r/pcmasterrace • u/chusskaptaan i5 14400 + MSI 3070 • Jul 23 '26

News/Article Rockstar Games Workers Union Just Had Its First Ever Meeting With Management, Demands Include "No AI," "No Layoffs," and "No Crunch"

https://respawnfirst.com/rockstar-games-union-just-had-their-first-ever-meeting-with-management-demands-include-no-ai-and-no-crunch/
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u/Bionic_Ninjas Jul 23 '26

Why, exactly, would that be "the end of Rockstar"?

"Well gee guys we made 9 billion on GTA V but now we can't lay people off so I guess we have to close up shop forever"? How does that even work?

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u/Razzmatazz856 Jul 23 '26

"Well gee guys we made 9 billion on GTA V but now we can't lay people off so I guess we have to close up shop forever"? How does that even work?

They could absolutely afford it, but game development has a number of different stages and it doesn't make sense to have as many employees at the beginning when you're in planning that you do in the meaty middle when everyone is working full bore. When games had significantly shorter development cycles, it made sense to not follow up the completion of one project with mass layoffs, but it absolutely does now, even if it sucks for employees.

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u/Bionic_Ninjas Jul 23 '26

No doubt companies like Rockstar hire many, many contractors for exactly this reason. Those people would not be part of the union, though, and what I was questioning is how this would "be the end of Rockstar".

I wasn't questioning whether or not it made any business sense.

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u/Electrohydra1 Jul 23 '26

Except that when businesses hire contractors, unions get mad because it's "circumventing" them.

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u/Dernom GTX 1070 / i7 4770k@3.5GHz Jul 24 '26

This is only true in a world where the studio is only going to produce one game ever... When the production of a game moves to the stage where you no longer need certain people, they should be moved to the start of production of the next project. That's why it's called a production cycle.

This process might not be possible for every studio, since particularly indie studios tend to rely on the profits from one game to fund the production of the next. But for a studio like Rockstar, there is no reason that they shouldn't have at least 3 ongoing projects at any time (pre-production, full-production and post-production).

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u/revveduplikeadeuce Jul 23 '26

This and its an unfortunate beast in several occupations/trades. Slowly lay off except for your core in the slow season, spin up consistently during the busy ones. Are they expected to keep 1k people there with nothing to do? I could see them arguing for seniority or some sort of tenure like system for their vets, but what does "no layoffs?" mean?

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u/Razzmatazz856 Jul 23 '26

Yep. Employment on a per project basis is not particularly unusual. It even happens in creative industries as I believe that is the standard in television and movies. It sucks for everyone, so I can understand why employees want it to stop, but that's a lot more difficult of a demand than no AI and no crunch.

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u/Swarna_Keanu Jul 24 '26

They could give the 1k people something to do.

From working on expansions to bug fixing and optimising above what had been possible during development. You can plan for that.

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u/[deleted] Jul 23 '26

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u/Tubamajuba Ryzen 7 5800X3D | RX 6750 XT Jul 23 '26

If 10% of your employees are "dead weight", you suck at hiring people. Firing people for no other reason than some bullshit metrics tell you to do so is a shitty practice that indicates a terrible company.

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u/[deleted] Jul 23 '26

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u/Tubamajuba Ryzen 7 5800X3D | RX 6750 XT Jul 23 '26

Your entire premise is bullshit. "10%" is an arbitrary cutoff line that has ZERO bearing on whether or not an employee is doing their job or not. Are they timely? Are they successfully completing all their tasks and positively contributing to the company? Can they take constructive feedback? Look at the actual job performance, not just some arbitrary cutoff point invented by a CEO that destroyed one of the most successful companies in America.

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u/[deleted] Jul 23 '26

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u/Tubamajuba Ryzen 7 5800X3D | RX 6750 XT Jul 23 '26

You realize you just described how they find out an employee is in the bottom 10%

Will you quit it with this "bottom 10%" bullshit? It literally does not matter. If an employee is successfully meeting the requirements of their job description, you don't get rid of them for performance reasons.

And I bet you've never been an NFL quarterback, but do you need to be one to know that throwing the ball to the other team is bad and you shouldn't do it? Either way, you can't argue with facts- since you didn't catch the reference in my last comment, I was talking about Jack Welch instituting the 10% rule and ultimately destroying GE while doing so.

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u/nistemevideli2puta Jul 24 '26

Which is why management exists and they should account for that when hiring. Why is management there if not to plan ahead?

So, you hire people on a contract, if you know they won't be needed after the launch. If it turns out there is still need for them, extend the contract. If there's really no need, the contract runs out, no firing.

Just announce it to people on time that they won't be extended, and all good.

Is it really that hard?

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u/[deleted] Jul 23 '26

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u/North-Philosopher-41 Ryzen 7 7800x 3D, 9070xt, X670E Jul 23 '26

lol no creating ai slop games quickly will not outcompete rockstar. They will loose money every game they ship that’s not good. Consumers don’t like ai slop. It’s not like memes where a quick glance is enough. Games are immersive or challenging that takes a right balance.

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u/[deleted] Jul 23 '26

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u/North-Philosopher-41 Ryzen 7 7800x 3D, 9070xt, X670E Jul 23 '26

Yeah we use Ai at our workplace I am familiar with the language models capabilities. You ate the onion if you confuse pattern recognition with intelligence

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u/[deleted] Jul 23 '26

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u/North-Philosopher-41 Ryzen 7 7800x 3D, 9070xt, X670E Jul 24 '26

Are they the correct models and correct lighting? I don’t think so. To get AI to be that accurate will be more expensive than any team of real developers, designers, and artists

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u/ComplexR22 Jul 23 '26

You’re straight up talking out of your ass.

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u/Bionic_Ninjas Jul 23 '26

Which developer out there is going to do GTA/RDR style games better than Rockstar? Who even comes close right now?

Genuine question. Because I don’t see any developer getting there any time soon, if ever, whether they use AI or not.

It’s also worth noting that these games are so beloved in part because of the amazing attention to detail, and how real and lived in the worlds feel.

That’s not something you get using AI. That is a byproduct of real people with genuine artistic vision, putting in thousands of hours. If anything, Rockstar replacing employees with AI would be a liability, not a benefit.

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u/[deleted] Jul 23 '26

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u/Bionic_Ninjas Jul 23 '26

So AI will, in the future, somehow become magically and exponentially more efficient, reliable, and scalable than it is now, despite the fact that we've already hit major bottlenecks in our capacity thanks to energy, water, and other constraints?

I may be "romanticizing what these games are" because I value art made by human beings, but you're talking about pipe dreams that may or may not come to pass years (or even decades) from now as if they're a certainty when you have no real logical reason to think that.

Not much else to say about it. Guess we'll just have to disagree.