statistics: the video game industry is attractive and inspires many people to enter the field, yet no one stays in it for very long because of the deplorable working conditions and widespread discrimination.

We want to be proud of our games – give us the means to do so!

We don’t work in the video game industry because of the working conditions it offers. If ‘passion jobs’ are a reality and workers are enthusiastic, we can’t live on love and fresh water. To be dedicated, we must be able to maintain good health, have a social life and have the option of starting a family… Without having to sacrifice everything on the altar of work.

Let’s put an end to widespread disorganisation

Chaotic productions waste a lot of time, lead to overwork and strain work relationships… All these factors have a strong negative impact on morale and health. Who does what, and why? Efficient production means dividing up tasks clearly and transparently. This will not only benefit employees, but will also result in better games.

Achieving a better work-life balance

By reducing working hours, let’s make room for life outside the workplace. Let’s free up time for ourselves, for our loved ones and, why not, for our personal game projects.

Demand 4: direct participation of workers in decision-making

Direct participation of workers in decision-making at their companies in order to avoid management errors and control the proper use of private and public funding.

Our production, our choices

Workers are at the heart of the machine, as close as possible to the reality of what their game is. They are not only competent but also in a position to make decisions about what they are producing.

Workers always identify problems in advance, and that’s normal since they’re the ones who make the games. They are the first to come up with solutions to problems. They are not listened to only because bosses prefer to maintain their power over workers rather than respect them. It’s more important for them to protect their privileges first and foremost, even when it puts their company and everyone who works there at risk.

But in reality, allowing programmers to make decisions about programming, level designers to make decisions about level design, animators to make decisions about animation, etc…. This isn’t the idea of a bloodthirsty revolutionary, it’s a logical conclusion that becomes obvious when we understand that we’re the only ones who are capable of doing what we do.

We are the industry

Many of us in the video game industry have strong creative desires and the hope of really being able to leave a mark on the games we make. But these days, the prevailing thinking is that the only possible way to gain creative freedom is to set up a company and exploit other workers, to express our vision without giving others the freedom to express themselves on our productions. This would be going down the wrong road and allowing ourselves to be indoctrinated by a bourgeois class imposing its capitalist ideology.

Creativity must be accessible to everyone, not just to a minority with sufficient connections and financial means to impose their creative vision as the only possible one. If we want diverse games that tell stories from different backgrounds and experiences, we need to give creative people from all walks of life the chance to create their own games.

The STJV has called for a general strike in the video game industry in France on February 13, 2025. This article addresses a few common questions and explains why we have chosen to go on strike.

Why a strike and not some other action?

Employers have absolute power in the workplace. In practice, the law gives them the right to reject every demand, within a certain framework and as long as they follow the legal procedures. Furthermore, employees are subject to rules laid down by companies, which can punish them for many things, effectively preventing them from speaking out.

For years now, the STJV and other unions active in the industry have been making regular demands to employers to improve the industry and its working conditions. So far, employers have consistently rejected these demands out of hand, without even bothering to comply with the law. As of today, we have only obtained improvements when our demands were backed up by strike action.

The STJV is not calling for a strike for the sake of it, or for the sake of folklore, but because striking is the only genuinely legal and protected way of expressing our discontent and making demands of our bosses, and it works.

A strike is a total stoppage of work for a given period, a way of refusing to continue producing value for our bosses until they agree to our demands.

Why only one day?

For a strike to work reliably in a company, it is necessary to strike over the long term so that the strike costs the company more than the demands made by workers.

The strike on February 13 is not aimed at a specific company but at all companies in the industry. The purpose of the general strike on February 13 is to warn of the mortal danger hanging over the video game industry in France, and to demand the changes necessary to avoid this.

We are therefore calling for a single day of national strike action to come together and demonstrate the will of all workers, past, present and future, not to let our industry die without reaction.

We leave it to the workers to transform this national movement into local actions wherever necessary to defend their rights. The STJV is ready to provide support.

Who can participate?

For salaried workers, the call covers companies involved in publishing, distribution, services and/or creation for video games, whatever the company’s field of activity (games, consoles, mobile, serious games, VR/AR, game engines, marketing services, streaming, derivative products, esports, online content creation, etc.), as well as all teachers working in private education linked to video games.

But everyone can take part in the strike, not just salaried workers. Because workers are all the people who depend, depended or will depend on work to live, not just salaried workers.

Student ? You can come and defend your future working conditions and make sure you will have a job when you graduate, and after.

