A recent report suggests that nearly half of game industry professionals think workers should unionize, though less believe this will actually happen.

Loading

Loading

This data comes from GDC’s State of the Game Industry 2019 report, which polled nearly 4,000 developers, giving an indicative, but not perfectly accurate, look at how many developers around the world feel about this and many other issues. Specifically, when asked “Do you think that workers in the video game industry should unionize?” 47 percent answered Yes, 26 percent answered Maybe, 16 percent answered No, and 11 percent answered I Don’t Know.However, when asked if they think industry workers will actually unionize, only 21 percent answered Yes, and 39 percent answered Maybe. When given the chance to give written explanations of these views, one respondent wrote “companies will just do what Walmart does when they vote in a union: they close the Walmart/game studio and open a new one a mile down the road across the city limits.”Another respondent wrote “There is too much supply: too many people want into the industry, Those who unionize will be shoved out of the way as companies hire those with fewer demands.”Yet another respondent wrote “When one executive can get a $20 million bonus in exchange for crunching hundreds of people, shipping before the game is ready, then laying off those people, the industry is ripe for self-correction.”The poll also raised questions relating to working overtime and these intense “crunch” periods in the industry. 44 percent of respondents said they spend over 40 hours a week on average working on games, with 21 percent specifically saying they work between 41-45 hours per week on average. 5 percent said they average 51-60 hours a week, while 3 precent said they averaged over 60 hours of work per week on games.Some respondents claimed that, during the heaviest crunch periods, they had worked as much as a 100-hour work week within the last 12 months. 2 percent said they worked 91-100 hours in a single week, while another 2 percent said they worked beyond this.During GDC 2018, pro-union game developers said they were ready to fight for change . Later that year, talks of unionization and fair treatment of employees arose after Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser made comments on 100-hour work weeks. Soon after, Rockstar explicitly told its employees that overtime was optional. This same report also indicated that about 18 percent of game developers are working on next-gen games.

Colin Stevens is a news writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter