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100 Riot Employees stage Walk-Out Protest
- Thread starter DigitalOp
- Start date
Good for them. Hopefully this affects positive change and no one is criticized for not choosing to participate.
It needs a centralized voice and more participants. Otherwise, it'll just get waved away and be forgotten. AKA, it needs Union-grade organization and managers to join.
100 is not a lot of people, but my hope is that it emboldens more to join in next time. There will be a lot of eyes on this, not just from inside Riot but from other companies. These 100 are hopefully paving the path for more people making their voices heard and forcing change in the absence of unions.
that is the hope, but the reality of the aftermath may be disappointing.
A hundred collective voices acting together are always louder than a hundred single voices acting alone.
Hopefully this is the start of something.
Hopefully this is the start of something.
This is what worries me.
They're really brave to test the waters. I hope it pays off for them.
Great to here. All current union orgs should be assisting. Tech is one of the last frontiers for unionization.
I think it was more of a "turn this into good PR" for the management at Riot. I like to think the employees were going to walk out regardless of the permission from management.
I don't know about you, but where I work, if 10% of people just walked out, we would be in serious trouble. I imagine the same is the case for most workplaces.
Riot has 2500 employees according to google. That's 4% of their employees participating in this walkout. I don't think that's enough to make Riot sweat yet, but that's a non-negligible amount; and hopefully it will embolden others to join in.
I suppose it depends on who exactly is walking out though. If there's higher level employees and managers or senior engineers then it'll definitely hurt.
Ummm on one hand fair wages, livable work hours, job security, etc on the other hand I would have to pay more for my hobby.
Like we don't pay higher game prices now? Sure, a handful of games come out that are $60 no microtransactions or season passes but the majority of games that are released have all that crap. I would suspect unionization to not really change that. Also there's been studies on crunch and humans are just not as effective during a 60 hour workweek as they would be during a 40 hour one (not to mention the longterm benefits and overall industry worker health.)
Even if it's lower-level staff, it's often them who do the bulk of the operational work - the managers will mostly just be making decisions. Without the more junior staff, no work would actually be done! I think Riot will definitely pay attention to this.
I'm sure that will be the line the games industry will take once unionization starts precipitating. But games are already costing more
Genuinely appreciate y'alls words of support towards the walkout today. We wish it wasn't necessary, but knowing a lot of good people that play games care about the people that want to make games is one of the reasons it's worth standing up for this.
A lot of my fellow coworkers are using #RiotWalkout to share their thoughts if you want to follow that.
Again, thank you all for the kind support.
A lot of my fellow coworkers are using #RiotWalkout to share their thoughts if you want to follow that.
Again, thank you all for the kind support.
Then so be it. If the only way to have current-price games is by abusing a workforce and forcing them into shitty work conditions, endless crunch, tyrannical management, etc., then we don't deserve games at their current price.
It's also fucking laughable to raise a "higher price" """concern""" in this thread when Riot's sole game is F2P. But again, priorities.
All the best for you all.
If that's the case in all situations, then how come the medical industry and residency doctors work 60-80 hours per week as an accepted practice. Don't you think that field would be even more important/liable for doctors, compared to video game industry?
Stop buying games day one, wait a couple of months for prices to drop if you're worried about higher game prices.
OP
OP
It makes you wonder... If the company sanctions it... then why dont more employees participate?
No worries! I saw the news and was like "How is there no thread on ERA?!"
You all are literally on the forefront of changing the work culture in the tech industry. What you're doing is vastly important and will start the wave of change, please let everyone know this!
No worries! I saw the news and was like "How is there no thread on ERA?!"
You all are literally on the forefront of changing the work culture in the tech industry. What you're doing is vastly important and will start the wave of change, please let everyone know this!
Aside from the fact that this is laughably incorrect and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how companies like riot make money, it's also says alot about your morals that this is the first thing that popped into your head after reading the horror stories coming from that studio.