In this new contribution to the series on the theme of labor in the cultural sector, The duty addresses the unique challenges of the video game industry, this time from the employee perspective.
If a video game were created about jobs in the video game industry, the 2023-2024 version of this mise en abyme would take place in a universe, if not pre-apocalyptic, at least under very high tension.
More than 11,250 layoffs were recorded worldwide last year, in three major waves (January, June, November), according to the Videogamelayoffs.com website. Zhaoxi Guangnian (Nuverse) thanked more than 1000 people; Epic Games, creator of the immensely popular Fortnite, 830 employees; Unity Technologies, more than 1165 professionals in several harmful bleedings. The ax has fallen on certain companies active in Canada and Quebec, including Ubisoft, Digital Extremes, Bioware, Lumi, Blackbird Interactive, Rovio, Sega, Adglobe, CyberConnect2 and Phoenix Labs.
The new year has amplified the referrals. In January alone, 6,000 new layoffs hit the sector. Activision Blizzard alone, a subsidiary of Microsoft, has cut 1,900 jobs in this globalized sector; Unity, 1800. And the specialized streaming service Twitch, owned by Amazon, at least 500 others, almost as many as Riot Games (530). The Eidos studio in Montreal, purchased by the Swedish group Embracer in 2022, laid off 97 people at the end of January. At the end of 2022, the same group bought and quickly closed the Square Enix Montreal studio.
This backlash follows the boom period of hiring during the pandemic. Confinements stimulated the use of screen entertainment and recruitment to meet demand, real or expected. The return to some sort of normality would partly explain the current difficult period.
The withdrawal explanation seems plausible in the eyes of Charles (not his real name), a mobile game designer who requested anonymity, like all the employees interviewed for this article. “The pandemic hit […], so the sector began to hire a lot. Except that people have returned to work, to their habits. And now companies are getting rid of their employees,” he says.
Charles is one of them. He was dismissed from his work at the end of 2023. He had worked in the field for around fifteen years, and he is not yet sure whether he will return. “Which is ironic, because I have experience and the studios complain about lacking experienced employees. Except that experienced people cost more…”
He also notes that layoffs lead to new voluntary departures of depressed and fearful employees. In the last studio where Charles worked, half of the staff from 2019 remain. The sector still employs around 14,000 people in more than 300 studios in Quebec.
Fundamentally capitalist
Timothé, an artist specializing in special effects, recognizes the evidence of recent hirings and poaching while contextualizing them. “This explanation – let’s say, organic – of the sector which inflates in an artificial way with the pandemic and is now replacing itself seems a little naive to me,” he said. There are still explanations that come from global strategies of frantic accumulation and acquisition by large international groups, banking on promises of rapid return on investment. When the output is not up to par, we cut. This increases the value of the stock in the short term. At the end of the day, it’s the employees who pay. We hire them, we fire them. »
Another employee, Karine, who works in game design, sums up the situation in a more comprehensive way: “It’s a very techno industry, which has a progressive aura, but which is above all fundamentally capitalist. »
The great purge generates “heartbreaking collective and personal” situations, summarizes Antoine, game designer in a Montreal studio. And “the presence in Quebec of numerous workers recruited from abroad amplifies the dramatic situations,” he says. People with a work permit have three months to find a job after being laid off. Afterwards, they must leave Canada. It’s a big source of stress. »
Some of the employees interviewed are activists within Game Workers Unite (GWU) Montreal, founded in 2018. The organization brings together people from the video game industry in Montreal who volunteer to promote unionization in the sector. The GWU website could not be clearer on the reasons for this desire to unionize employees: “Stories of abuse and mass dismissals are common here. That’s enough ! »
Labor contritions
The testimonies align the competitive advantages of their “young and modern” industry, from “the constant and stimulating technological evolution” to “the beautiful creative emulation”, including its openness and accessibility. However, they do not mask its equally significant disadvantages.
The question of schedules comes back like a leitmotif. “On paper, we work seven or eight hours a day. But in reality, there are many studios where people can work up to 60 hours or more per week, especially during crunch, said Karine. The pressure and demand are extremely strong when we reach the end of the production run. So we do a lot of unpaid overtime. »
Working conditions vary from one studio to another. “A lot of studios do subcontracting: they have bits of work carried out by others,” explains Antoine. In general, in contract studios, conditions are much worse. At the bottom of the scale, we speak of a testing “farm”. Employees work on call, without fixed schedules. They are paid minimum wage, or a little more, and the legal constraints are extremely onerous because employees work on prototypes about which they cannot share any information. »
Confidentiality and non-competition clauses are omnipresent and restrictive. And lead to abuse, according to the comments collected. The work is often done without recognition.
The sector is also described as very hierarchical. There are indeed studios operating like cooperatives, with egalitarian relationships, but others, especially large companies, have adopted a pyramid structure which cascades decisions from top to bottom, say GWU activists. “The culture on the horizontal level often remains pleasant, but the marked hierarchy means that it can be difficult to get people to listen – for example when an employee wants to denounce situations of harassment,” summarizes Timothé. The blockage is felt well. An omerta sets in. »
Relations with product customers would also complicate the lives of employees. They complain of harassment from players on social networks, again without always obtaining support from their companies.
Towards unionization of the sector?
GWU activists therefore wish to unionize the sector to better regulate the balance of power. They point out in passing that the industry was created with the financial support of generous state programs, which could exert pressure, if only to enforce labor laws in Quebec.
“It’s becoming too difficult to fight individually, each for themselves,” says Antoine. We must regroup, protect ourselves and restore the balance of power. » He wants the same compensation for the employees laid off here as that obtained by the unions in the United States after the layoffs at Sega and Microsoft (Zenimax-Blizzard).
Employees at Keywords Studios in Alberta became the first in Canada to unionize in the summer of 2022. Labor relations then worsened. After a year of attempts to negotiate a first collective agreement, management of the studio fired the 16 employees, who responded with picketing and complaints to the province’s labor relations office.
“We believe that it is too early to present their maneuvers as a failure,” Antoine said again in closing. They are on strike and have won a case before the Alberta Labor Board, which sets an important precedent for remote workers. »