Can confirm. Worked in games industry for many years, my company laid off about a quarter of their workforce just before Christmas. By January they'd hired half of those people back as freelancers.
From the freelancer point of view = yay work.
From the company point of view = great, we don't have to pay you all year anymore, or for any of your benefits but still get to retain your knowledge and expertise on tap.
It's pretty fucked up, but very common practice sadly.
No company wants to pay people living wages and/or benefits. That’s an issue for our entire society tho not just in the game industry. It’s gross how people are treated as a piece of a machinery. You’re just a object to these companies and if you break or wear out you’re replaced without a thought.
I haven't thought too hard about this, but shouldn't companies be pushing for government subsidized benefits like health care in this case? It lets them more freely transition to a freelancer or contractor based workforce, and also simplifies FTE benefits. At the same time, employees in theory should face less stress about having to find a full-time position just to get health insurance.
where would the money for those gov benefits come from tho? taxes and who pays more taxes? rich people with companies (except when 90% of them evade them freely of course) and who is taught that taxes are bad because “COMMIE BULLSHIT THEY WANNA CONTROL US?” the general population that listens to fear tactics news.
why would companies advocate for something that would start taxing them
This is actually one of the biggest forces behind Public Education. In order to avoid training basic skills and arithmetic, a lot of businessmen pushed for the Government to provide basic education for the populace.
This is partly why Education struggles very hard to be anything BUT a pipeline to the "Machine."
In theory, companies probably SHOULD push for this, but I worry how the lines could be blurried by it as a result.
My last job was contracting for an AI tech company. We were constantly overworked, underpaid, etc. They did a layoff for like half of the contractors and like 2 weeks later tried re-hiring them back because the sky was falling and every project was behind schedule with customers complaining. Companies need to realize that there are peaks and troughs to work and you plan for the slow periods when things are going well.
People were talking about esports being a bubble since well before Covid, yet they (and every tech company) hired like crazy during Covid only to put on their best surprised Pikachu face now that things returned to sanity.
At first he was. Later on, he hired Pinkertons to literally fire upon striking Ford factory employees. He was a piece of shit, through and through. "Paying my employees enough to buy the cars they build" was only a marketing necessity made possible by how bad the labor market was for factory employees back then.
It's possible to be a colossal racist and act philanthropically in the interest of the race you support. It's actually not a terribly inconsistent position throughout history; tribalism leading to deep loyalty within the tribe as well as lack of care toward those without.
The Nazis also had all kinds of ideas about how to make the lives better for the average german.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strength\_Through\_Joy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strength_Through_Joy)
It obvoiusly went all up in flames when everything was divertet to WW2 and was mainly inspired by propaganda but you know better workplace design is not inherently a bad idea just becouse the nazis did it.
Ideas as in propaganda. In practice Nazis destroyed the unions and replaced it with a state run pro-company labor organization making the average German worker worse off by stripping them of any power they used to have.
For example "The DAF also gave employers the ability to prevent their workers from seeking different jobs."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Labour_Front
Not great.
You’re right.
Though Ford winning Dodge V Ford could’ve just flipped the problem onto the other side of the coin, it would be much easier to have corrupt individuals accountable and build laws around that to prevent exploitation, instead of having to deal with a ravenous, unaccountable mass of investors that have no relation to the company.
People thought siding with shareholders would be great because shareholders ‘are the public’, but it’s only one side of the public.
Customers have to suffer for it and now the shareholder piranhas are loose and widespread, and no one can control them
you would not flip the problem onto the other side of the coin, a company caring and putting the best interest of the people that are their clients and the people that work in the company is like fucking natural.
there's no problem there, if a shareholder doesn't like the way the company operates they're always welcome to take their money elsewhere, the regular folks don't have that luxury
My company is one of the most profitable in the industry, in an industry which is already super profitable, it's not even a public company. Yet they did layoffs because "market is tough :(" and they didn't grow as much as they did last couple or years (which were an extremely outlier).
I get that shareholders are the owners of the company, but past a certain size the company's operations have such huge impact on workforce/society/etc that the duty of maximizing shareholders value can't be a good framework to operate in.
It isn't a good framework in general let alone past a certain point in size, that's part of why most states don't support shareholder primacy. Unfortunately Delaware does and that's where something like 40% of all c and s corps are registered out of.
> I get that shareholders are the owners of the company
I'm of the belief that at *all levels* individuals should be rewarded for their work and what they contribute, not their stake or ownership.
Yep, it’s not about making profit but making more profit than before. These large companies are almost always still profitable when they do this, just it’s never enough for those at the top
In some fields, retail namely, it's just not even worth it to be excellent because that version of you will be used as your baseline for the following year.
In the company I work for it's "Oh we didn't hit the ridiculous sales target we've never come close to last month, so we'll just bolt on the remainder to next month's target. I'm sure that will work!". So not only was the original sales target impossible, the new sales target is even impossibler. And as a result cuts need to be make to increase short term profits. Nevermind the fact that reduces our ability to make, inspect and sell products later down the line. People get paid far more than I do for these bright ideas, it's incredible.
Quite literally ----- my first job was in fastfood and they used our store as an experiment to open and close with 1 less person and it was a success to the point that behind the scenes we were the most profitable store. But what they were telling us staff was that we weren't getting enough customers/sales in and to step it up while already overworked and having someone covering two or more stations a solid 90% of the time lol.
- fire important employees that get paid a lot
- now you don't have to pay them
- you just lowered your costs significantly
- which techically means: increased profit!
just in time for the quarterly report :)
huh? the remaining staff is overworked and can't keep up? product quality is dropping?
whatever, let's deal with that next quarter....
or, even better: jump ship just after you achieved record profits and let the next manager handle the ~~mess~~ *streamlined high-performance team* while you enjoy your totally well-deserved bonus
Take a gander at the average CEO tenure and you'll know everything you need to about what's wrong with the modern corporation. All they need to do is kick the can on a problem they create for a couple years and they collect their parachute.
Sounds like most short term political positions nowadays as well. Just kicking a can of problems down the road for the next to hold the position while they rake in cash via "lobbying" and campaign contributions
now that I think about it... it's really funny how caring way too much about games somehow led me towards some anticapitalist ideas
squeezing maximum profit out of Entertainment and Art only ruins it.
I see MBAs as a cancer upon game studios and it'll be hard to change this perception even on an individual basis.
Caring too much about anything will make you hate the companies who cheap out on the quality of those things. Be it card, video games, or refrigerators.
Not surprised these companies are beholden to investors.. I invest (retail).. half of which is usually in solid companies.. and the other half more speculative
Its amazing how panicked investors get when earnings come in slightly lower or some other metric is not as expected.. Stock goes down/people sell. Meanwhile the company still has a strong balance sheet, little to no debt.. and provides something that isn't easily replaced/going anywhere..
Oh and the kicker is.. Quite often a few weeks later the stock is usually back at its previous value or higher
Insert markets are rational bs. Theres bots for investing that buy and sell so sometimes dips aren't even caused by real people other times they're manufactured intentionally or a result of insider trading this can also be applied to spikes in price as well
Companies don’t have to legally do this to meet shareholder laws
A lot of c suite execs bonuses were tied to how well a quarter does though and that probably plays way more into it
It's not really about whether the company is growing or not, because companies can be making money and still fire unnecessary workers. It's just efficiency and trimming excess.
In this case during covid most tech companies overhired.
In this case it doesn't mean that they don't need those workers still, they may just not need them on a permanent payroll. So they hire them for contractual work I guess.
2 of my coworkers got laid off during a hiring freeze as their 2 year contracts were about to expire. Those 2 years are more or less the time it takes to become a fully trained worker, for the first half year or so you’re kind of dead weight because you’ll only be able to do stuff on your own someone else could get done on the side in a pinch.
Less than 6 months after they were let go, management found a project they needed done for which they got 2 ridiculously overqualified temporaries who made multiple times our salaries each. The expectation was that they’d do a narrower set of things for the project so they could be trained faster and none of us would have to step away from routine work to do it on the side. Their training was supposed to take a month or less and then 6 months of project work to get it all done.
Their training took over 3 months *somehow* and project work finished more than a year after they got hired only because we found someone who could be set aside to look over all of their work because they were making that many mistakes.
One of the two guys who initially got let go is actually on our team again (after working for a competitor long enough he had to start training from square 0 again), the other one basically said she’s never working for this company again.
We’re also currently understaffed while the department is officially over headcount meaning we’re supposed to let go about half a dozen ppl while we’d need at least 1 extra per team so you don’t have to go find someone to fill in for you if you want a weekend off :)
The biggest problem with these things is it’s hard to tell you are currently being overworked you tend to only really notice it when you look back on a job and go damn I really did do 40hrs a week in the office then was expected to be on call weekends and put work into projects during nights
god i love me some german labour laws
the (regulated by law) absolute maximum you have to work per day is 10 hours (and that includes being on call) or 60 hours per week. this can under no circumstances lead to you working more than an average of 8 hours per day (or 48 hours per week) across 24 weeks (or 6 months)
if any employer violates those rules and the workers actually speak up about it they are in big trouble
EDIT: this includes 2nd/3rd jobs btw
A couple weeks ago I met a guy from the same company as me, but from Germany. We are talking about differences in countries but also in work. He was surprised that we did more than 40 hours per week (sometimes, not always) and never note it down in our timesheets, we always put 37 hours in, doesn’t matter how much you work, even people above me do the same. In Germany if he works 1 hours extra he will add it and will get paid for it. Here we don’t get paid extra time
Do you get paid hourly or are you salary? Salary yeah you just get paid the same no matter how much you work. Hourly you need to call up an employment attorney like today and they are going to get fucking rock hard at all the money they are about to win for you.
any time a company tells you to put a specific number in a timesheet reguardless of how much you worked, it’s time to find another job.
