re: Video game testers attempt to organize a union, get laid off, cry shenanigans.

I did this for a while. It’s very limited scheduling and very limited pay. It’s designed to be a part time job. It isn’t intended to be someone’s primary source of income. The idea of starting a union like just anyone off the street can’t do this is ridiculous

They targeted gamers.

Gamers.

We're a group of people who will sit for hours, days, even weeks on end performing some of the hardest, most mentally demanding tasks. Over, and over, and over all for nothing more than a little digital token saying we did.

We'll punish our selfs doing things others would consider torture, because we think it's fun.

We'll spend most if not all of our free time min maxing the stats of a fictional character all to draw out a single extra point of damage per second.

Many of us have made careers out of doing just these things: slogging through the grind, all day, the same quests over and over, hundreds of times to the point where we know evety little detail such that some have attained such gamer nirvana that they can literally play these games blindfolded.

Do these people have any idea how many controllers have been smashed, systems over heated, disks and carts destroyed 8n frustration? All to latter be referred to as bragging rights?

These people honestly think this is a battle they can win? They take our media? We're already building a new one without them. They take our devs? Gamers aren't shy about throwing their money else where, or even making the games our selves. They think calling us racist, mysoginistic, rape apologists is going to change us? We've been called worse things by prepubescent 10 year olds with a shitty head set. They picked a fight against a group that's already grown desensitized to their strategies and methods. Who enjoy the battle of attrition they've threatened us with. Who take it as a challange when they tell us we no longer matter. Our obsession with proving we can after being told we can't is so deeply ingrained from years of dealing with big brothers/sisters and friends laughing at how pathetic we used to be that proving you people wrong has become a very real need; a honed reflex.

Gamers are competative, hard core, by nature. We love a challange. The worst thing you did in all of this was to challange us. You're not special, you're not original, you're not the first; this is just another boss fight.

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I always laugh at people who immediately side with management over labor, despite the fact that they are undoubtedly closer to the latter than the former

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frick a fricking Union.

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I always laugh at people who immediately side with management over labor, despite the fact that they are undoubtedly closer to the latter than the former.

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Bold assumption, Cotton.

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Purple badges were EA employees often managers or executives and paid much more.

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If I were interested in more money, I would figure out how to be a purple badge.
Or find a better job if I had any skills at all.

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Cause there is this disconnect with some people on here that love to relish in low-level workers being told to shut up and lick the boot of billion-dollar corporations that want to treat and pay their employees as little as possible, then whine when we spend so much money on entitlements.

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I will tell you the same thing I have told many people. If I can walk into a Walmart parking lot, throw a rock and hit a guy and that guy can replace you in your job at that point, you deserve minimum wage or less. Cold facts are that if you are fricking up someone's order at McDonalds or Taco Bell or frying the shitty food they serve, you should make minimum wage. If you show up a little early every day, have a good attitude and learn each level of the work then you will be a manager there in less than 6 months.

The problem we have now in this country is the image of success and the instant gratification that all the youth now require. They see someone with a 500k house and think that they should have, or deserve, that with no skills in any capacity or field. Sometimes people just have to pay their dues and then move on in their careers. Work the shite job, figure out that sucks and that money sucks but you get a few valuable life lessons and skills and then move on to another place or move up in that place. No one seems to want to work their way up anymore.

Yep. Supply and demand applies to employees as well.

It’s why teachers, police, firefighters etc, will never be highly paid.

There are simply too many of them, and it’s too easy to become one.

And they can’t make it harder, because then they couldn’t hire enough.

Right on brother.

These people in here talking trash couldn't hang. The joysticks would tear up their soft little hands.

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"is a union really necessary for people who play video games for a living?"

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Unions are necessary for ALL workers. They help protect labor rights.