Ctrl+Alt+Union: Game workers’ struggle and unionisation
Tracing exploitation in the gaming industry, Jamie Woodcock highlights the organising by workers in the industry and the model it provides for organising in non-union work sectors.
‘Gaming Worker Solidarity’ (Source: Game Workers Union website)
The games industry is an important part of contemporary capitalism. While it is often treated as a "new" industry, it generates more profit than film and music combined. As a commodity, games tell us something about how capitalism is changing, particularly with the connections between industrial production and the services necessary for consumers to play games. Over the past six years, another story has unfolded with important lessons for worker organising and unions: the story of Game Workers Unite (GWU).
GWU is an international movement to unionise the games industry launched in 2018, following a controversial event on unionisation at the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC) held that same year. There is, of course, a long history of worker struggles in the industry, including actions since the 1980s, as the Game Worker Solidarity website details. There was even one at Nintendo in 1955 – although these were factory workers making playing cards, long before the company started making digital games. But the GWU movement marks a new wave of organising that has spread internationally, drawing game workers across different countries, all with the aim of unionising the industry.
Why are game workers organising?
There have long been issues with work in the games industry. When workers are passionate about the commodity they are making, employers can take advantage of this by driving down pay and conditions or demanding long hours – or a combination of both. While there are some well-paid roles in the games industry, there are also many low-paid workers such as Quality Assurance (QA) roles. These workers test games to ensure they are ready for release.
Long working hours, also known as “crunch”, has been a significant problem in the industry. In 2004, the anonymous ea_spouse published an open letter, writing about the experiences of their partner working 85-hour working weeks at Electronic Arts:
This crunch also differs from crunch time in a smaller studio in that it was not an emergency effort to save a project from failure. Every step of the way, the project remained on schedule. Crunching neither accelerated this nor slowed it down; its effect on the actual product was not measurable. The extended hours were deliberate and planned; the management knew what they were doing as they did it. The love of my life comes home late at night complaining of a headache that will not go away and a chronically upset stomach, and my happy supportive smile is running out.
The letter raises two important points. First, while Marx noted that the capitalist organisation of work involves the production of ‘relative surplus-value’ by increasing the speed and intensity of work, crunch, in contrast, is a clear example of the production of ‘absolute surplus-value’ by lengthening the working day. This is an old trick of managers in squeezing productivity out of workers. But what is unusual is that capitalists usually start with absolute and then increasingly rely on the production of relative surplus-value.
The second issue is how the extension of the working day shapes the composition of the workforce. If workers are expected to work 85-hour weeks or more, then those with caring responsibilities (or those who cannot rely on others for their care and support reproducing their labour-power) are pushed out of the workforce. With a predominantly younger and male workforce, this reinforces crunch, creating a feedback loop that limits the diversity of the workforce.
Problems of diversity have become an important part of game worker organising. This is both diversity in terms of who gets to make games, as well as the kinds of games that workers are making, and under which conditions. There have been a series of high-profile sexual harassment and discrimination cases, like at Riot games in 2018. This has led to lawsuits and organising campaigns, drawing attention to toxic workplaces and work practices.
Across these issues, there are grievances that would be recognisable to workers in other industries. For example, comparisons can be drawn with film and television, both in terms of organising in a cultural industry and the need for union organising to adapt to the context. More recently, strikes and protests have taken place against employers demanding workers end work-from-home arrangements. Concerns have also been raised in relation to the wave of mergers and acquisitions in the industry.
“Problems of diversity have become an important part of game worker organising. This is both diversity in terms of who gets to make games, as well as the kinds of games that workers are making, and under which conditions.”
What has happened so far?
The first game worker unions preceded the wave of organising from 2018. These include, among others, STJV in France, Game Makers of Finland, and enterprise level unions in South Korea. However, following the launch of GWU, there have been actions in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malta, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, UK, and USA. So far, 192 examples of collective action in the games industry have been documented, with one hundred organising groups. 33 strikes have taken place, mainly in the USA and France, but also in Italy and South Korea. The Game Worker Solidarity website provides a searchable map and database of the actions so far.
In particular, unionisation is developing in Australia, Britain, Canada, Finland, France, Ireland, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and Poland. In each country, workers have either formed their own unions or joined mainstream or alternative unions. What is unique about this wave of unionisation is that – for the most part – this emerged as a social movement at the international level, then devolving back into national campaigns, as game workers engage with the industrial relations systems and existing unions in their context.
As Austin Kelmore (chair of the IWGB Game Workers Branch) and I have argued, the Game Worker Solidarity project provides a way to archive and share collective actions as they take place. This represents, of course, only the public moments of campaigns, rather than the wide range of worker organising activities that happen behind the scenes.
While it is still early days, some important trends are emerging so far.
First, there is no one clear way to successfully organise and win demands in the games industry. There are a range of ongoing experiments with building workers’ collective power. Second, while issues like pay are important for organising, there are increasing instances in which contestation over control at work is an important motivator for organising. Some of this is linked to “crunch”, but also to what kinds of games are being made and how – particularly in relation to issues of oppression in the industry. Third, regardless of the form they are taking in a national context, the successes in game worker organising are those that have developed from workers activity. For example, developing materials that engage with game culture - like the Game Workers Unite Zine - or using communication tools like Discord that are already commonly used, can prove essential
“There is no one clear way to successfully organise and win demands in the games industry. There are a range of ongoing experiments with building workers’ collective power”
Learning from the game workers movement
The wave of game worker organising provides a range of live case studies to think about how historically non-union sectors can become organised. Game workers might not be the typical figure of union organising but have found new and creative ways to take collective action and develop unionisations. This can provide important lessons for the mechanisms of new union organising, as well as refreshing debates on union revitalisation. It has implications for so-called “new” industries, as well as for the challenges the wider labour movements face.