What does the games industry look like if it takes 1-2 more years to create the same products and with significantly less people?
Where do all the formerly employed QA testers, developers, project managers, etc. go? Start their own business? With what capital? Do they have to pay union rates and fees too? If so, how would it not be somewhere around 5 years before they can make a game? Thats an unsustainable model for anyone but the largest most profitable corps.
Healthier. An industry where people can work for a career instead of a 3-5 year stint in their 20s and then quit for something resembling a sane work life balance.
We have to take a step back here. If the games industry can’t exist without mountains of unpaid labor then we already can’t afford it. The idea that devs and artists should apparently just volunteer the extra 40 hours for the benefit of daddy corporate is insane. And the fact that one of the only paths to getting paid fairly is forming a union is total failure of our existing labor laws. Something something wage theft outweighs all other theft combined.
These kinds of things don’t and shouldn’t need a union but it’s the only tool available when your government fails you (or let’s be honest captured by corporate interests). I guaran-fucking-tee you that eliminating the overtime exemption would overnight kill the desire to these workers to unionize.
The cost to deliver your product with employees that work 40 hr weeks, normal PTO, and limiting your “crunch” to 2-3 sprints a year is the cost of doing business.