Unemployed ? Let’s improve the industry so that you can have the possibility of finding a job quickly, under good conditions, and to ensure that you can keep it for as long as you want.

Freelancer as a form of undeclared work ? We must fight to ensure that the industry no longer resorts to this illegal practice and that you regain your rights as an employee.

Voluntary freelancer ? If nothing changes and the industry collapses, you will no longer have enough customers to make a living.

Former worker of the video game industry, whether by choice or necessity ? Come and support the industry you left so that the problems you encountered there don’t happen again.

Gamer ? At the current rate, if nothing changes, the quality of games will only deteriorate.

Supporter outside of the video game industry ? Solidarity between workers is what enables everyone to gain new rights. The STJV is also fighting to get video game workers to support the fights in other industries.

How to get involved?

We have a guide to striking as an employee in a private company: The right to strike in private companies – STJV

Generally speaking, the most important thing is to attend the rallies and events that will be organised in your area on February 13. We will organise a count of participants at the strike and rallies to the best of our ability.

If you don’t know if something is being organised where you live, don’t hesitate to ask!

If nothing is planned in your area yet, try to organise something! Even getting together with a few workers for a coffee on February 13 is an important action. Let’s take advantage of this day to get together, discuss our work and what we could do to improve it.

Why now?

As mentioned earlier, workers have been trying for years to improve video game production and working conditions, and have been facing blockages. All these years, workers have anticipated all the problems encountered, have warned their management, and have even proposed realistic solutions to avoid them.

Today, the video game industry is in a critical state, threatening not only our jobs but the existence of the industry itself. We know there are still more disasters to come, to which executives are turning a blind eye. We cannot wait until the last second, on the brink of the abyss, to take action.

We are calling for a strike now as a means to count ourselves among workers, to acknowledge that we are not alone, and to send a strong message of unity, not only to our bosses but also to ourselves. Worker unity is the only force that will bring about the necessary changes.

We will discuss our demands in future articles.

Drawing on its years of experience as the majority union in the French video games industry, the STJV was able to draw up an assessment of the industry, which has become a corporate circus. We have drawn up an action plan so that we, the video game workers, can make lasting improvements to our industry.

To demand that the industry finally becomes mature and stable, for workers to benefit from dignified working conditions, and to have confidence in the future, the STJV is calling all workers and students to take part in a general strike of the video game industry on February the 13th, 2025.

We demand:

1. Preservation of jobs, the cancellation of layoffs and the accountability of decision-makers who must first make sacrifices themselves when their companies face difficulties.
2. Companies’ full transparency about their financial situation and economic health, so that workers can plan their future, and profit sharing with workers.
3. Consideration for work-related health and personal life, through work reorganisation and the reduction of work hours.
4. Direct participation of workers in decision-making at their companies in order to avoid management errors and control the proper use of private and public funding.

These demands are highly practical, and come in response to decades of corporate mismanagement, opacity and denial of workers’ suffering. For example, at the time this call is published, workers at Don’t Nod are on strike against a layoff plan caused by years of mismanagement, and unheeded workers’ alerts. Don’t hesitate to support their strike fund.

Although our bosses systematically ignore polite requests, workers can count on their numbers and the solidarity that binds them together. We need to organise everywhere. We encourage everyone to meet their union representatives to talk about the situation, to contact us, to organise actions and discussions in their own areas, and to go together to the rallies that will be organised on 13 February.

This call covers the STJV’s field of action in the private sector, and therefore applies to any person employed by a video game publishing, distribution, services and/or creation company – whatever their position or status and whatever their company’s area of activity (games, consoles, mobile, serious games, VR/AR, game engines, marketing services, streaming, derivative products, esports, online content creation, etc.) – as well as to all teachers working in private schools in video game-related courses. As this is a national strike call, no action is necessary to go on strike: just don’t go to work.

If you want to reuse our GG25 visuals, we produced a press kit: https://cloud.stjv.fr/s/FBSYLQ7QZcqMLcx

Context

Now over 50 years old, the video game industry is not a ‘young’ industry. However, it remains unstable, with antiquated working conditions, and is still underdeveloped, due to a lack of accumulated and advanced knowledge. The vast majority of video game bosses are clowns with over-inflated egos, only accepting totalitarian control and vainly trying to hide their incompetence by treating workers and consumers like stupid children.

The crisis the video game industry is currently going through is entirely due to these bosses but it’s the workers, the very people without whom games wouldn’t exist, who are losing their jobs. Just as capitalism allows.

