Some video game workers are trying to form a union to demand better working conditions

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Pressure on video game workers is intensifying. They work long hours, face layoffs, and the games they make are more complex. Some employees call this the “passion tax” and it needs to be addressed.

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MICHELLE MARTIN, HOST:

Employees at video game companies often work long, grueling hours in conjunction with product launches. This schedule is so ingrained in the industry that it has a special name: “crunch.” But that attitude is changing. Our colleagues at The Indicator, Wailin Wong and Darian Woods, report that video game workers are organizing for better working conditions.

DARIAN WOODS, BYLINE: A lot of video game people got into gaming by playing them as kids. And that's true for Skylar Hinnant as well. He is a quality assurance tester for his ZeniMax. It is a video game publisher owned by Microsoft.

Schuyler Hinnant: Like, the prestige of working on something that you grew up playing with is really great. So you have to pay a certain level of passion tax to get into the industry.

WAILIN WONG, BYLINE: A passion tax occurs when employees do unpaid work or put up with less-than-great conditions because they love their job. This may be a familiar feeling for those working in creative fields or helping professions such as social work.

Woods: Skyler knows about the passion tax in video games. He was initially employed as a contractor. That means he won't receive paid vacation or health benefits.

Wong: And for both contract and permanent employees, the squeeze was a normal occurrence.

Woods: In a 2021 survey of game developers, one in four workers said a demanding job meant working more than 60 hours a week. Entertainment press outlets have documented more extreme schedules, targeting entire departments, not just developers. For example, one executive said that a writer for the game “Red Dead Redemption 2” worked 100 hours a week for three weeks.

WONG: Johanna Weststar is a professor of labor and employment relations at Western University in Ontario, Canada.

Johanna Weststar: If there are enough people willing to do the work, companies can afford to pay workers less. Working conditions could become even harsher. And if someone burns out, they burn out and someone else comes along. And we can see that there is a considerable reserve army of labor in the game industry.

Wong: Johanna also said that video game studios are caught up in something called the iron triangle of project management.

WESTSTAR: At the Iron Triangle, we need to deliver games on time, within budget, and within our promises. And what happens is that it starts to become very restrictive, and the people in that triangle that actually have the most flexibility are the workers themselves.

Woods: Executives talk about this lack of flexibility, not being able to extend deadlines or extend budgets. Some people acknowledge that overwork is happening and are trying to deal with it.

Wong: For example, the studio behind the Witcher game series says it's fighting the financial crisis by ensuring employees get paid time off and overtime pay.

Woods: But some video game workers aren't waiting for their employers to act. In recent years, they have begun organizing to demand better working conditions. Schuyler Hinnant and about 300 of his fellow quality assurance testers voted to unionize in 2023. They became Microsoft's first American labor union.

Wong: At the same time, the cost and time required to produce blockbuster games has increased significantly. Other companies have made big bets on things like blockchain technology that haven't panned out. Thousands of workers lost their jobs as a result.

Woods: Elise Willacker is one of those workers. Elise said some of his former colleagues are considering switching to software or web development.

ELISE WILLACKER: It's really tragic to see so much passion oozing out of the industry during times like these. But people are getting over it.

Wong: Do you feel like it's over?

Willacker: Personally, I think I'll always be obsessed with games. I love this industry. Working on something you love can be fulfilling in a way that no other job can match. So I don't think I'll ever really leave.

Woods: Darian Woods.

WONG: Wei-Ling Wong, NPR News.

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Martin: For more articles like this, check out Planet Money's The Indicator. They just did a series decoding the economics that fuel the gaming industry. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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