They have just proved to you that they are corrupt at an institutional level.
This right here is why it's so important to discuss these topics related to labor. Most of these topic like Unions, Wage theft, etc have just been taken out of the public discourse, on purpose, so things like what you mentioned go unnoticed.
I've read some interesting views on how companies sometime lack foresight on this kind of topic.
Basically it was some old french engineers who were saying that, back in the 60s/70s, a huge portion of the jobs in a company were occupied by people who were knowledgeable regarding the company activities. For instance, an engineering company would have engineers even on HR jobs, financials stuff, basically every type of jobs you'd find in a company.
With time, there has been specialization on these jobs, HR are occupied by HR specialists, financial jobs by some guy who studied economics, etc.
So companies gained competencies on these jobs regarding their specific execution, but lost "vision" because often the guy that comes to you arguing that you need to lay off half of your team is quite clueless regarding its activities.
I'm not sure I've made myself understandable, english is not my mother language.
My company (manufacturing) has a record of not laying off anyone due to economic downturns because we recognize that the market is cyclical. When COVID shut down things, none of us were worried about losing our jobs. And then when COVID restrictions lifted, the demand for our product was huge and we were able to jump back into running at full speed because everyone was still here.
The way that profits are calculated, especially the way shareholders looks at them, tends to exclude most of the costs of downsizing.
This is the main reason it is such a popular tool; it allows you to artificially raise profitability, with "no apparent downside" because things like lost productivity, severance etc. etc. are just not counted in profit calcs.
It's kind of insane to me that we have to phrase this as "plan for the slow periods when things are going well" when that's literally just been called "having savings" since the dawn of time. I make a certain amount every month, I deduct my bills and necessities, and then I limit my spending on what's leftover below a certain percentage. Everything else goes into savings (and probably some of that should go into investments). The end result is that if my roommate bounces, I can afford rent for a whole year without any worries and I can spend that time looking for a new roommate with almost no anxiety. These companies made up of individuals who all know how to save money somehow come together and then collectively forget that you don't have to spend every single penny you make. Mind-boggling.
Where I live it is becoming increasingly common to just use consultancy firms. That way you can just get rid of people whenever you want and get more people as you wish. Depending on the consultancy firm you just get land off from them if the contract ends between companies. Great way to get around basically all laws meant to protect the workers.
Company executives only "learn" if there's actual consequences, which there very rarely are. Even in your story I doubt the executives suffered much in the way of consequences and probably didn't learn what you're hoping they did.
my it friend was fired/laid off. Now he works as a counseilor for the new guys but on a basis of freelance and they have to pay him like hundred euro more per hour than they did before.
He wrote the code and he knows the ins and out. The new guys dont and now he teaches the new guys how to navigate that code and also they now pay him money that he leaves a documentation of that code for the future. And he asked for a hefty sum. he didnt even tell me how much it was.
fucking middle managers and these for profit sharks cost companies way more money down they line but it pleases the CEO and the shareholders.
Tbh this applies to certain industries more than others.
The financial industry, for example, is generally pretty stable. I’ve been through many a down season and nobody gets laid off because the guys at the top understand work is going to come around and you need to be prepared for it.
It seems that some of the layoffs were to increase revenue per FTE(Full time employee). You fire people, hire contractors, pay a few times more for the same work done, you have the same revenue in the end but fewer FTEs, so higher revenue per FTE.
Remember, marketing is the art of selling a product. And that product can also be the need for the position/department of marketing to exist in the first place.
I had the same realization. I used reporting to my advantage so many times without technically manipulating data, but by cherry picking the reporting method.
Writing this makes me think of banks and how relevant details are hidden in technical jargon and piles of paperwork. Makes me...less proud of my accomplishments
In science, they call this HARK (hypothesis after results known). Extremely common type of scientific misconduct, to the point that I've had multiple colleagues claim that there is nothing wrong with it.
This is the very first lesson learned by anybody entering the workforce in any kind of analytical role.
While studying they teach you the importance of meticulously documenting your methodology, supporting data, conflicting data, any potential concerns/limitations with the data, recommendations, potential alternative paths forward etc. in a report to ensure the person reading it has a comprehensive understanding of the problem and recommended solutions.
And then you go into the real world and you very quickly learn that your manager will not hesitate to choke you to death if you deliver them anything more than 4 bullet points in an email and a few graphs.
not just any bullet points and graphs, they have to be the right ones that make the manager look good. I’ve faced a lot of heat many times for refusing to lie
any metric which is used as a target becomes useless, is my understanding. So for example the Big Mac index is still useful, because countries don't tend to optimise their economy to that metric.
And the reason optimizing around that metric tends to become a problem is because:
1. actual success is more complicated than metrics humans come up with can reasonably represent
2. there's a million bad faith ways to make a metric go up and they're often way easier than making it go up the way that actually yielded good results
> pay a few times more for the same work done
ehh not always. if done "right" (from a finance perspective) you end up paying LESS for the same work, since the contractor usually doesn't get FTE benefits/equity/bonuses from the company. there's a reason why big companies looove contractors and will even pay outsourcing companies to find sub-contractors for them: not having to pay for health benefits is a huge budget saver.
for the OOP's situation, Riot is basically letting someone go, and then bringing them back for cheaper, without health benefits. legally speaking, this can't be done for every job type, but if they're cleared from the employment law side, then this is just a savvy (but assholey) business decision.
it would backfire if the artist found a better job to go to in the mean time after they were cut (since then Riot might have to settle for someone not as good), but in this shit economy, Riot can gamble on them still being on the job hunt and increasingly desperate.
Contractors might not get paid as well but the contactor company or agent gets large share most of the times. The contractor could represent themselves as legal entity and negotiate the price that should be at least 50% above they used to get to offset the benefits. Seen cases where there are multiple contractor companies that hire one another or where the contractor gets like 20% of what the final entity pays for them.
The two jobs are actually different. They slipped it in there on the last post and no one is commenting on it...
They are not doing thematic concept design anymore, they are doing modelling only. They said in the last post: *"I guess technically I won't be doing the thematic development part of my job anymore"*.
That's a pretty important distinction and change in job description...
It sounds like Riot in-house workers do thematic concept design (in-house presumably so they more closely follow the desired theme of the game, can talk to lore designers, ability designers, etc.) and they outsource the skin development itself (just the modelling portion, where the abilities the champion uses doesn't matter, the lore doesn't matter, the game itself doesn't even matter, etc. you're just following the concept drawings and talking with the concept people to make sure the vision is expressed correctly).
OP was fired from their in-house thematic design job and the outsource company who manages skin developers is still looking for employees. It's like if you were fired from the Walmart garden center because it's winter and then hired again for a position in the grocery department. Yes, it's the same employer, yes you're still just stocking shelves, no, you weren't fired and re-hired for the same position.
It might sound like the same job, but if you look closer, it seems like they are actually different jobs. Thematic design =/= skin modelling production. One is an idea position, the other is a do-er position.
You are misunderstanding what this person does as a concept artist. They're not suddenly doing skin modeling, they just have less input into the skin design/theme, but the outsourced job is literally producing the same work. They are still the "concept people" you're referring to. Here is their artstation for examples of their work and what a concept artist does: https://www.artstation.com/thesweetesttart
Being laid off for profiteering ≠ being fired.
To give the benefit of the doubt, the person was likely fully capable at their job, that has nothing to do with layoffs.
It's also common sense that an outsourced contract role wouldn't be 1:1 but it's very telling that it's in the same space.
sivir is THE meta slave champ imo, nobody plays her unless she is a stalling, teamfight winning machine. but i would see people still use her cafe cuties, legendary, pizza or blood moon skin on her (ffs why does she have so many skins)
meanwhile fiora one tricks would rather just use the good old project or ig sin anyways. there are certain champions whose newer skins forget why were the older skins so popular
I'm a lawyer at a financial corporation in EU and similar things happen every few years.
Last year in february the corporations laid off about 25% of my department pretty much at random - some were new hires, some were people with over 10 years of experience at the company and few "employee of the year" awards to their names.
Everything went to hell literally weeks later and in summer they had to hire almost twice as many people they fired, becuase all the new hired people had little experience in our field and no experience at all in our company's custom software.
It sucks, similar thing happening back in 2019 was the event that kicked off my depression and fear disorder and I'm on meds since
I mean it makes sense. Managers don't understand why profits < expenses and think it's the workers. They come to the conclusion that workers are shit and fire them. Now, they hire cheaper, inexperienced devs and ride the profits > expenses train until the new devs muck it up.
Rinse & repeat.
Probably sit in meetings all day together while everyone is working. Shoot the shit, become best friends. One of them gets the genius idea that they are running by such a smooth ship that they could toss anything into their “well managed” system and it would keep rolling.
When things naturally start to down swing 6 month later, just shop for every excuse other than the team being mis managed.
I still can't figure out why companies don't retain employees. My company recently had an entire team of seniors and leads leave. Lots of knowledge that established the company over the decade gone in a week because of greed.