Social crises and layoffs are multiplying, from Don’t Nod to Artisan Studios via Ubisoft, Leikir, Spiders, Goblinz… The list goes on and on, and the stories of workers in distress are multiplying.

In an initial article we identified three major categories of problem plaguing the industry:

• Unacceptable working conditions, where discrimination thrives, preventing workers from being able to have a real, sustainable career.
• Widespread disorganisation, in which an absence of strategic planning directly impacts workers’ health, job stability, and production quality.
• Complete indifference, if not outright hostility, from companies on issues of work-related health and disability.

Since its creation in 2017, the STJV has taken numerous actions to support workers and improve the industry: legal, moral and financial support, worker representation in companies, data gathering, building relationships with political institutions and trade unions in France and around the world, etc.

While the STJV has succeeded in placing video games among the most unionised private industries in France, the fight is still ongoing.

This was the theme of our press conference on January the 16th, during which we presented the union’s orientations for the coming years. We have reproduced them in this article.

Informing workers

In the video games industry, as in many others, employers are methodically trying to deprive workers of knowledge about their own industry: everyday problems, our skills and trades, our rights, etc. The STJV proposes an action plan to train video games workers on a massive scale about the reality of their industry.

We want to :

• Produce more data on the problems and working conditions in the video game industry in order to make them more objectively known.
• Establish a credible reference framework of video game professions, by and for workers, with the aim of establishing clear job descriptions and fighting against the vagueness and even active disinformation about our skills and professions, which are damaging our careers and benefiting employers.
• Create more public documentation on workers‘ rights and employers’ obligations, to combat employers’ abuses and train workers in the sector. Employers would also benefit from this learning a great deal themselves.
• Draw up an assessment of self-employment (‘freelance’), which is becoming increasingly common in the video game industry, but whose status is little known and poorly documented. All too often it is a form of disguised salaried employment, depriving workers of the majority of state protection schemes, while directly exposing them to job insecurity.
• Inform students who need to know both their specific rights, but also to be better trained in labour law and the specific situation of our industry as future video game workers.
• Improve training for workers, in particular by enabling them to use the twelve paid days of economic, social, environmental and trade union training leave to which they are entitled each year in France.
• Ensure that the voice, information and representation of workers are respected. Employee representative bodies are still not respected by employers, who block all attempts at change and improvement, leaving workers in the dark. We encourage these bodies to sue their companies whenever necessary and will commit the necessary means to help them do so.

Raising awareness among public authorities

For a long time, the video game industry was only represented by employers‘ lobbies, which kept the public authorities in the dark, allowing employers to shower themselves with public money while continuing to violate workers’ rights with total impunity. The STJV wants to put a definitive end to this situation by showing the true face of the industry to elected representatives, the CNC, the French labour inspection authority… and to any other institution concerned.

We want to :

• Demonstrate the strategic value of the video game industry. Between advanced technologies that can be used in sensitive areas, the soft power that it represents, and the hegemony of foreign groups and capital within it, public authorities should take an interest in the sector.
• Inform elected representatives and institutions about the state of working conditions and widespread non-compliance with the law in the video game industry, with job and career insecurity directly threatening French video game production and its international competitiveness in the short and medium term.
• Inform elected representatives and institutions about the public subsidies used in the video game sector, how they are distributed, and how they are actually used. They must be able to measure the real value of this aid and the shortcomings of its current use, to enable them to better frame their political action.
• Inform elected representatives and institutions about institutes in the public and private video game education system, many of which receive public funding. The hegemony of big private groups and their influence on studying conditions, where high prices, mediocre teaching standards, and the maintenance of a code of silence are just as much a threat to the industry.

Reorganising video game productions

Corporate disorganisation and lack of strategy, fuelled by the incompetence or malice of our bosses, are the main threats to workers’ health and jobs, as well as to the quality and diversity of productions. If these problems are not resolved, the very existence of the video games industry is threatened.

We will fight to :

• Establish common principles of healthy and efficient production management that do not crush workers, while stabilising jobs, and leaving room for creativity, innovation and worker expression. This will result in quality games produced under good conditions.
• Impose the most horizontal hierarchy possible in companies. Integrating workers directly into decision-making is a necessary measure for jobs and business survival. Workers have predicted every business failure or bankruptcy that has hit the industry in recent years. A dictatorial hierarchy refusing to listen to their solutions has prevented problems from being solved on time.
• End the cult of the author and allow workers to choose what their work contributes to. This is a democratic measure, of cultural and economic salvation, to break the current vicious circle of standardisation in games. Games are the complex result of collaboration between workers with a wide range of skills, not of solitary creative ‘geniuses’ that don’t exist.

