Are there any unionized game studios that continue to produce highly acclaimed games?

Bethesda used to make great games, but the last great game they made was Skyrim in 2011, they unionized in 2022, and just recently they had some big layoffs.

CD Projekt made the highly acclaimed Witcher 3 in 2015, Cyberpunk disappointed on it's release in 2020, although it's reviews are mixed. CD Projekt unionized in 2023.

Blizzard have been in decline for a long time, they mostly focus on maintaining the cash cows games WoW and hearthstone. Although Diablo has is mostly well regarded(ignoring immortal). They haven't made any new ambitious game for a while. Their last attempt at making something ambitious was Titan, a cancelled MMO that they worked on for 6 years and supposedly spent $80 million on, cancelled in 2013.

The decline seems to begin well before the unionization, so I wouldn't say it's causal, it's more of a symptom of the company no longer being a place that can foster high functioning teams, where people feel like they are valued and working on something important.

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gandhiandy69 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Patched Cyberpunk is the best game after Elden Ring of the last 10 years

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Lucasoato 24 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

CPR is about to release The Witcher 4, probably it’s going to be a masterpiece.

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an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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glenngillen 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm not sure I follow the correlation or causation logic here. By the evidence presented the conclusion I would draw is it's very difficult to have repeated success. All your stated failures predated any unionisation.

If anything to unionization seems correlated simply to how long a company has been around.

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Fire-Dragon-DoL 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Isn't Activision Blizzard, which implies they make call of duty which is one of the games that makes the most money out there?

I don't like any of that, but they do make money.

As for good games, the last one was warcraft 3 maybe

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WatchDog 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah they still make good money.

I think calling WC3 the last good game is immoderately scornful though.

I regret the time I spent playing WoW, but it was category defining and a cultural phenomenon.

StarCraft 2 was excellent, perhaps to this day the best RTS ever made.

Diablo 3 was highly regarded.

	▲	Fire-Dragon-DoL 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Fair point on WoW and I totally forgot Starcraft 2. Diablo 3 I played extensively, yet I felt somewhat disgusted by the end of it. But it's a product of that time. If I think about the games I played recently, nothing holds except Warcraft 3 with the custom maps. I have little time so I play only what I consider "top" for my taste and drop everything else, even in the "good" category. Due to that my last few years have been games that last me hundreds and hundreds of hours with high satisfaction, or shorter games with high satisfaction. Either way, I would never play diablo 3 the same amount of time I did back in the day, the only reason I played was because of the friends I had

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3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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ViktorRay 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I guess we will find out when GTA 6 comes out as Rockstar has become unionized.

Although actually…Rockstar didn’t become unionized until most of GTA 6 had already been completed. So I guess we’ll find out when their next game comes out.

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johnnyanmac 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't really know what unionization has to do with making good games. We've seen plenty of studios fall from grace with raw, unfettered capitalism.

It ultimately will come down to if it can retain talent and don't do a soft reset every project.

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luqtas 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

the expectation combined with more studios doing stuff, the fact that video-games don't have 100 years (so it's a maturing art form, somehow) and also investment money... i believe there's much more chances of quality declining on companies by the hook of investors or at least less innovation (which seems to drive a bunch of 'unicorns' on this field)? graphics kinda topped by now, there's no more magic on realism/fancy graphics! maybe at some point role-play/storytelling will get more complex/infinite with AI but it's not clear how or if it'll, as we have player driven multi-player video-games for quite a while, like Albion or some much older: https://www.havenandhearth.com/portal/ ... maybe man vs. the machine in a sensible way and not those engines stomping pro-players on Dota

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claytongulick 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't think "raw, unfettered capitalism" and unions are orthogonal.

Actually, quite the opposite - in a free market, labor is free to organize in any way they want. If they have enough leverage over the employer, they'll succeed.

The anti-free market part is the regulatory quagmire that the US has in place for organized labor.

I think that's the thing that most people take umbrage with.

I don't know for sure, but I've heard from knowledgeable folks that it is more effective in Europe.

	▲	TFYS 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		They are a little bit, because collective action is very hard. If everyone chooses to participate and pay the cost of organizing it is worth the cost and a union will happen. But if a number of people choose not to then everything falls apart, as it is no longer worth it for anyone to pay the cost and the union can't function. Often the benefits of a union are also a public good, meaning everyone gets the benefits of a union fighting for better working conditions whether they pay the cost or not. If so, then there's little incentive to pay and the union will have trouble keeping itself alive. Unions need some external extra incentive, like the state forcing them to exist or subsidizing the cost of organizing, to exist long term.

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Camus134 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Cyberpunk may have had a bad launch, but in 2026 it is a great game, and worth playing. One of the best games I've played in years.

	▲	15155 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I remember it being called "Cedarpunk" on account of its rendering issues.