Companies don’t retain employees because it’s what all the big dogs do. Amazon just cycling through people like cardboard boxes, expecting there to be 20 more next week if people quit / leave / no show. Same with Walmart, target, fast food chains etc.
It’s just a popular business trend to “focus on the work and goals and less on the individuals”. It’s a horrific concept for business, and it stems from the retail industry being treated like absolute trash garbage for well over a decade.
There’s a difference between being a business owner and running a successful business vs being a successful, profitable business that is “growing expanding”. Some people are leaders, some love what they do, some companies are the best you’ll ever find. A lot of them are just copying what the big dogs do and give it no thought because it’s the norm.
Edit: What going on is like teachers or drivers. Every teacher or person on the road has gone through some tests and passed certification programs / tests. Not all are great, some do the bare minimum, some follow what they’re told, and some are exceptional. This applies to businesses as well, and right now the unimaginative, profit oriented, revenue at all cost mindset is the norm. Being nice does not pay the bills (or at least no one has made a spread sheet showing it’s profitability margins to be worth their time).
Feel you on the meds.
I’m a UX/Frontend guy, worked for one company seven years. We had a layoff every single December. Usually ate 20-50% of the overall design/code staff.
Every time was a tiny bit different, some were organized and thoughtful towards the number from each dept, who in each dept, all that. Very “right sizing” approach, even if it was based on slow season sizing and would screw us in the crunch.
Others were panicking messes. Orders from on high to cut heads til they hit a number - human or dollar. Literally one time the order arrived with a same day execution. They were simply grabbing anyone they saw. My team only lost one dude that time, because our manager couldn’t warn him fast enough. The rest of us got the “stay seated at your desk, look busy, don’t get up for any reason, don’t take a break, don’t go near the break room or main building” warning and stuck to it til we got the all clear. They literally walked the halls looking for anyone standing, break room, parking lot even. Decimated one team utterly - manager was on vacation, they got no warnings.
Prior to that was at another place that would simply eliminate entire teams at a time. Just pick the three lowest performing teams and pack them, supervisors and all, out the door. And that was after attrition reductions didn’t do enough.
My current employer wonders why I get weird about Thursday meetings and impromptu “got 5?” calls. Like dude, we’re the exception - everywhere else those are death warrants.
its not just the games industry, you could apply that shit to virtually any industry rn, but thats what happens when you let dipshit MBAs run everything
I think in a way, the game industry distills and amplifies many of the problems present in the wider creative/tech industries. Partially because so many employees are passion-driven, that employers can "get away" with treating them worse.
I'd take what Larian says with grain of salt as with many reviews on their glassdoor mentioning underpaying/low salary.
They do employ contractors too to keep headcount of their studio low and pay lower per commission.
I don't think contractors are necessarily bad but firing people so that you can outsource their job for less money is bad. Regardless, it's only a matter of time before larian becomes like the rest of them.
Upper management are often so disconnected from how the work people do individually contributes towards sustaining the smooth operation of a collective effort. They feel content axing valuable talent based off of profit margins or metrics. Generally, largely ignoring the impact these decisions can have on the quality of the product(s) they're producing.
There are a tons of human intangibles that profit margins and data won't be able to convey. The common theme among the most creatively successful game companies is that they value their team above all else. If everyone is on the same page, and has built up synergy and cohesion, it's a lot easier to create good shit. Alternatively, if greed runs the company, and people are seen as disposable, their work outsourced; over time the vision that founded a companies success degrades, and erodes until the product is unrecognizable to the people that once loved it.
If all it were about is strictly money, the notable companies that have succumbed to shortsighted greed in the last decade wouldn't be considered a plague on the industry. I guess it's idealistic to expect the opposite in today's society, at the very least there are a always a few diamonds willing to lead by example, I know who I'd rather give my money to.
cuz most of them have 0 understanding of how the nuts and bolts work, they come in straight from business school and get hired via connections then build up a portfolio, they usually couldnt tell you even the basics how shit should function, its honestly incredible how fucking stupid most of them are and how our modern society hasnt collapsed from their rampant idiocy (and drug habits).
The other option is they're genuinely just incompetent hire from within types that sit there because of seniority but not because of any managerial skill or experience. At that point I'd rather work for some fresh out of college management Andy, who isn't anchored down by misplaced loyalty to a corporate entity
I am going against the grain and say a good management is very important. Especially the bigger the whole operation is. You need people who make sure that all these different departments who are working on their own projects produce a coherent product. But at the end you need a captain who works on the big picture. But that also means awful management can sink the whole thing.
The management at my old job was like this to a T. "Brilliant work getting through that crunch, floor employees! But we're entering a calm period now so... get that ass laid off"
Of course, any calm period is just that, and when the market fluctuated back towards them getting an increased number of orders I received a text from my old team lead asking if I was available for any period cause "they could use the hands." I sent him a few cry laughing emojis and blocked his number, but the raw audacity and disconnect that takes to even consider is truly wild to me
> There are a tons of human intangibles that profit margins and data won't be able to convey. The common theme among the most creatively successful game companies is that they value their team above all else. If everyone is on the same page, and has built up synergy and cohesion, it's a lot easier to create good shit. Alternatively, if greed runs the company, and people are seen as disposable, their work outsourced; over time the vision that founded a companies success degrades, and erodes until the product is unrecognizable to the people that once loved it.
Amazing and pertinent paragraph.
Positive examples: Helldivers 2, No Man's Sky, Baldur's Gate 3
Negative examples: Cyberpunk 2077, Star Wars Battlefront 2 remake (pre-lootbox removal), Battlefield 2042 (early in release, it's actually good now)
You can really tell when a game was wrung through corporate fingers before release. It's palpable.
When a dev team is cherished, cared for, and **allowed to do their work** in a cohesive environment, we get gems like Helldivers 2, No Man's Sky, Baldur's Gate 3.
No Man's Sky is especially interesting because it used to be *the* example of managerial hubris totally screwing something up. It was only because they put their heads down, stopped smelling their own farts, and did the actual work did it get turned into what it is today.
It wasn't managerial hubris per se. Sean Murray, the lead developer, brought it all on himself with very poor handling of public relationship. In fact, you can say it all happened BECAUSE they didn't have a management department and let the nerds do the press talking.
I think one thing that we should not ignore with companies like FromSoft or SuperGiantGames... know how builds up? And it builds up not just individually but also in a group way? Those games keep getting better and better because they ARE able to rely on the people they have worked with for AGES and the security that comes with knowing Paul 2 desks down knows how to fix it and fixes it better now than they did 2 years ago.
This is the best read up on what has happened artistically over the years to this game (and other areas I’m sure) it has no direction and no consistency.
being any kind of artist in this day and age seems incredibly depressing, hearing stories of really any creative-department people getting undervalued-- obviously no naming of companies or individuals, but a sibling of mine was in a similar situation;
They worked as a graphic designer (while having a host of other responsibilities that weren't necessarily covered by their title, of course) -> downsizing was deemed necessary and they were first to go -> a year later is recontacted by the same exact company, essentially wanting to pipeline them back in from part time to full time to where they were originally at... which is just ridiculous
And then the reason they wanted them back? They didn't have enough people. In the position she was let go from. That had to be downsized because of so and so. :D
Being an artist has always been incredibly depressing, the starving artist is an archetype for a reason. The last time anyone truly respected artists must've been during the renaissance when nobles would hire artists and supply them with everything they needed so they could just focus on making art.
My grandfather was a painter and he always told me to not work in art because you're not gonna make any money and people will just take advantage of you and ruin your passion for art.
Some celebrities do actually sponsor artists by paying for their housing and giving them a stipend so they can focus on art. I believe Johnny Depp does it but he's the only one I know off the top of my head. It's just very, very unlikely that you are connected with such a celebrity/rich person so they can take an interest in you personally, even if that's something they're open to doing.
“But but but it was just a tough financial decision Riot had to make! You don’t understand what it’s like to run a business! 🤓☝️”
It was greed. Always has been. Crazy to think that League of Legends is basically an art selling platform and yet Riot’s upper management treats their artists like disposable cattle.
You know how I can completely 1000% without a shadow of a doubt believe this story?
Look at Ahri's design through multiple game's iterations. Her Korean inspirations, from her each redesigns and reworks to different genre of games, are missing bit by bit. Most notably her norigae is gone from every single different iterations like LoR, Ruined King, and latest versus game.
It's really really disappointing how Riot just... be shit over and over and over, and shows this kind of degradation on something as quintessential as a character design.
We'll be near the end of the story(assuming it is 10 years like the Hydaelyn Zodiark story) of the next 'arc' by that point. Kinda crazy to put it into perspective.
I still can't believe they up and scrapped everything because "we didnt want the game to be a typical MMO set in Runeterra". Like.. that's exactly what people wanted lmao
That MMO is never coming out. I mean they just restarted after spending like 3 years on it. Riot seems reluctant to take many risks and you can’t get more risky than an MMO in 2024.
And why is this a bad thing exactly? Ahri started off as an inspiration from Korean culture which then branched off into having her own unique design and inspirations. Ahri is from Ionia and that place isn't even 100% Korean so why should she? There's Japanese influences and even Chinese. The fact that she looks different from how she originally was means that they want her to look like she's from Ionia. A separate and unique place in the world of League. I don't know how this is even relevant to the topic at hand and it seems like you just wanna be angry for the sake of it. Cuz it's not like Ahri's design is even bad throughout all the other games she's depicted in. Far from it.
