They can choose to work their allotted 0 hours any time of the day they choose. Has to be at home though, mandatory "do not work" from home orders apply.

My uneducated take here is based my my friend's experience, who is an electrician. He's happy to be more flexible than the law allows him to. Work more hours, longer shifts, worse times of the day. Whatever gets the job done as good as possible. But there's an expectation of mutual respect here. If the boss starts not compensating him sufficiently for the work he is asked to do, not giving him time off and periods of calm, and listening to him when he thinks he's nearing his limits, the system doesn't work.

Just like laws in reality are the to protect the average Joe from an abusive employer, unions are similarly a strength in numbers approach to being treated better.

It seems unionisation is one way people slam the breaks on companies that don't treat them fairly for the effort they are expected to put in. Your evidence seems to indicate the companies had plenty of chances to ask "why are people unhappy" before their employees unionised

> Are there any unionized game studios that continue to produce highly acclaimed games?

In order for that to happen, a game studio that is currently producing highly acclaimed games would have to unionize. All of your examples seem to be of studios that are past their peak... Does unionizing turn that around? Seems like no, but what does?

Anyway, Acclaim Games shut down in 2004, and again in 2010. There's a new Acclaim as of 2025, so maybe there's a chance highly Acclaimed games will come out, but I don't think they're unionized, and it might just all be vapor and puffery.

Aguably those things would have happened with or without a union. E.g. it's extremely rare that any studio could repeat a masterpiece like Witcher 3, and CDPR's earlier Witcher titles also are far away from that quality. This game really was a unique 'perfect storm'.

From what I've seen, success and following decline are directly related. Once a studio becomes successful, they start to attract the sort of people (especially in leading positions) who are great at selling themselves but not much else, and the studio founders haven't learned yet to separate the chaff from the wheat. And then after a while suddenly the company is full of 'mercenaries' which only care about their own carreer advancement but not about the games they create.

I think Valve sets a good example for an alternative, while not union they operate with a flat structure and is not publicly traded which sets them apart. They're kinda like an elite guild of game developers.

Patched Cyberpunk is the best game after Elden Ring of the last 10 years

I'm not sure I follow the correlation or causation logic here. By the evidence presented the conclusion I would draw is it's very difficult to have repeated success. All your stated failures predated any unionisation.

If anything to unionization seems correlated simply to how long a company has been around.

Isn't Activision Blizzard, which implies they make call of duty which is one of the games that makes the most money out there?

I don't like any of that, but they do make money.

As for good games, the last one was warcraft 3 maybe

All those studios were actually already on a downward trend I'd argue. Unionisation may turn it around

CPR is about to release The Witcher 4, probably it’s going to be a masterpiece.

I guess we will find out when GTA 6 comes out as Rockstar has become unionized.

Although actually…Rockstar didn’t become unionized until most of GTA 6 had already been completed. So I guess we’ll find out when their next game comes out.

I don't really know what unionization has to do with making good games. We've seen plenty of studios fall from grace with raw, unfettered capitalism.

It ultimately will come down to if it can retain talent and don't do a soft reset every project.

Cyberpunk may have had a bad launch, but in 2026 it is a great game, and worth playing. One of the best games I've played in years.

Unionization seems to be a secondary effect of strategic failure. If there is a causal relationship, I think it happens in reverse.

Walking the game theory backward, if the team was executing successfully and productively and everyone is getting paid fat bonuses then I don't think there is much motivation to get political in the workplace.

Only after the soul has been completely extracted from a company/team does this process seem to occur.

I remember when Warcraft 3 came out and a news outlet mentioned something on the lines of "gamers' trust in Blizzard borders on religious faith" and it sounded true.

It's unbelievable how far from that trust and love they have fallen.

The time to unionize was 15 years ago. But the majority didn't want to because they got theirs and screw everyone else.

Now with downsizing and AI knocking at the door, funny how willing everyone is to unionize.

Would be crazy to work for a company where you had confidence that like half your colleagues would be "laid off" after successfully delivering a project.

Americans trade higher worker income for decreased protections.

There are plenty of legal "safety nets" for American employees, regardless of if you're in a union or not. Could they be better? Sure, anything can be improved, just like every other country on Earth.

What kind of boggles my mind is that people online think they have an understanding of almost every part of American society because of what they read online or saw in the news. I wouldn't for the slightest second think I would have a clue about the working conditions in Australia, nor would I think I have the ability to read stuff online and get an actual understanding of it.

The most glaring example of this were all the people who came here for the world cup, afraid of all the crime and all that nonsense, and realized that living in America is actually pretty fucking great.

> its an extreme example of giving all the power to the employer

And yet, we make the most money, which seems to kind of go against that idea. If all the power was with the employer, you'd expect low wages, not high ones.

Apologies if that was a harsh response, it's just tiresome reading all of these foreign online "experts" on American society.

No need, Jason Hall said that a single World of Warcraft cosmetic mount generated more profit for Blizzard than the entire release of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty

The Starcraft site is clearly doing some sort of intentional glitch out ARG, and the rumour going around is that they are doing some sort of singleplayer shooter set in that universe.

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/113435/blizzards-next-starcra...

I hear they may be re-re-re-releasing WoW Classic again.

Meanwhile the 40k universe keeps releasing game after game. Obviously not all good, but it’s better than being stagnant

Overwatch had so much promise. I could have seen an Arcane style series featuring characters. But no. I'm not expecting anything good from them again.

definitely not now