Bethesda Game Studios Employees Vote to Unionize - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 21 July 2024 / 2,489 Views
Employees at Bethesda Game Studios, the studio best known for The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Starfield, have voted to unionize with the Communications Workers of America (CWA).
241 employees, including "artists, engineers, programmers and designers." have signed a union authorization cards or have shown the desire to unionize.
"We, a majority of developers at Bethesda Game Studios Dallas, Rockville, and Austin, are ecstatic to announce the formation of our union with @CWAUnion," said the union on Twitter. Together as #OneBGSUSA, we advocate for the betterment of every developer at BGS, setting the new standard for our industry.
We, a majority of developers at Bethesda Game Studios Dallas, Rockville, and Austin, are ecstatic to announce the formation of our union with @CWAUnion. Together as #OneBGSUSA, we advocate for the betterment of every developer at BGS, setting the new standard for our industry.
— OneBGS_USA (@OneBGS_USA) July 19, 2024
"As a democratic organization, we seek to empower the collective wishes of our studios’ workers; having a safe, sustainable, and equitable work environment for all. Having a proper seat at the discussion table allows us to turn those wishes into reality.
"Joining in solidarity with our fellow members at @ZeniMaxWorkers, @OneBGS_MTL, and all of @CWAUnion, we push for increased job security, compensation transparency, and flexibility to continue creating the games we love.
"As we work towards our first contract with Microsoft, we hope you'll join us in voicing your support as we serve as an example for all, into the next era of game development."
The Bethesda Game Studios employees will be members of CWA Local 2108 in Maryland and CWA Local 6215 in Texas.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Is it really the best time to do this? MS recently axed multiple studios, and Starfield wasn't precisely the golden hit MS wanted from Bethesda. Not sure if a union now is the best move when MS could axe them as well and present it as "saving measures".
Microsoft isn't going to axe Bethesda. At worst, it's not as profitable as Microsoft hopes, but I don't see a world where Bethesda isn't profitable right now or stops being profitable in the near future.
I would guess it was either not profitable after all (in the long run). One guess would be reallocation of the workforce to other tasks in other studios, which might be more profitable, but I'm not sure if they did that or just fired everyone (in practice). But at least that's certainly not something you can do with Bethesda, because Bethesda is what's supposed to be profitable (which I'm sure it is, especially because of the two MMOs they currently have).
games to hit $79.99
Sony increased it from US$60 to US$70. Although Microsoft considered it, it was Sony that executed it first.
This is true
Interesting. Why now?
Sometimes these things take time. Simple as that.
Great, get rid of them and bring in a new staff.
Unions are just bad news
Well MS was all for unions during the Acquisition, so I guess they get to deal with those now.
Finally some good news.
Good for them. And hopefully more follow suit.
Funny seeing people here talking about how they will axe them and how prices will rise. We are going through one of the worst layoff periods in the industry's history and price hikes that are happening as a result of corporate decisions. Bad management in every other studio, lack of crediting policies, worker protections have gone to hell.
But no, it's the big bad scary unions that will cause this.
Whether or not someone considers unions good or bad, they will almost certainly lead to higher labor and administration costs for the studio. It's up to businesses to eat those costs, cut costs elsewhere, or to pass them on to the consumer. Nothing in life is free.
One place that might see a reduction is the number of "permanent" employees, since contractors are much cheaper and easier to deal with and union employees cannot be made to do anything that isn't laid out in their job description.
It could also lead to longer development periods, as well, since unions are all about red tape and getting union authorization for any deviations from agreed upon procedure. It all depends on the CBA, of course, but where I work members of management are expressly forbidden to rush union employees or wake them up if they're taking a nap in the breakroom.
Good people get overworked and underpaid unions are good in that industry now work more hours if u can't afford games or being a liberal and complain
sad that the UAW makes 2-3 times what the entry level into the us military makes
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