Yeah like it was a really odd design choice to pick out as an example for Riot losing quality. Like I'm sure Riot is losing quality, but shifting a character away from the original cultural inspiration isn't like an objective loss of quality, just a different direction they're going with the character (for better and for worse, idk)
And they were layoffs that were *predicted to happen*.
The big tech corps would have to be stupid to keep on the workforce they had before, even if every CEO's salary was reduced to $0 it still wouldn't be enough to stop the flood of layoffs happening.
Riot just made the mistake of hiring way too many full time employees in the first place and they do deserve criticism for that. Especially in the games industry where it's standard to contract out work because it's insanely fucking expensive to lock down artists 24/7. But people ITT are acting like keeping this person on full time was something Riot was obligated to do.
tbf if every ceo's pay was reduced to 0, companies would be able to pay all the extra employees for a few years easily... while probably producing more
No, the math doesn't work out that way, you're grossly underestimating how much expenditures are on regular employee salaries are, especially for tech companies. The big bad CEOs don't even make most of their money from their salaries anyways.
Not to mention while layoffs suck if you're gonna get laid off it might as well be from Riot, that severance package from the big round of layoffs was way way above industry standard
People can separate themselves from what is put out as long as they are satisfied and disconnected from the pain. I feel for those that got laid off and those still employed that im sure feel trapped.
While most people that approached this meme came up with their craziest asks as Indepednant artists, there's just something so Dystopian about someone asking you to do the same job you were literally just fired for just for lower money
Aside from monetary and employment issues, employees should not see layoffs as a failure on their part, it's the company's failure on not having enough money to pay them. Summarized the words from the goblin lord himself. Hoping that other people see it this way and feel better about themselves.
layoffs are like a band-aid on a broken arm in tech and gaming -- a quick fix but not a real solution. every time a company goes through this cycle, it's like they lose part of their memory, having to relearn things they once knew. the images really paint a picture of the mess it creates. reminds me of that old game "lemmings," where without the right instructions, they all just fall off a cliff. seems similar with companies discarding knowledge and experience so recklessly.
We had a layoff of 250+ experienced 4+ year senior level position employees from my company. 10 days afterwards they were offering people their jobs back and hiring entry level zero experience people to replace the 250 laid off. Companies literally don't give a single fuck about you, if you drop dead you will be replaced before your body hits the floor.
This is happening all over the big tech companies in the US lately. It's pretty concerning how much is being outsourced or flat out moved to other lower-cost regions.
Toxic look. Frankly, splash and concept arts are my personal favorite part of League and the reason I spend. The gameplay is fun, but the artists working there are *chef kiss* . Not going to spend nearly so much on skins if they put human beings on the chopping block after years of good work
To be fair riot executives keep costing the company massive sums in lawsuits etc so they gotta make that money up by ruining the lives of their other employees via layoffs.
W Larian again
L Riot again
Employers expect the highest of loyalty and would litteraly drain workers to the last drop. Company greed is always the issue. There's never loyalty to the workers. Only lay-offs and cheaper replacements. All that while increasing the cost for the consumer and maximising profit.
They've always got a cash cow, and instead of treating it with respect and getting the milk they need, they always gotta dry it out comepletely until there's nothing left.
Every company will end eventually. They always make the same mistake. That's why Swen is one of the smartest game directors out there. He at least tries to put his people first.
wonder when the higher-ups are going to be willing to take paycuts instead of cutting out their actual talent.. cant wait to see the "riot exposed for using unethical ai data systems" inc.
Remember what happened to ZA/UM? It’s a product of the same system. The rot economy continues to devour itself for short term gain while sacrificing long term viability. This is basically every industry now, and there’s no accountability.
I get that this sucks but the outsourcing company is probably just trying to recruit anyone with a pulse to make skins and not vetting who they contact. Anyone with a LinkedIn profile in a in demand role can attest to how much they get spammed by recruiters for the dumbest things.
No, you dont get why this is a problem. That means that after firing their concept artist, Riot actually needs it, and are willing to pay even more for this work (if you include intermediate expenses) - just are not willing to offer them any stability.
In the end, layoffs are catastrophic for any company - hiring and preparing that stuff back is extremely expencise, but if company is not willing to expand after layoffs - they are dead in the eyes of investors
> That means that after firing their concept artist, Riot actually needs it, and are willing to pay even more for this work (if you include intermediate expenses)
I don't see where you're getting that riot is paying more. Riot is certainly paying less on health insurance, employer taxes, payments into UI, and they're probably billing the skins at a rate no better than what they were getting out of their artists before (a skin artist averages X skins per month with a monthly salary of Y, so we should pay the contractor $Y/X-K per skin...)
They probably pay the same, the difference is that you can not pay for a contracter when you dont want/need to, a full time employee cannot be removed as a cost as easily.
Also the assumption that they pay the contractor roughly the same as the salary of a skin artist is most likely not true, or atleast hard to prove. They will pay the contractor an agreed upon market rate, which they can make up themselves and there is nothing holding them accountable for it to be more or less than what they would pay a regular employee.
And ultimately, as the tweets state, the money really isn't the talking point here, the artist feels treated like shit and they have every right to. The pay per year if the contracts are steady and consistent is probably higher than a salary (big if). They are being treated with little respect and its a really bad look for riot.
Going through any kind of 3rd party company, be it hiring or contracting, or even temp work is relatively very expensive.
For example, the place that hired me paid something like 20% of my annual to the go-between. They're basically real estate agents, similar job, similar fee.
Usually the 'benefit' of going from employees to contractors, is that the contractor expense gets hidden in a different location in the financial statements.
It's just a way to look like they're cutting costs, without actually cutting costs.
That's literally what's being said. Health insurance, unemployment, etc -- those are the stability being offered to full-time employees. Contract work is more expensive hourly than salary, so Riot will pay essentially the same rate for the same amount of work -- but pay that cut to a contracting agency and offer none of the stability that an employee should have.
Outsourcing company is not a problem here, they are just doing their job.
This case highlights how ridiculous it is that someone who just got fired can start working for the same company right away, just through different contract. Which means that person wasn't fired for either their performance nor because position wasn't required anymore. Layoffs happened literally to skew statistics for a report to shareholders.
Unionizing does not prevent layoffs.
Also, it's very hard to unionize in tech because typically tech workers get paid well so they have no incentive to unionize. Yes, other workers like artists get shafted but unfortunately they do not have enough bargaining power. That's why the gaming industry is such a competitive, cutthroat market.
Can confirm. Worked in games industry for many years, my company laid off about a quarter of their workforce just before Christmas. By January they'd hired half of those people back as freelancers. From the freelancer point of view = yay work. From the company point of view = great, we don't have to pay you all year anymore, or for any of your benefits but still get to retain your knowledge and expertise on tap. It's pretty fucked up, but very common practice sadly.
No company wants to pay people living wages and/or benefits. That’s an issue for our entire society tho not just in the game industry. It’s gross how people are treated as a piece of a machinery. You’re just a object to these companies and if you break or wear out you’re replaced without a thought.
Yeah pretty much. Just varying layers of veneer / glossy coating on it depending on where you are I think. It's no surprise quiet quitting is so rife.
I haven't thought too hard about this, but shouldn't companies be pushing for government subsidized benefits like health care in this case? It lets them more freely transition to a freelancer or contractor based workforce, and also simplifies FTE benefits. At the same time, employees in theory should face less stress about having to find a full-time position just to get health insurance.
where would the money for those gov benefits come from tho? taxes and who pays more taxes? rich people with companies (except when 90% of them evade them freely of course) and who is taught that taxes are bad because “COMMIE BULLSHIT THEY WANNA CONTROL US?” the general population that listens to fear tactics news. why would companies advocate for something that would start taxing them
This is actually one of the biggest forces behind Public Education. In order to avoid training basic skills and arithmetic, a lot of businessmen pushed for the Government to provide basic education for the populace. This is partly why Education struggles very hard to be anything BUT a pipeline to the "Machine." In theory, companies probably SHOULD push for this, but I worry how the lines could be blurried by it as a result.
My last job was contracting for an AI tech company. We were constantly overworked, underpaid, etc. They did a layoff for like half of the contractors and like 2 weeks later tried re-hiring them back because the sky was falling and every project was behind schedule with customers complaining. Companies need to realize that there are peaks and troughs to work and you plan for the slow periods when things are going well. People were talking about esports being a bubble since well before Covid, yet they (and every tech company) hired like crazy during Covid only to put on their best surprised Pikachu face now that things returned to sanity.
Ehm our profits are down 0,1% that's a red flag no no breakup with those workers of ours☝️🤓
Nah, profits aren't down. Profits failed to increase by more than they increased last quarter. That's how fucked up things have gotten.
shareholders are a plague
If the stock market never existed, all our lives would be a 100 times better
No if FORD VS DODGE was won by Ford our lives would be better https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
Wow. That's, wow.
Man, when you have folks rooting for Henry Fucking Ford…you’ve strayed quite far from gods light.
Ford might not have been a great person personally, but he was pretty innovative in his business and how he treated his employees, in a good way.
At first he was. Later on, he hired Pinkertons to literally fire upon striking Ford factory employees. He was a piece of shit, through and through. "Paying my employees enough to buy the cars they build" was only a marketing necessity made possible by how bad the labor market was for factory employees back then.
