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Ubisoft/Joseph Gordon-Levitt accused of exploitative labor practices for BG&E2
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They have, it's called the Ubisoft Gradute Program. It's more focused on programming, but UX designer are a part of it too.
My reply was excessively vitriolic and I apologize. I get extremely defensive about this stuff as someone who has been lucky enough to be (so far) successful in this field, but watched countless friends and work acquaintances struggle for years because of this type of behavior.
I feel like some people are underestimating the quality of fans/hobbyists. The quality, bot graphically and mechanically, of some of the mods for Binding of Isaac (as an example) are amazing. You had groups of people creating entire mini-expansions out of love for the game.
The Dead Cells devs post fan art from time to time on the steam news feed, and some of those are freaking amazing stuff.
I feel like this is no different. Sure, you will have pros submitting stuff trying to get payed, but you will also see lots of high-quality stuff by fans. People doing that because they love the series and have a passion for that area (be it drawing or music). This is supposed to bring those people together, and the money is them giving something back to the community.
The Dead Cells devs post fan art from time to time on the steam news feed, and some of those are freaking amazing stuff.
I feel like this is no different. Sure, you will have pros submitting stuff trying to get payed, but you will also see lots of high-quality stuff by fans. People doing that because they love the series and have a passion for that area (be it drawing or music). This is supposed to bring those people together, and the money is them giving something back to the community.
Some sort of proper commissioning system where the fan shows their preexisting portfolio and Ubisoft hires them for a certain number of pieces related to BGE2. Probably still diminishes the value of staff artists somewhat, but not as much as a glut of free content.
This is fundamentally a fan contest. One of the cases being made against this seems to be that professionals in need of work are compelled to participate because there's money involved and it's exploitative to not be paying such professionals up front. Would it be better if there was no money involved and therefore no monetary incentive for professionals to participate? That would mean the work would only be that of willing fans, but I feel like then people would just be upset that the creators aren't getting compensated at all.
So, to people who are against this, do you feel there is a right way to run fan contests along these lines that is not exploitative or are fan contests inherently exploitative?
So, to people who are against this, do you feel there is a right way to run fan contests along these lines that is not exploitative or are fan contests inherently exploitative?
I think the big difference between it being an cool contest vs a exploitation of artists is the intention behind it. Ubisoft can more than afford paying legitimate artists to make their content. They're just doing this as a way to involve their community and reward talented fans.
You put the doors up expecting to be paid. No one is posting their fan art on Hitrecord with the expectation they'll be selected and paid.
games like this excites a lot of people creatively and instead of sharing your art on Devinart, you can now post it here and may even get paid for it.
You put the doors up expecting to be paid. No one is posting their fan art on Hitrecord with the expectation they'll be selected and paid.
games like this excites a lot of people creatively and instead of sharing your art on Devinart, you can now post it here and may even get paid for it.
Believe it or not most contests that have you submit work are exploitative in nature. Since whoever's running the contest tends to end up owning submitted work whether or not it won.
Which is specifically not the case for this contest.
This is not a contest for hiring though. That's what job openings are for.
Ubisoft isn't doing some fun community event, this is about mass content creation that Ubisoft gets the pick of the litter of.
I made my living doing "spec work" 2007 through 2013. A nice, comfortable living after a year of hustling. It's competitive as heck fuck but I knew that going into and, yeah, sometimes things don't work out but it eventually led to a staff job on a television show. Conflating two different things: Spec work and contests is wrong. Sorry but this hot take is BS and really undermining of HitRecord's mission statement. There are many predatory companies out there but JGL and his late brother had been building HitRecord from the ground up as a community and the shared equity came later and they are one of the more transparent groups out there.
This was always a community marketing initiative.
Frankly there's no practical way for Ubisoft Montpellier to manage and approve a contract art pipeline with potentially thousands of individual contributors.
Spec work is not for everyone. If you're a professional, you need to think carefully on an individual basis if the upside is worth your time. Given the nature of the RFP I'd imagine this is really only of interest to fan artists.
Ubisoft's mistake was to make such a big song and dance about this, and as others have said it would have been better positioned it as a competition. But for better or worse, spec work exists across all creative industries (spec movie scripts, short story contests, architecture design pitches, talent shows etc).
Is Ubisoft claiming ownership of all art submitted, whether used or not? Now THAT would be shady.
Frankly there's no practical way for Ubisoft Montpellier to manage and approve a contract art pipeline with potentially thousands of individual contributors.
Spec work is not for everyone. If you're a professional, you need to think carefully on an individual basis if the upside is worth your time. Given the nature of the RFP I'd imagine this is really only of interest to fan artists.