Making the fight international

Like many industries, the video game sector is part of an international context that has a direct impact on workers’ rights. Social dumping (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_dumping) is one example of the concrete impact it has on jobs and working conditions.

Taking an internationalist position, the STJV has made this an essential factor in its action since its creation, whether through the exchange of knowledge or support for foreign unions, including in their creation process. The development of global trade unionism in video games means that we can do even more, together.

Our ambition is to :

• Set up joint actions with foreign unions, in a spirit of international solidarity to help video game workers organise everywhere, and to fight against companies putting workers in competition with each other, particularly through outsourcing.
• Inform and raise the awareness of foreign unions and international institutions about the video game industry in order to get higher levels involved in legislation and eventually negotiate international agreements. This may include strengthening our presence within the Uni Global Union, of which the STJV has been a member for several years.

Creating and securing new rights

While we are still a long way from it on many issues, the video game industry’s outdated working conditions will not improve simply by complying with the legal minimum. Video game workers, like all workers, must be able to work in dignified conditions and to get the recognition they deserve, so they don’t waste their lives fighting to receive what they are due.

In addition to representing the industry before the institutions, we are going to use all the levers of action at our disposal to:

• Obtain new rights for all of society, by getting the video game industry involved in inter-professional actions whether they be international, national or in branches close to the video game industry. The diversity of our industry means that we can play a liaison role between industries such as IT and animation.
• Obtain new rights in companies, by negotiating company agreements with the aim of standardising these rights as far as possible across companies and workers in the industry.

We will first focus on the urgent issues in the video game industry:

• Tracking and restructuring and reducing working hours, so that working life no longer devours life altogether, and to prevent companies abusing working hours as much as possible.
• Disabilities, so that the video game industry finally becomes accessible to everyone, with positions adapted to each individual, and so that disabilities are acknowledged, including those that are widespread in the video game industry but that have little to recognition from the State.
• Physical health, work-related illnesses and accidents, and ergonomics. The risks associated with office jobs, in particular musculoskeletal, neurological and visual disorders, must finally be taken into account. Solutions must be found so that workers can remain in good health beyond a few years of their career.
• Psycho-social risks, such as depression, burnout and anxiety which wreak havoc among video game workers due to the disastrous working conditions, and which remain systematically ignored by companies.
• Consumer violence to which video game workers are exposed, particularly in online marketing teams, and the consequences of which are almost universally ignored. The STJV would like to introduce the concept of operational protection, which exists in the civil service, into our industry.
• Emergency protection measures for workers, in particular by stopping production when there is too much sick leave taken in a short time period, which is a sign of serious organisational malfunctioning endangering workers.
• Workers’ compensation and in particular, in the form of contractual bonuses, the sharing of the value they produce when a game is a commercial success.

The general strike

We know from experience that our bosses, whatever the company and although they claim the opposite, do not listen when we ask them regularly to improve our working conditions and our careers. It is therefore necessary to make them understand in a different way that workers, their rights and their working conditions are not mere adjustment variables to make up for their incompetence.

Employers have colossal means at their disposal, because they use the value created by workers against them, with lawyers, crisis communication firms and trade union repression consultants – however, workers have numbers and the solidarity that binds them together.

To demand that the industry finally matures and becomes stable, that workers benefit from dignified working conditions, and that they can have confidence in the future, the STJV calls on all workers to take part in a general strike of the video game industry on February the 13th, 2025.

We published a detailed call for strike action on the 17th of January.

7 years ago, the STJV was created to address video game workers’ problems.

Over the past 5 years, our activities in representing workers in companies and our work with freelance workers have intensified and, over the past 2 years, we have seen them multiply even further.

Today, despite our successes and ongoing efforts, working conditions in the industry have deteriorated to such an extent that all the alarm bells are ringing.

Our assessment of the situation has identified several major bottlenecks, associated with problems that will have to be corrected if the industry is to get back on the right track:

• Careers and discrimination
• Disorganisation and lack of strategy within companies
• Total disregard for workers’ health and safety.