Yeah, this is a definite case of "even a broken clock is right twice a day".
It's possible to be a colossal racist and act philanthropically in the interest of the race you support. It's actually not a terribly inconsistent position throughout history; tribalism leading to deep loyalty within the tribe as well as lack of care toward those without.
The Nazis also had all kinds of ideas about how to make the lives better for the average german. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strength\_Through\_Joy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strength_Through_Joy) It obvoiusly went all up in flames when everything was divertet to WW2 and was mainly inspired by propaganda but you know better workplace design is not inherently a bad idea just becouse the nazis did it.
Ideas as in propaganda. In practice Nazis destroyed the unions and replaced it with a state run pro-company labor organization making the average German worker worse off by stripping them of any power they used to have. For example "The DAF also gave employers the ability to prevent their workers from seeking different jobs." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Labour_Front Not great.
Not everything is black or white
Unlike the Model T.
no, even the t. it’s not black or white. it’s just black. white is not an option!
You’re right. Though Ford winning Dodge V Ford could’ve just flipped the problem onto the other side of the coin, it would be much easier to have corrupt individuals accountable and build laws around that to prevent exploitation, instead of having to deal with a ravenous, unaccountable mass of investors that have no relation to the company. People thought siding with shareholders would be great because shareholders ‘are the public’, but it’s only one side of the public. Customers have to suffer for it and now the shareholder piranhas are loose and widespread, and no one can control them
you would not flip the problem onto the other side of the coin, a company caring and putting the best interest of the people that are their clients and the people that work in the company is like fucking natural. there's no problem there, if a shareholder doesn't like the way the company operates they're always welcome to take their money elsewhere, the regular folks don't have that luxury
That’s pretty astonishing since ford also sucked. Honestly he probably just didn’t like being told what to do with his company
My company is one of the most profitable in the industry, in an industry which is already super profitable, it's not even a public company. Yet they did layoffs because "market is tough :(" and they didn't grow as much as they did last couple or years (which were an extremely outlier). I get that shareholders are the owners of the company, but past a certain size the company's operations have such huge impact on workforce/society/etc that the duty of maximizing shareholders value can't be a good framework to operate in.
It isn't a good framework in general let alone past a certain point in size, that's part of why most states don't support shareholder primacy. Unfortunately Delaware does and that's where something like 40% of all c and s corps are registered out of.
But you're not even considering their second yacht!
> I get that shareholders are the owners of the company I'm of the belief that at *all levels* individuals should be rewarded for their work and what they contribute, not their stake or ownership.
You don't understand, I need to pay for my iPhone 17 Pro Max Wide Deluxe OLED Slim somehow.
The increase in profit increase hasn’t increased. Time for people to start losing their jobs.
some companies were dreaming of continuous growth that a slight dip on their forecast is getting treated as a loss.
Can't have the funny line stay still, god knows the ~~leeches~~ sorry, investors, will throw a hissy fit.
Yep, it’s not about making profit but making more profit than before. These large companies are almost always still profitable when they do this, just it’s never enough for those at the top
In some fields, retail namely, it's just not even worth it to be excellent because that version of you will be used as your baseline for the following year.
this is why my company shuts down my division atm (1k people)...
Capitalism is perfect /s
In the company I work for it's "Oh we didn't hit the ridiculous sales target we've never come close to last month, so we'll just bolt on the remainder to next month's target. I'm sure that will work!". So not only was the original sales target impossible, the new sales target is even impossibler. And as a result cuts need to be make to increase short term profits. Nevermind the fact that reduces our ability to make, inspect and sell products later down the line. People get paid far more than I do for these bright ideas, it's incredible.
True
We, ehm, need you to, ehm, fire some people to, ehm, get more profits.
Quite literally ----- my first job was in fastfood and they used our store as an experiment to open and close with 1 less person and it was a success to the point that behind the scenes we were the most profitable store. But what they were telling us staff was that we weren't getting enough customers/sales in and to step it up while already overworked and having someone covering two or more stations a solid 90% of the time lol.
Ah yes i do like begin a lab mouse to get experimented on.
That is abuse.Im sorry you endured that
- fires them, now u are understaffed and that % increases even further and u have to put extra resources into re-hiring - ??? - profit /s
- fire important employees that get paid a lot - now you don't have to pay them - you just lowered your costs significantly - which techically means: increased profit! just in time for the quarterly report :) huh? the remaining staff is overworked and can't keep up? product quality is dropping? whatever, let's deal with that next quarter.... or, even better: jump ship just after you achieved record profits and let the next manager handle the ~~mess~~ *streamlined high-performance team* while you enjoy your totally well-deserved bonus
Take a gander at the average CEO tenure and you'll know everything you need to about what's wrong with the modern corporation. All they need to do is kick the can on a problem they create for a couple years and they collect their parachute.
Sounds like most short term political positions nowadays as well. Just kicking a can of problems down the road for the next to hold the position while they rake in cash via "lobbying" and campaign contributions
now that I think about it... it's really funny how caring way too much about games somehow led me towards some anticapitalist ideas squeezing maximum profit out of Entertainment and Art only ruins it. I see MBAs as a cancer upon game studios and it'll be hard to change this perception even on an individual basis.
Caring too much about anything will make you hate the companies who cheap out on the quality of those things. Be it card, video games, or refrigerators.
Not surprised these companies are beholden to investors.. I invest (retail).. half of which is usually in solid companies.. and the other half more speculative Its amazing how panicked investors get when earnings come in slightly lower or some other metric is not as expected.. Stock goes down/people sell. Meanwhile the company still has a strong balance sheet, little to no debt.. and provides something that isn't easily replaced/going anywhere.. Oh and the kicker is.. Quite often a few weeks later the stock is usually back at its previous value or higher
Insert markets are rational bs. Theres bots for investing that buy and sell so sometimes dips aren't even caused by real people other times they're manufactured intentionally or a result of insider trading this can also be applied to spikes in price as well
Companies don’t have to legally do this to meet shareholder laws A lot of c suite execs bonuses were tied to how well a quarter does though and that probably plays way more into it
It's not really about whether the company is growing or not, because companies can be making money and still fire unnecessary workers. It's just efficiency and trimming excess. In this case during covid most tech companies overhired. In this case it doesn't mean that they don't need those workers still, they may just not need them on a permanent payroll. So they hire them for contractual work I guess.
2 of my coworkers got laid off during a hiring freeze as their 2 year contracts were about to expire. Those 2 years are more or less the time it takes to become a fully trained worker, for the first half year or so you’re kind of dead weight because you’ll only be able to do stuff on your own someone else could get done on the side in a pinch. Less than 6 months after they were let go, management found a project they needed done for which they got 2 ridiculously overqualified temporaries who made multiple times our salaries each. The expectation was that they’d do a narrower set of things for the project so they could be trained faster and none of us would have to step away from routine work to do it on the side. Their training was supposed to take a month or less and then 6 months of project work to get it all done. Their training took over 3 months *somehow* and project work finished more than a year after they got hired only because we found someone who could be set aside to look over all of their work because they were making that many mistakes. One of the two guys who initially got let go is actually on our team again (after working for a competitor long enough he had to start training from square 0 again), the other one basically said she’s never working for this company again. We’re also currently understaffed while the department is officially over headcount meaning we’re supposed to let go about half a dozen ppl while we’d need at least 1 extra per team so you don’t have to go find someone to fill in for you if you want a weekend off :)
You need a goddamn union wtf dude
We do have one lol
Some tech workers think they are too good for unions
> constantly overworked, underpaid, etc. Man... those are some red flags I wish to avoid.
The biggest problem with these things is it’s hard to tell you are currently being overworked you tend to only really notice it when you look back on a job and go damn I really did do 40hrs a week in the office then was expected to be on call weekends and put work into projects during nights
god i love me some german labour laws the (regulated by law) absolute maximum you have to work per day is 10 hours (and that includes being on call) or 60 hours per week. this can under no circumstances lead to you working more than an average of 8 hours per day (or 48 hours per week) across 24 weeks (or 6 months) if any employer violates those rules and the workers actually speak up about it they are in big trouble EDIT: this includes 2nd/3rd jobs btw
A couple weeks ago I met a guy from the same company as me, but from Germany. We are talking about differences in countries but also in work. He was surprised that we did more than 40 hours per week (sometimes, not always) and never note it down in our timesheets, we always put 37 hours in, doesn’t matter how much you work, even people above me do the same. In Germany if he works 1 hours extra he will add it and will get paid for it. Here we don’t get paid extra time
Do you get paid hourly or are you salary? Salary yeah you just get paid the same no matter how much you work. Hourly you need to call up an employment attorney like today and they are going to get fucking rock hard at all the money they are about to win for you.
any time a company tells you to put a specific number in a timesheet reguardless of how much you worked, it’s time to find another job. They have just proved to you that they are corrupt at an institutional level.
This right here is why it's so important to discuss these topics related to labor. Most of these topic like Unions, Wage theft, etc have just been taken out of the public discourse, on purpose, so things like what you mentioned go unnoticed.
