> All the video game industry has to do is to give its workers better treatment than they would get under union stewardship. Problem solved.

Not even that. You could give employees half of what they would get under a union and you'd completely kill any motivation to unionize. The video game industry is so exploitative though that'll never happen.

Apparently if you just pay people a bit more and give them free lunch that's enough to placate people to the point they regard the very notion of collective bargaining as 'childish'.

TANSTAAFL

>> But I expect video games will follow the path of many other industries, and keep beating their mules until the mules revolt.>>

Revolt by creating a monopoly on labor that leverages the violence of government to commandeer the decisions in the company?

Seems a a lot easier for the mules to just quit and work somewhere that fits their needs better.

The same lesson that unions have learned about killing machine shops by locking down production and employee ownership to the point where no growth can happen. Unions tried to stop the progress of new technologies and save jobs and failed. Thousands of years worth.

Humble overlords are required, that doesn't make the entire industry necessary for unionization.

Sadly they might actually be. It's game theoretically an efficient strategy because they can extract so much before the workers unionize that it'll still be cheaper than compensating them fairly all along.

Only if institutional myopia keeps them focused solely on the next quarter or two.

The companies will learn that treating their employees fairly from the outset is cheaper than having a union force it upon them for the next 10 to 50 years.

How many micro-transaction laden titles can you shit out in 10 years?

What is the half-life of a game publisher/studio executive?