Chaotic jobs and careers: an obstacle course

Severance agreements as a career goal

Problems start at school, with courses that are extremely expensive, inadequate and dangerous for students’ health. In these institutions where nepotism reigns supreme, we are taught the harmful culture of crunch, all of this with no proper training for entering a hyper-competitive working world where we will have to get by despite wages that are not always sustainable, and the lack of supervision and on-the-job training.

Why is there a majority of young workers in the video games industry? Because older workers have long since left the industry. Why? Low pay, unstable contracts, hidden work, lack of career progression, negative impact to family life… In other words, not only is it a real struggle at first, but working conditions don’t even improve with time and experience.

And that’s if you’re lucky enough not to suffer harassment and discrimination. From difficult recruitment processes to being forced to resign, as well as the routine hell endured in a culture of sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia and so on, the video games industry can become a self-esteem black hole.

Disarray is the norm, nothingness is the strategy

“I played a game last weekend”

From the earliest stages of development, games face many obstacles. They are made despite the incompetence of upper management. A lack of knowledge about the world of video games, a focus on profits and ever-increasing productivity demands, the invention of so-called ‘solutions’ without consulting experts, a permeability to the industry’s latest fads: these are just some of the characteristics that describe decision-makers in the video game industry.

As a result, ordinary workers have to deal with the fantasies of their hierarchy. Their expertise is not acknowledged, and they are not trusted, so they have no choice but to adapt to decisions that are at best clumsy, often completely stupid. They also have to deal with a host of top managers who waste precious time on inefficient processes, meetings and cumbersome, time-consuming micro-management. Unable to come up with realistic schedules and briefings, let alone effective supervision, they foster confusion at the expense of organisation.

As for creative directors, it’s the rule of silence. Despotic and untouchable, these people use their seniority and connections to do as they please, without any possible challenge from workers. This is how we end up wasting time, money and skills by restarting productions several times over, at a simple request from upper management, who are content to follow the latest trends blindly

Despite decades of history of this “young” industry, production targets are still totally distorted by a short-term vision based on inevitable crunch and the desire to impress executives or publishers. In addition, cost estimates are unrealistic and do not take into account the realities of producing a game. And when the results or financial estimates are not to their liking, production is further compromised by accounting schemes designed to mislead shareholders or executives, just to ensure bonuses and dividends.

This lack of communication and information also undermines the quality of games. Throughout all phases of development, the excessive division of labour isolates teams from each other. Not to mention the industry’s legendary paranoia, which obscures the strategies and overall vision of a project or a company. Everything is stretched thin, done in a vacuum, with no room for hindsight, benchmarking, self-criticism or experimentation. As a result, there is no room for innovation and creativity, which leads to mediocre games.

In smaller companies however, the ask for polyvalence can turn into a real balancing act. While it is understandable that smaller teams mean that boundaries are less defined, it often ends up means outright not having required skills available from team members (specifically when it comes to quality assurance or communications, but also by asking for separate specialties like going back and forth from 2D to 3D graphics) in the hope that someone within the team steps up and shoulders the burden.

Abandonment as a prevention policy

Burnouts, muscle pain, fruit baskets

Unfortunately, the problems described above affect not only the games themselves, but also those who make them. They are subjected to working conditions harmful to their health, but these problems are systematically downplayed and overlooked.

To begin with, companies refuse to acknowledge any problem as systemic. Everything is treated as individual responsibility in the neoliberal fantasy, making it impossible to genuinely tackle issues and implement appropriate policies.

Within companies, staff representatives are often blocked through a lack of documets, information, consultation…Another strategy is when some companies try to outright block the setup or basic functions of employee representatives (by avoiding speaking about it, or by organising elections too early where only the first employees are eligible). As for independent workers, they are subjected to the do-or-die doctrine, since the question of health in the workplace simply does not exist (no tracking, supervision, or laws).

In any event, we can never count on work-related accidents and illnesses being taken into account, let alone disabilities, which are denied and swept under the carpet. Only solidarity between workers can sometimes prevent the worst from happening.

Workstation and career adaptations, meanwhile, are subject to the whim of employers, who see them as unnecessary comfort. Ergonomic tools, part-time work and remote working, for example, are refused purely because of ideology and autoritarianism.

In short, workers have to fight constantly to achieve the legal minimum, and well-being at work is treated as an incidental luxury of which they should be lucky to get even the smallest crumb.

Faced with these problems, and faced with the current state of our industry, which employers seem to want to reduce to rubble, the STJV does not intend to remain inactive…

… see you in 2025.