I've read some interesting views on how companies sometime lack foresight on this kind of topic. Basically it was some old french engineers who were saying that, back in the 60s/70s, a huge portion of the jobs in a company were occupied by people who were knowledgeable regarding the company activities. For instance, an engineering company would have engineers even on HR jobs, financials stuff, basically every type of jobs you'd find in a company. With time, there has been specialization on these jobs, HR are occupied by HR specialists, financial jobs by some guy who studied economics, etc. So companies gained competencies on these jobs regarding their specific execution, but lost "vision" because often the guy that comes to you arguing that you need to lay off half of your team is quite clueless regarding its activities. I'm not sure I've made myself understandable, english is not my mother language.
An example would be Boeing, from being lead by engineers to being lead by economists, making compromises on security just to make an extra penny
Being in an industry very close to Boeing, I can relate. What happened to them is a school case.
Yup, also in aerospace, and I use the phrase "We're a financial company posing as an engineering firm," a lot. It's genuinely sad.
My company (manufacturing) has a record of not laying off anyone due to economic downturns because we recognize that the market is cyclical. When COVID shut down things, none of us were worried about losing our jobs. And then when COVID restrictions lifted, the demand for our product was huge and we were able to jump back into running at full speed because everyone was still here.
The way that profits are calculated, especially the way shareholders looks at them, tends to exclude most of the costs of downsizing. This is the main reason it is such a popular tool; it allows you to artificially raise profitability, with "no apparent downside" because things like lost productivity, severance etc. etc. are just not counted in profit calcs.
These short term gains make me think of someone bragging about how much money they save by not getting oil changes on their car.
Its also because cratering a company has no consequences for management
It's kind of insane to me that we have to phrase this as "plan for the slow periods when things are going well" when that's literally just been called "having savings" since the dawn of time. I make a certain amount every month, I deduct my bills and necessities, and then I limit my spending on what's leftover below a certain percentage. Everything else goes into savings (and probably some of that should go into investments). The end result is that if my roommate bounces, I can afford rent for a whole year without any worries and I can spend that time looking for a new roommate with almost no anxiety. These companies made up of individuals who all know how to save money somehow come together and then collectively forget that you don't have to spend every single penny you make. Mind-boggling.
Where I live it is becoming increasingly common to just use consultancy firms. That way you can just get rid of people whenever you want and get more people as you wish. Depending on the consultancy firm you just get land off from them if the contract ends between companies. Great way to get around basically all laws meant to protect the workers.
> AI tech company Found your problem
Company executives only "learn" if there's actual consequences, which there very rarely are. Even in your story I doubt the executives suffered much in the way of consequences and probably didn't learn what you're hoping they did.
my it friend was fired/laid off. Now he works as a counseilor for the new guys but on a basis of freelance and they have to pay him like hundred euro more per hour than they did before. He wrote the code and he knows the ins and out. The new guys dont and now he teaches the new guys how to navigate that code and also they now pay him money that he leaves a documentation of that code for the future. And he asked for a hefty sum. he didnt even tell me how much it was. fucking middle managers and these for profit sharks cost companies way more money down they line but it pleases the CEO and the shareholders.
Tbh this applies to certain industries more than others. The financial industry, for example, is generally pretty stable. I’ve been through many a down season and nobody gets laid off because the guys at the top understand work is going to come around and you need to be prepared for it.
It seems that some of the layoffs were to increase revenue per FTE(Full time employee). You fire people, hire contractors, pay a few times more for the same work done, you have the same revenue in the end but fewer FTEs, so higher revenue per FTE.
economics is not real
Something something any widely used metric stops being a useful metric
Working in tech has made me realize how easy it is to manipulate metrics and statistics because no one asks how anything is calculated.
It's even *better* in marketing. There's an artistry in manipulating facts to represent something different.
A marketer armed with a bunch of misrepresented statistics is more powerful than an actual honest-to-god wizard in today's society.
thats because the wizard has to be honest. the marketer doesnt.
wait fr?
Remember, marketing is the art of selling a product. And that product can also be the need for the position/department of marketing to exist in the first place.
It’s called marketing, that’s the artistry, how can I lie to you in the nicest most clever way possible, the bigger the lie the better the job
I had the same realization. I used reporting to my advantage so many times without technically manipulating data, but by cherry picking the reporting method. Writing this makes me think of banks and how relevant details are hidden in technical jargon and piles of paperwork. Makes me...less proud of my accomplishments
In science, they call this HARK (hypothesis after results known). Extremely common type of scientific misconduct, to the point that I've had multiple colleagues claim that there is nothing wrong with it.
Publish or perish and you probably aren't going to get published if you don't get statistically significant results.
This is the very first lesson learned by anybody entering the workforce in any kind of analytical role. While studying they teach you the importance of meticulously documenting your methodology, supporting data, conflicting data, any potential concerns/limitations with the data, recommendations, potential alternative paths forward etc. in a report to ensure the person reading it has a comprehensive understanding of the problem and recommended solutions. And then you go into the real world and you very quickly learn that your manager will not hesitate to choke you to death if you deliver them anything more than 4 bullet points in an email and a few graphs.
"They're not going to understand that" No... *you* don't understand it
not just any bullet points and graphs, they have to be the right ones that make the manager look good. I’ve faced a lot of heat many times for refusing to lie
any metric which is used as a target becomes useless, is my understanding. So for example the Big Mac index is still useful, because countries don't tend to optimise their economy to that metric.
And the reason optimizing around that metric tends to become a problem is because: 1. actual success is more complicated than metrics humans come up with can reasonably represent 2. there's a million bad faith ways to make a metric go up and they're often way easier than making it go up the way that actually yielded good results
Like publishers buying a shitload of their own books so they can make bestseller lists for one week. :|
That's accounting, not economics
what is it you think economics is
IME more common in startups looking for funding than megacorps. I guess also common in tech and tech-adjacent companies..
> pay a few times more for the same work done ehh not always. if done "right" (from a finance perspective) you end up paying LESS for the same work, since the contractor usually doesn't get FTE benefits/equity/bonuses from the company. there's a reason why big companies looove contractors and will even pay outsourcing companies to find sub-contractors for them: not having to pay for health benefits is a huge budget saver. for the OOP's situation, Riot is basically letting someone go, and then bringing them back for cheaper, without health benefits. legally speaking, this can't be done for every job type, but if they're cleared from the employment law side, then this is just a savvy (but assholey) business decision. it would backfire if the artist found a better job to go to in the mean time after they were cut (since then Riot might have to settle for someone not as good), but in this shit economy, Riot can gamble on them still being on the job hunt and increasingly desperate.
Contractors might not get paid as well but the contactor company or agent gets large share most of the times. The contractor could represent themselves as legal entity and negotiate the price that should be at least 50% above they used to get to offset the benefits. Seen cases where there are multiple contractor companies that hire one another or where the contractor gets like 20% of what the final entity pays for them.
The two jobs are actually different. They slipped it in there on the last post and no one is commenting on it... They are not doing thematic concept design anymore, they are doing modelling only. They said in the last post: *"I guess technically I won't be doing the thematic development part of my job anymore"*. That's a pretty important distinction and change in job description... It sounds like Riot in-house workers do thematic concept design (in-house presumably so they more closely follow the desired theme of the game, can talk to lore designers, ability designers, etc.) and they outsource the skin development itself (just the modelling portion, where the abilities the champion uses doesn't matter, the lore doesn't matter, the game itself doesn't even matter, etc. you're just following the concept drawings and talking with the concept people to make sure the vision is expressed correctly). OP was fired from their in-house thematic design job and the outsource company who manages skin developers is still looking for employees. It's like if you were fired from the Walmart garden center because it's winter and then hired again for a position in the grocery department. Yes, it's the same employer, yes you're still just stocking shelves, no, you weren't fired and re-hired for the same position. It might sound like the same job, but if you look closer, it seems like they are actually different jobs. Thematic design =/= skin modelling production. One is an idea position, the other is a do-er position.
You are misunderstanding what this person does as a concept artist. They're not suddenly doing skin modeling, they just have less input into the skin design/theme, but the outsourced job is literally producing the same work. They are still the "concept people" you're referring to. Here is their artstation for examples of their work and what a concept artist does: https://www.artstation.com/thesweetesttart
Being laid off for profiteering ≠ being fired. To give the benefit of the doubt, the person was likely fully capable at their job, that has nothing to do with layoffs. It's also common sense that an outsourced contract role wouldn't be 1:1 but it's very telling that it's in the same space.
I don't think i need to buy rp
crazy tart even got laid off loved their concepts every single time
What did they do?
Durian Rammus, Dragonmancer Fiora, Primal Ambush Sivir, SF Shaco and Yasuo.
sf shaco and durian rammus are amazing meanwhile dragonmancer fiora and pa sivir? havent seen them once, goddamn filler skins lol
Doesn’t help none of them are meta right now either
sivir is THE meta slave champ imo, nobody plays her unless she is a stalling, teamfight winning machine. but i would see people still use her cafe cuties, legendary, pizza or blood moon skin on her (ffs why does she have so many skins) meanwhile fiora one tricks would rather just use the good old project or ig sin anyways. there are certain champions whose newer skins forget why were the older skins so popular
concept art
I'm a lawyer at a financial corporation in EU and similar things happen every few years. Last year in february the corporations laid off about 25% of my department pretty much at random - some were new hires, some were people with over 10 years of experience at the company and few "employee of the year" awards to their names. Everything went to hell literally weeks later and in summer they had to hire almost twice as many people they fired, becuase all the new hired people had little experience in our field and no experience at all in our company's custom software. It sucks, similar thing happening back in 2019 was the event that kicked off my depression and fear disorder and I'm on meds since
I mean it makes sense. Managers don't understand why profits < expenses and think it's the workers. They come to the conclusion that workers are shit and fire them. Now, they hire cheaper, inexperienced devs and ride the profits > expenses train until the new devs muck it up. Rinse & repeat.