Ubisoft's mistake was to make such a big song and dance about this, and as others have said it would have been better positioned it as a competition. But for better or worse, spec work exists across all creative industries (spec movie scripts, short story contests, architecture design pitches, talent shows etc).
Is Ubisoft claiming ownership of all art submitted, whether used or not? Now THAT would be shady.
Read the terms and make your own decision, kids.
I remember submitting a short-story to a famous author as part of a contest to win a free signed copy of his autobiography when I was a kid, and I won the contest and a copy of the book. I later found out my short story was used as the basis for the author's next book.
Granted, as a kid I was hyped. "He used MY story! Isn't that so cool?"
I'm still kind of amused by it and didn't get paid because "any submissions become property of the publisher", but that's part of these deals. You read the terms and either do it or don't. This is basically just a glorified art contest.
I remember submitting a short-story to a famous author as part of a contest to win a free signed copy of his autobiography when I was a kid, and I won the contest and a copy of the book. I later found out my short story was used as the basis for the author's next book.
Granted, as a kid I was hyped. "He used MY story! Isn't that so cool?"
I'm still kind of amused by it and didn't get paid because "any submissions become property of the publisher", but that's part of these deals. You read the terms and either do it or don't. This is basically just a glorified art contest.
I think it's been pretty well established though how this harms artists, and how these sorts of 'fun events' are common throughout the media industry as a way to cheaply acquire content.
Producing high quality audio for Ubisoft is just a fun community event.
This fucking websites logo was the result of a competition by an evil corporate LLC.
Sometimes a cigars just a cigar.
I think it's been pretty well established that the fear mongering is misguided as well as uninformed in this scenario.
We literally have people here who said that they did it for fun, have you actually listened to ANY of the people who've contributed?:
Since i'm tired of this "yves" bs. Please tell me how I spun anything. Please outline where I have been factually incorrect. I look forward to your detailed reply outlining how my posts have spun this situation. I expect links involving the website in question, as well as excerpts from people involved with the project, (you know, like the stuff I have provided). I'll help you out and provide you a link to the project page itself. The onus is now on you to show that i'm apparently in the wrong and am "spinning" this.
Reading just the first few pages, about the "Time is consumed for potentially nothing!" remarks
I spent time I will never get back in my life and money(Transporation) for job interviews and boy I wish I would get those travel expenses covered for failed interviews. What did I get out of that? False hope and I guess experience? What happens if I got hurt on my way to the interview? Not the company's responsibility.
I am sacrificing time and money(Now that I work and I want to go on another interview, I have to sacrifice annual leave time to set up a POTENTIAL new job via interview) that I am not getting back and it could be all for naught.
This has been going on for decades with job interviews.
I spent time I will never get back in my life and money(Transporation) for job interviews and boy I wish I would get those travel expenses covered for failed interviews. What did I get out of that? False hope and I guess experience? What happens if I got hurt on my way to the interview? Not the company's responsibility.
I am sacrificing time and money(Now that I work and I want to go on another interview, I have to sacrifice annual leave time to set up a POTENTIAL new job via interview) that I am not getting back and it could be all for naught.
This has been going on for decades with job interviews.
I get why non-artists might support this, because from the outside, it just sounds like a fun way for amateurs to generate arts, and it's not like the long term health for the artist industry is of any concern to them(even though they should, if they have a favourite artist).
However, anyone wishing to become a pro artist and is in support of this kind of practices is just incredibly short-sighted: "Let's destroy the whole pay-for-work idea before I even got into the field!"... Why...?
However, anyone wishing to become a pro artist and is in support of this kind of practices is just incredibly short-sighted: "Let's destroy the whole pay-for-work idea before I even got into the field!"... Why...?
Since i'm tired of this "yves" bs. Please tell me how I spun anything. Please outline where I have been factually incorrect. I look forward to your detailed reply outlining how my posts have spun this situation. I expect links involving the website in question, as well as excerpts from people involved with the project, (you know, like the stuff I have provided). I'll help you out and provide you a link to the project page itself. The onus is now on you to show that i'm apparently in the wrong and am "spinning" this.
I'm with you Crossing Eden. As a professional creative some of the backlash against this cool, in my mind anyway, event rings disingenuous or just a plain projection of people's own history of professional dissatisfaction. I write, film, record for a living and there are clear stated and agreed upon billable hours and then there are works that are solely about practicing and making art/collaborating because that is my passion. That's what artists do. They create because they are internally compelled too sometimes. If you go into this project like clearly knowing where you fall with the PLUS of possibility of getting paid for your work I don't see what the problem is. It just seems like people raging against the establishment... because.
