https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/bethesda-game-studios-developers-form-wall-to-wall-union-with-241-members/
The Fallout and Elder Scrolls developer is a union shop now.
Thank fuck for that. With any luck the better conditions will even give them the power to push back on management if management demands something stupid be added to a game.
In an industry as notoriously dreadful as game development, every bit of quality of life counts.
Microsoft has actually voluntarily recognized a gaming company union before. It seems they prefer to voluntarily recognize the unions and then fight them during the contract phase, not sure exactly why they do it this way instead of trying to stonewall the first step like most companies.
It's more likely a cost benefit analysis. Fighting the Unions is lawyer expensive and PR expensive. Gamers are noisy after all, when riled up. Microsoft is evil, but also like Trump, they understand optics.
Oh this could definitely be it, let the union exist, get the good press, and then fuck them hard in contract negotiations.
I think it might be more subtle than that, unions exist so that when negotiations happen they can fuck back, but we know Microsoft can strategise longer term than that. They pioneered "embrace, extend, extinguish". Embracing a union then trying to infiltrate and turn it into a corporatised union is another version of that exact same play.
Companies can leverage CBAs to "fix" pay scales well below CPI or other metrics by forcing extensive negotiation as a way to sell down an agreement. Similarly, they can use agreements to create separate classes, for example: the SAG/AFTRA agreement for voice actors with all the Gen AI exemptions.
I wonder where a union draws its power from in an industry where there are so many people desperate for work right now.
Trade unions make sense because there’s such a shortage of skilled workers in total, much less scabs. How does a union for such a well known legacy game developer sustain itself in an environment where I bet scabs would be in abundance?
Maybe for Bethesda specifically, there's also a shortage of skilled work? I mean, they often hire modders and Creation Engine STILL uses flash (Starfield's menus are .swf files),
Creation Engine STILL uses flash (Starfield’s menus are .swf files),
YOOOOOO WHAT THE FUUUUCK.
Seriously, how hard is it to change the UI to use JS?? They really go through old ass Adobe documentation whenever they make a new menu with AS3????
I seriously hope it's all AS and compiled to SWF, if they're running some fucked version of Adobe Flash to make the swfs by hand, 💀
Seriously, how hard is it to change the UI to use JS??
JavaScript can do animations without wanting to commit suicide?
I don't know about the details, but I found that out while browsing the menu mods, as the Undelayed Menus, which removes the pointless delay in opening and closing of menus, comes with a bunch of .swf and that was when I thought to myself "You have to be fucking kidding"
Checking any other menu mod, it'll be .swf files.
Yea, they probably have that one guy still there from the days creation engine was made that is required to be on staff for any future games to fix whatever archaic code they break. Get him on board with the union and Bethesda is probably held by the short hairs to do whatever they say.
I wonder where a union draws its power from in an industry where there are so many people desperate for work right now.
With more than 450 employees, you can't really replace all that on the fly.
Their games are shit - Starfailed was garbage, Fallout 3 and 4 are running on the same engine designed for... Oblivion 20 years ago. They can't write jack shit, and the optimization is a joke.
I hope they go bankrupt
“I don’t personally like their games so I hope all of the hundreds of employees working on them lose their jobs and their families are devastated by life changing hardship”
I think you missed the exit for Reddit, it was back there a ways.
I think their games are great. And I think the Creation Engine is great, the amount of immersion I get and amount of hours I spend playing fallout, oblivion, Skyrim, morrowind is second to none. The mod support is endless, they were in a league of their own when it came to RPGs
Granted they have slipped a little (okay alot) lately but that doesn't take away from their past works.
You can think the creation engine is great, but there are simple issues that should have been fixed decades ago they've completely ignored. At this point it should be considered an insult to the player base that there needs to be the "unofficial patch" for all games. It would take more time and effort arguing against fixing them, than actually fixing them.
I was under the impression that 99.99% of fixes in the unofficial patches were gameplay related things, not underlying issues with the engine.
I also feel like if every game had the player count and mod support of Bethesda games, they would all have unofficial patches. No game is perfect and bug free, I know Bethesda games are buggier than most, but they are also way more ambitious and have way more content than most (I'm talking pre-starfield here, I haven't gone back to starfield like I still go back to fallout and elder scrolls)
Gameplay related things on each game is an engine issue. The fixes have already been completed in unofficial patches. It would be pretty much a copy/paste fix in the engine. They have just opted not to.
A misplaced mesh, missing quest dialogue, or invalid NPC navmesh is not an engine issue and is specific to each individual game, these things can't be fixed in the engine
It would be pretty much a copy/paste fix in the engine. They have just opted not to.
You either misunderstood the comment you're replying to or don't know how the unofficial patch works or both.
99% of what the Unnofficial patch fixes have absolutely nothing to do with the engine. For example, we'll use the Skyrim Unnoficial Patch, easily the biggest and most popular. It fixes literally nothing in the engine, it fixes certain models not having textures wrapped correctly, it fixes certain meshes or textures having small errors like clipping, it adds a new flag for a town that didn't have a flag in the original for some reason, the absolute closest it gets to an "engine fix" is fixes for different scripts that sometimes fire incorrectly.
Literally none of these are engine issues or fixes. Sure, they definitely should've fixed them before releasing the game, but it's not like these are engine issues that have somehow persisted for 20 years. They're very small bugs with models, textures, and scripts, which are all individual game issues, not engine issues.
Creation Engine is great
It's objectively not. It was great back when Oblivion came out
oblivion, Skyrim, morrowind
Back then their games were good. But it was long, long time ago.
It's objectively not. It was great back when Oblivion came out
It objectively is for their use case. What do you want them to do? Switch to Unreal? Switch to Unity? Switch to any other pre-built engine? They can't, none of those will work for their use case without major modification.
Want them to create an entirely new engine from scratch? I mean, they could do that, but that would involve throwing away 20 years of innovation and experience on this product and would delay any projects massively.
Want them to massively update their engine? They just did with Starfield's Creation Engine 2.0, which fixed or improved 90% of their engine issues and is a massive overhaul of their original engine.
This is a company that recently sold for several billion dollars, they've undoubtedly had a team investigating what they could to do their engine for at least a decade, and they've decided that this path is the only realistic one for them.
But I'm sure you know better than the large team that does this for a living. /s
What do you want them to do? Switch to Unreal?
Yep. Unreal is more than capable doing everything they need
They just did with Starfield's Creation Engine 2.0, which fixed or improved 90% of their engine issues
It's the most unoptimized engine out there. It's performance is horrible. And Starfield couldn't even achieve loading screen free planet surface landing like No Man's Sky, or Star Citizen
Out of curiosity, which engine would you say is your favourite? If Bethesda were going to start using a new engine tomorrow, which engine would you hope they would use?
If they had to switch now? Unreal Engine.
But what they should do years ago, is to use engineering expertise of IdSoftware they own to create their own engine tailored to their needs.
"Fortnite and Tekken 8 are running on the same engine designed for... Unreal Tournament 20 years ago."