From the article:
In an FAQ on the union’s website, it’s explained that discussions of a union began after the layoffs at CD Projekt, which amounted to roughly 100 people. “This event created a tremendous amount of stress and insecurity, affecting our mental health and leading to the creation of this union in response,” reads the FAQ. "Having a union means having more security, transparency, better protection, and a stronger voice in times of crisis.
Unions don’t stop lay-offs, but this is still a strong move and probably the most likely to succeed. CDPR needs to find new income now that they don’t have a game on the horizon, so they need devs to produce.
Literally, the power is in the devs’ hands here. CDPR’s only option is to either work with the union or lay them all off and then not release any new products and go bankrupt.
Hopefully, it spreads to more European countries and becomes normal business for games to be made with unions in Europe
keep in mind, CDPR isn’t just a game studio, they own GOG, so not releasing a game doesn’t necessarily get then at 0 income. Although not as big as valve of course, thats like saying valve would be broke if it didn’t release games (and it rarely releases games nowadays)
eh no. it’s not like saying that at all, as you point out yourself, they are very different in terms of scale.
However we do have actual data here, because CDPR is publicly traded and produces financial reports. according to their Q1 financial report, gog had a net profit of around 56k euros. this is after it’s big comeback from being “unprofitable” in 2021, where they basically moved everyone out of gog and onto other projects or laid them off.
So we are talking about a situation where CDPR would have to lay off everyone aside from the few gog employees that are left, and exist as a shell company that just pays the hosting bills.
this is not “like saying valve would be broke if it didn’t release games” as valves primary source of income, is not making and selling games, it’s getting 30% of 99% of game sales on the pc platform via steam.
One issue is that unions have failed to globalize while industries have. CDPR could simply chose to bypass the union by opening a dev studio in a country with no or less union presence.
Given the recent wave of layoffs in the game industry, they’ll have no shortage finding capable people.