Yep this is exactly what I was thinking during the announcement.
Hitrecord is actually awesome for amatuers and for professionals who want to dump assets or work with a community. But once you pass it into a commercial opportunity without paying anyone it's 1000% exploitative.
Hitrecord is actually awesome for amatuers and for professionals who want to dump assets or work with a community. But once you pass it into a commercial opportunity without paying anyone it's 1000% exploitative.
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The big difference is that you don't actually produce content for your potential employer during a job interview. Like, if I went into a coding interview and they asked me to open a pull request against one of their production repos instead of doing a whiteboard interview, I would have serious concerns about their ethics.
But you are still picking my brain in an interview and potentially gathering insight and are also finding out(Very often in interviews) how I stumbled upon this job which is used for research within the company's Human Resources department towards future recruitment.
Should I be allowed to charge these companies for using my answers towards surveys and how I found a position when putting my cover letter/resume online? They are using my personal information(Gender, Race etc.) and my opinion/way I found a job opening for future research, regardless if I get the position or not. It is helping out their recruitment.
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Answering a survey and spending hours recording vocals or creating artwork isn't really a comparable amount of labor.
we should also do away with the minimum wage, because if people aren't happy with their pay they can just find another job.
I pretty much agree with this. It's not like HitRecord hasn't existed for the last 8 years and I haven't heard anything bad about it until the Ubisoft presser.
It's not like Ubisoft is asking fans to create the whole game for them and then only pay pittance to the selections they choose. I feel like this was a fun thing that got swept up in outrage culture because there are a lot of artists and freelancers who orbit the video games industry. I get that spec work as a whole is a bad practice, but this isn't the usual kind in my opinion.
That's how I saw it, but am honestly not surprised by the overeaction we see surrounding it. People love to overeact and exagerate, news at eleven.
I disagree. I do feel that this is simply a fun community event and Ubisoft thought that fans who love doing art anyway wouldn't mind submitting fun stuff like some sound samples and graffiti which don't impact the main game. This is a tempest in a teapot. The outrage is ridiculous.
Ubisoft has like 9000 employees? Nobody is losing out on any freelance work here. This is just an opportunity for fans to collaborate on a game they've wanted for years. Working "for exposure" is horseshit, it fucking sucks. But I don't think that's what this is. This isn't Dave at the local burger joint running a "contest" for a new slogan so he doesn't have to pay someone for work.
Edit: I double checked and Ubi has around 13k employees now. lol
Edit: I double checked and Ubi has around 13k employees now. lol
Era has been on an outrage binge lately, it seems. AFAIK, HitRecord has always followed this such model: everyone can submit work to the site and the chosen works get paid. Why is this unethical now that it involves a game? I think it's a cool way to have some of the art produced by the community surrounding BG&E immortalized in the game.
You guys need to stop having such a calm, cool, understanding of this event and be outraged!
I mean, aren't you upset that a Beyond Good and Evil fan has the chance to contribute to a game they are excited about?
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As Paquete_PT 's link pointed out, HitRECord's previous projects followed a model where contributors get royalties and that this specific collaboration isn't a normal project:
Yes, because usually HitRecord doesn't usually produces bits and pieces for projects that aren't theirs, and Beyond Good and Evil 2 is certainly not a project wholly created by HitRecord. The idea behind this collaboration is the same, however.
I think this is something weird to complain about. If you are going to do fan art for Beyond Good and Evil anyway, why not submit it and see if you earn some money?
Guess this is the loophole they're using to actually be allowed to continue making it.
Everyone with a shred of respect for artists is coming to this conclusion. Only people who think that artists should be glad to work and work for free, because they themselves violate paper with coloured pens in their spare time, so obviously an artist can just work for exposure.
Imagine anyone that ever applied a bandage to claim that doctors or nursed should work for free. Fuck that. And fuck anyone facilitating the exploitation of work (not just artists)
Most people ITT defending this have no idea what real creative work actually costs (a logo design starts around 20k and you get half upfront regardless of results). These types of contests are a joke and border on stealing from people who don't know better. Whatever Ubisoft pays you will be nowhere near what your work is actually worth, and that's assuming you're one of the few that win. Got some hobby shit lying around that you'd do regardless? Give it away for free I guess. You're damaging the industry but no one can stop you. Just please don't sit around doing actual work in hopes of getting paid for this. Literally the ONLY reason Ubisoft is doing this is to save money on labor. Don't let anyone fool you into thinking otherwise. You might still be ok with that. I'm worth a lot more.