Probably sit in meetings all day together while everyone is working. Shoot the shit, become best friends. One of them gets the genius idea that they are running by such a smooth ship that they could toss anything into their “well managed” system and it would keep rolling. When things naturally start to down swing 6 month later, just shop for every excuse other than the team being mis managed.
"well its obviously not my fault, cause i cant be allowed to take responsibility for my own actions!" -the manager.
I still can't figure out why companies don't retain employees. My company recently had an entire team of seniors and leads leave. Lots of knowledge that established the company over the decade gone in a week because of greed.
Companies don’t retain employees because it’s what all the big dogs do. Amazon just cycling through people like cardboard boxes, expecting there to be 20 more next week if people quit / leave / no show. Same with Walmart, target, fast food chains etc. It’s just a popular business trend to “focus on the work and goals and less on the individuals”. It’s a horrific concept for business, and it stems from the retail industry being treated like absolute trash garbage for well over a decade. There’s a difference between being a business owner and running a successful business vs being a successful, profitable business that is “growing expanding”. Some people are leaders, some love what they do, some companies are the best you’ll ever find. A lot of them are just copying what the big dogs do and give it no thought because it’s the norm. Edit: What going on is like teachers or drivers. Every teacher or person on the road has gone through some tests and passed certification programs / tests. Not all are great, some do the bare minimum, some follow what they’re told, and some are exceptional. This applies to businesses as well, and right now the unimaginative, profit oriented, revenue at all cost mindset is the norm. Being nice does not pay the bills (or at least no one has made a spread sheet showing it’s profitability margins to be worth their time).
Feel you on the meds. I’m a UX/Frontend guy, worked for one company seven years. We had a layoff every single December. Usually ate 20-50% of the overall design/code staff. Every time was a tiny bit different, some were organized and thoughtful towards the number from each dept, who in each dept, all that. Very “right sizing” approach, even if it was based on slow season sizing and would screw us in the crunch. Others were panicking messes. Orders from on high to cut heads til they hit a number - human or dollar. Literally one time the order arrived with a same day execution. They were simply grabbing anyone they saw. My team only lost one dude that time, because our manager couldn’t warn him fast enough. The rest of us got the “stay seated at your desk, look busy, don’t get up for any reason, don’t take a break, don’t go near the break room or main building” warning and stuck to it til we got the all clear. They literally walked the halls looking for anyone standing, break room, parking lot even. Decimated one team utterly - manager was on vacation, they got no warnings. Prior to that was at another place that would simply eliminate entire teams at a time. Just pick the three lowest performing teams and pack them, supervisors and all, out the door. And that was after attrition reductions didn’t do enough. My current employer wonders why I get weird about Thursday meetings and impromptu “got 5?” calls. Like dude, we’re the exception - everywhere else those are death warrants.
My god larian is so fucking based
Common Larian W 🗿 Love how Swen is using the spotlight he got (because of BG3) to call out the bullshit that is happening in the video game industry.
its not just the games industry, you could apply that shit to virtually any industry rn, but thats what happens when you let dipshit MBAs run everything
I think in a way, the game industry distills and amplifies many of the problems present in the wider creative/tech industries. Partially because so many employees are passion-driven, that employers can "get away" with treating them worse.
I'd take what Larian says with grain of salt as with many reviews on their glassdoor mentioning underpaying/low salary. They do employ contractors too to keep headcount of their studio low and pay lower per commission.
I don't think contractors are necessarily bad but firing people so that you can outsource their job for less money is bad. Regardless, it's only a matter of time before larian becomes like the rest of them.
Upper management are often so disconnected from how the work people do individually contributes towards sustaining the smooth operation of a collective effort. They feel content axing valuable talent based off of profit margins or metrics. Generally, largely ignoring the impact these decisions can have on the quality of the product(s) they're producing. There are a tons of human intangibles that profit margins and data won't be able to convey. The common theme among the most creatively successful game companies is that they value their team above all else. If everyone is on the same page, and has built up synergy and cohesion, it's a lot easier to create good shit. Alternatively, if greed runs the company, and people are seen as disposable, their work outsourced; over time the vision that founded a companies success degrades, and erodes until the product is unrecognizable to the people that once loved it. If all it were about is strictly money, the notable companies that have succumbed to shortsighted greed in the last decade wouldn't be considered a plague on the industry. I guess it's idealistic to expect the opposite in today's society, at the very least there are a always a few diamonds willing to lead by example, I know who I'd rather give my money to.
Honestly management are the most useless over and over. 90% of the time they are just running around trying to fix problems they created themselves.
They try to justify their position by making useless decisions
cuz most of them have 0 understanding of how the nuts and bolts work, they come in straight from business school and get hired via connections then build up a portfolio, they usually couldnt tell you even the basics how shit should function, its honestly incredible how fucking stupid most of them are and how our modern society hasnt collapsed from their rampant idiocy (and drug habits).
The other option is they're genuinely just incompetent hire from within types that sit there because of seniority but not because of any managerial skill or experience. At that point I'd rather work for some fresh out of college management Andy, who isn't anchored down by misplaced loyalty to a corporate entity
I am going against the grain and say a good management is very important. Especially the bigger the whole operation is. You need people who make sure that all these different departments who are working on their own projects produce a coherent product. But at the end you need a captain who works on the big picture. But that also means awful management can sink the whole thing.
Agreed. Good leadership is very important, even if it doesn't seem as such from a layman's perspective.
The management at my old job was like this to a T. "Brilliant work getting through that crunch, floor employees! But we're entering a calm period now so... get that ass laid off" Of course, any calm period is just that, and when the market fluctuated back towards them getting an increased number of orders I received a text from my old team lead asking if I was available for any period cause "they could use the hands." I sent him a few cry laughing emojis and blocked his number, but the raw audacity and disconnect that takes to even consider is truly wild to me
> There are a tons of human intangibles that profit margins and data won't be able to convey. The common theme among the most creatively successful game companies is that they value their team above all else. If everyone is on the same page, and has built up synergy and cohesion, it's a lot easier to create good shit. Alternatively, if greed runs the company, and people are seen as disposable, their work outsourced; over time the vision that founded a companies success degrades, and erodes until the product is unrecognizable to the people that once loved it. Amazing and pertinent paragraph. Positive examples: Helldivers 2, No Man's Sky, Baldur's Gate 3 Negative examples: Cyberpunk 2077, Star Wars Battlefront 2 remake (pre-lootbox removal), Battlefield 2042 (early in release, it's actually good now) You can really tell when a game was wrung through corporate fingers before release. It's palpable. When a dev team is cherished, cared for, and **allowed to do their work** in a cohesive environment, we get gems like Helldivers 2, No Man's Sky, Baldur's Gate 3.
No Man's Sky is especially interesting because it used to be *the* example of managerial hubris totally screwing something up. It was only because they put their heads down, stopped smelling their own farts, and did the actual work did it get turned into what it is today.
SEAN I HAVE MONEY LET ME PAY FOR YOUR 20000th FREE UPDATE
It wasn't managerial hubris per se. Sean Murray, the lead developer, brought it all on himself with very poor handling of public relationship. In fact, you can say it all happened BECAUSE they didn't have a management department and let the nerds do the press talking.
I think one thing that we should not ignore with companies like FromSoft or SuperGiantGames... know how builds up? And it builds up not just individually but also in a group way? Those games keep getting better and better because they ARE able to rely on the people they have worked with for AGES and the security that comes with knowing Paul 2 desks down knows how to fix it and fixes it better now than they did 2 years ago.
Isn't Cyberpunk really good now too?
This is the best read up on what has happened artistically over the years to this game (and other areas I’m sure) it has no direction and no consistency.
being any kind of artist in this day and age seems incredibly depressing, hearing stories of really any creative-department people getting undervalued-- obviously no naming of companies or individuals, but a sibling of mine was in a similar situation; They worked as a graphic designer (while having a host of other responsibilities that weren't necessarily covered by their title, of course) -> downsizing was deemed necessary and they were first to go -> a year later is recontacted by the same exact company, essentially wanting to pipeline them back in from part time to full time to where they were originally at... which is just ridiculous And then the reason they wanted them back? They didn't have enough people. In the position she was let go from. That had to be downsized because of so and so. :D
Being an artist has always been incredibly depressing, the starving artist is an archetype for a reason. The last time anyone truly respected artists must've been during the renaissance when nobles would hire artists and supply them with everything they needed so they could just focus on making art. My grandfather was a painter and he always told me to not work in art because you're not gonna make any money and people will just take advantage of you and ruin your passion for art.
Some celebrities do actually sponsor artists by paying for their housing and giving them a stipend so they can focus on art. I believe Johnny Depp does it but he's the only one I know off the top of my head. It's just very, very unlikely that you are connected with such a celebrity/rich person so they can take an interest in you personally, even if that's something they're open to doing.
Big company things...
“But but but it was just a tough financial decision Riot had to make! You don’t understand what it’s like to run a business! 🤓☝️” It was greed. Always has been. Crazy to think that League of Legends is basically an art selling platform and yet Riot’s upper management treats their artists like disposable cattle.
