It seems like every other week a game studio is massively laying off employees; sometimes after years of development. What I’m reading is that it’s a quick way to lower expenses and pad the investors’ pockets, flooding the market with developers and reducing their value, to then hire them back a few months later at lower salaries.

So, what’s holding back gamedevs from banding together to either unionize or start their own companies with better conditions that the purely money-driven studios? Why aren’t they trying to be better? Nobody willing to invest in them? Does starting a company together mean they will now be the bosses who have to answer to the investors, ensure returns, and fire employees? Is the world just an entire shit-cake?

  • Dymonika@beehaw.org
    8·
    6 months ago

    the only viable option, assuming you’re not already independently wealthy, is that you have to work another job to work on the game in the meantime, which means it will take even longer to come out.

    Or be ConcernedApe.

    • Gamma@beehaw.orgEnglish
      16·
      6 months ago

      Which means using up your savings and relying on your partner to support you

    • Fluentem
      9·
      6 months ago

      Except he also didn’t work on Stardew Valley full-time for the first

      • DdCno1@beehaw.org
        14·
        6 months ago

        So many Indie developers are making the mistake of thinking they’ll be the next [insert currently successful one-man dev here] and banking their careers and life savings on it. 99.999% of them are not.

        • luciferofastora@lemmy.zip
          6·
          6 months ago

          Survivor Bias - you only see the ones that “survive”, which may lead you to underestimate just how many tried and failed and vanished from attention.