Welcome to Aftermath, a worker-owned, reader-supported news site covering video games, the internet, and the cultures that surround them. Just launched today.
Welcome to Aftermath, a worker-owned, reader-supported news site covering video games, the internet, and the cultures that surround them. Just launched today.
Can we get worker owned game companies now?
Aren’t those called indie establishments?
Not really. Technically Bungie was “indie” after the Activision split and before being bought out by Sony and some of the issues circulating the news today were the same management issues they had when they were “indie”.
Worker-owned is a term rooted in socialism. It means the majority stake (ideologically 100%) of the company is collectively owned by the workers. Thus it means the workers decide what the company does and how they will do it. If an indie company has an owner, who makes the decisions, and employees, who don’t have a say in those decisions, then that’s not really a worker-owned company.
So Valve, as game devs?
No. The main reason people are worried about what happens to Valve when Gabe passes is because Gabe is the owner, he owns more than 50% of the company. Valve has done well under him but once he’s out the picture and that more than 50% ownership is transferred to another person then who knows if the company will stay the same. After all that 50 makes the decisions about the company
If that 50 was split between the workers there would be less certainty about the potentially passing of ice person because the workers collectively uphold the company vision.
sadly most indie companies are not co-ops
Can confirm. I’ve seen a small studio abuse one of the sole dev that wasn’t an owner and ducking him so hard…
This. This. This.
100% this.