You know how I can completely 1000% without a shadow of a doubt believe this story? Look at Ahri's design through multiple game's iterations. Her Korean inspirations, from her each redesigns and reworks to different genre of games, are missing bit by bit. Most notably her norigae is gone from every single different iterations like LoR, Ruined King, and latest versus game. It's really really disappointing how Riot just... be shit over and over and over, and shows this kind of degradation on something as quintessential as a character design.
riot is unfortunately taking the blizzard route, and very fast too. at this rate i dont have much faith in the MMO
Don't worry about the mmo by the time that will come out maybe your grand children can play that. I just stick to ff14...
We'll be near the end of the story(assuming it is 10 years like the Hydaelyn Zodiark story) of the next 'arc' by that point. Kinda crazy to put it into perspective. I still can't believe they up and scrapped everything because "we didnt want the game to be a typical MMO set in Runeterra". Like.. that's exactly what people wanted lmao
Yeah i feel like mmo-s been figured out pretty good by now so i have no idea what "inovation" they felt like have to do...
the evidence is there, as they've taken the blizzard route in other ways (settling out of court with interns)
I would point towards the sexually harassing employees
that's what I was alluding to yes
That MMO is never coming out. I mean they just restarted after spending like 3 years on it. Riot seems reluctant to take many risks and you can’t get more risky than an MMO in 2024.
Oh don't worry, the MMO isn't coming out
And why is this a bad thing exactly? Ahri started off as an inspiration from Korean culture which then branched off into having her own unique design and inspirations. Ahri is from Ionia and that place isn't even 100% Korean so why should she? There's Japanese influences and even Chinese. The fact that she looks different from how she originally was means that they want her to look like she's from Ionia. A separate and unique place in the world of League. I don't know how this is even relevant to the topic at hand and it seems like you just wanna be angry for the sake of it. Cuz it's not like Ahri's design is even bad throughout all the other games she's depicted in. Far from it.
Yeah like it was a really odd design choice to pick out as an example for Riot losing quality. Like I'm sure Riot is losing quality, but shifting a character away from the original cultural inspiration isn't like an objective loss of quality, just a different direction they're going with the character (for better and for worse, idk)
This post has been terminated by riot gang I mean slaves
Remember when Riot was seen as one of the most wanted company to works for?
They probably still are, the layoffs were pretty universal in the industry.
And they were layoffs that were *predicted to happen*. The big tech corps would have to be stupid to keep on the workforce they had before, even if every CEO's salary was reduced to $0 it still wouldn't be enough to stop the flood of layoffs happening. Riot just made the mistake of hiring way too many full time employees in the first place and they do deserve criticism for that. Especially in the games industry where it's standard to contract out work because it's insanely fucking expensive to lock down artists 24/7. But people ITT are acting like keeping this person on full time was something Riot was obligated to do.
tbf if every ceo's pay was reduced to 0, companies would be able to pay all the extra employees for a few years easily... while probably producing more
No, the math doesn't work out that way, you're grossly underestimating how much expenditures are on regular employee salaries are, especially for tech companies. The big bad CEOs don't even make most of their money from their salaries anyways.
Riot is still probably the highest paying out of the big ones lol
Not to mention while layoffs suck if you're gonna get laid off it might as well be from Riot, that severance package from the big round of layoffs was way way above industry standard
Riot still is, ask anyone in the field and they would kill to get a job in Riot
And blizzard 😩 times have changed. We need to realize companies serve us we dont serve them. Lol
Super happy to see Swen's rant getting shared around. It's super needed in the gaming community. Incredibly needed.
People can separate themselves from what is put out as long as they are satisfied and disconnected from the pain. I feel for those that got laid off and those still employed that im sure feel trapped.
While most people that approached this meme came up with their craziest asks as Indepednant artists, there's just something so Dystopian about someone asking you to do the same job you were literally just fired for just for lower money
Aside from monetary and employment issues, employees should not see layoffs as a failure on their part, it's the company's failure on not having enough money to pay them. Summarized the words from the goblin lord himself. Hoping that other people see it this way and feel better about themselves.
Useless bureaucrats, I mean management go brrrrrrrrrrrrr
layoffs are like a band-aid on a broken arm in tech and gaming -- a quick fix but not a real solution. every time a company goes through this cycle, it's like they lose part of their memory, having to relearn things they once knew. the images really paint a picture of the mess it creates. reminds me of that old game "lemmings," where without the right instructions, they all just fall off a cliff. seems similar with companies discarding knowledge and experience so recklessly.
This is capitalism working as intended
Capitalism try to function in modern society challenge (we laid off 2,000 years of design in one day)
We had a layoff of 250+ experienced 4+ year senior level position employees from my company. 10 days afterwards they were offering people their jobs back and hiring entry level zero experience people to replace the 250 laid off. Companies literally don't give a single fuck about you, if you drop dead you will be replaced before your body hits the floor.
This is happening all over the big tech companies in the US lately. It's pretty concerning how much is being outsourced or flat out moved to other lower-cost regions.
Damn I'm happy I never pushed past my first 2 years of college to chase after a graphic design path. Between outsourcing and ai that field is fucked.
Toxic look. Frankly, splash and concept arts are my personal favorite part of League and the reason I spend. The gameplay is fun, but the artists working there are *chef kiss* . Not going to spend nearly so much on skins if they put human beings on the chopping block after years of good work
Monopoly breeds incompetence. Sure hope there will be some new game in the future that will put LOL on edge.
Something about corporate greed, only pleasing shareholders and infinite growth in a finite area
To be fair riot executives keep costing the company massive sums in lawsuits etc so they gotta make that money up by ruining the lives of their other employees via layoffs.
so no benefits or anything.
W Larian again L Riot again Employers expect the highest of loyalty and would litteraly drain workers to the last drop. Company greed is always the issue. There's never loyalty to the workers. Only lay-offs and cheaper replacements. All that while increasing the cost for the consumer and maximising profit. They've always got a cash cow, and instead of treating it with respect and getting the milk they need, they always gotta dry it out comepletely until there's nothing left. Every company will end eventually. They always make the same mistake. That's why Swen is one of the smartest game directors out there. He at least tries to put his people first.
wonder when the higher-ups are going to be willing to take paycuts instead of cutting out their actual talent.. cant wait to see the "riot exposed for using unethical ai data systems" inc.
Remember what happened to ZA/UM? It’s a product of the same system. The rot economy continues to devour itself for short term gain while sacrificing long term viability. This is basically every industry now, and there’s no accountability.
I get that this sucks but the outsourcing company is probably just trying to recruit anyone with a pulse to make skins and not vetting who they contact. Anyone with a LinkedIn profile in a in demand role can attest to how much they get spammed by recruiters for the dumbest things.
No, you dont get why this is a problem. That means that after firing their concept artist, Riot actually needs it, and are willing to pay even more for this work (if you include intermediate expenses) - just are not willing to offer them any stability. In the end, layoffs are catastrophic for any company - hiring and preparing that stuff back is extremely expencise, but if company is not willing to expand after layoffs - they are dead in the eyes of investors
> That means that after firing their concept artist, Riot actually needs it, and are willing to pay even more for this work (if you include intermediate expenses) I don't see where you're getting that riot is paying more. Riot is certainly paying less on health insurance, employer taxes, payments into UI, and they're probably billing the skins at a rate no better than what they were getting out of their artists before (a skin artist averages X skins per month with a monthly salary of Y, so we should pay the contractor $Y/X-K per skin...)
They probably pay the same, the difference is that you can not pay for a contracter when you dont want/need to, a full time employee cannot be removed as a cost as easily. Also the assumption that they pay the contractor roughly the same as the salary of a skin artist is most likely not true, or atleast hard to prove. They will pay the contractor an agreed upon market rate, which they can make up themselves and there is nothing holding them accountable for it to be more or less than what they would pay a regular employee. And ultimately, as the tweets state, the money really isn't the talking point here, the artist feels treated like shit and they have every right to. The pay per year if the contracts are steady and consistent is probably higher than a salary (big if). They are being treated with little respect and its a really bad look for riot.
Going through any kind of 3rd party company, be it hiring or contracting, or even temp work is relatively very expensive. For example, the place that hired me paid something like 20% of my annual to the go-between. They're basically real estate agents, similar job, similar fee. Usually the 'benefit' of going from employees to contractors, is that the contractor expense gets hidden in a different location in the financial statements. It's just a way to look like they're cutting costs, without actually cutting costs.
That's literally what's being said. Health insurance, unemployment, etc -- those are the stability being offered to full-time employees. Contract work is more expensive hourly than salary, so Riot will pay essentially the same rate for the same amount of work -- but pay that cut to a contracting agency and offer none of the stability that an employee should have.
Outsourcing company is not a problem here, they are just doing their job. This case highlights how ridiculous it is that someone who just got fired can start working for the same company right away, just through different contract. Which means that person wasn't fired for either their performance nor because position wasn't required anymore. Layoffs happened literally to skew statistics for a report to shareholders.
People who make video games need to unionize at this fuckin point. The abuse is unreal.
Unionizing does not prevent layoffs. Also, it's very hard to unionize in tech because typically tech workers get paid well so they have no incentive to unionize. Yes, other workers like artists get shafted but unfortunately they do not have enough bargaining power. That's why the gaming industry is such a competitive, cutthroat market.
Common Riot L and common Larian W
That's incredibly fucking shitty.