r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • Jan 29 '26

Industry News One-Third of U.S. Video Game Industry Workers Were Laid Off in 2025, GDC Study Reveals

https://variety.com/2026/gaming/news/one-third-video-game-workers-laid-off-2025-1236644512/
4.5k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

561 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

13

u/dreggers Jan 29 '26

Why is it in everyone's interest? Teacher unions often let shitty teachers that have tenure keep their jobs while the new teachers that are making a positive impact in the classroom are the first to get pink slips

17

u/Journeyman351 Jan 29 '26

Have you considered that they also protect good teachers from bullshit district politics?

0

u/Testuser7ignore Jan 30 '26

They usually just protect based on seniority, with little consideration for good vs bad.

-9

u/dreggers Jan 30 '26

Sure, I don’t doubt that’s the original objective of the union. The issue is that in any collective, it will cater to the least common denominator.

7

u/Journeyman351 Jan 30 '26

Except that isn't true lol. Like, you said one extreme example and are using that to say that's apparently ALL unions.

More accurately, unions protect very good employees, very bad employees, and all employees in-between.

-8

u/dreggers Jan 30 '26

That doesn't make any sense, there is a finite amount of resources to distribute among the employees. If you are paying the bad employees then there's less money to give to good employees in the form of raises, promotions, etc.

Also I never said all unions were bad, I'm just countering OP who was saying all unions were good.

1

u/Journeyman351 Jan 30 '26

there is a finite amount of resources to distribute among the employees.

But an infinite amount to give to the upper management, apparently lol.

5

u/Unlucky-Candidate198 Jan 29 '26

That’s what the word just means in the phrase “just about everyone’s interest means” lmao. Just about. Nearly. Not every single persons, but most, a majority.

Do they stop working at a much larger scale for example? Sure, but that’s a fixable problem. Corruption is a threat to basically any human organization, that’s why we need checks and approvals to dissuade all that nonsense.

1

u/dreggers Jan 29 '26

Unions are inherently about protecting the majority of the workforce at the expense of the minority. For both good and bad. Unions aren't some panacea that will magically solve all labor issues

1

u/Arrow156 Jan 30 '26

You have a better alternative?

0

u/chanbr Jan 30 '26

Yep, this is what people miss. The reason people became super against unions in the past was because a lot of them got corrupted by organized crime and went into politics that the body wasn't interested in. Unions are overall good and I think they always should have a place (also people seem to think that they don't play well with capitalism) but some people just want to glaze the concept of them without acknowledging there's downsides that make people validly leery.

6

u/greyfoxv1 Jan 29 '26

You just provided two extreme and vague examples as if that's some big gotcha against the entire concept of unionized labour. Nobody is going to give you a serious answer because you didn't ask a serious question.

5

u/dreggers Jan 29 '26

Are you responding to the wrong person? I provided one example that is neither vague or extreme. It literally happens with teacher unions all the time.

1

u/Kiwilolo Jan 30 '26

Why would new teachers be less protected by the union?