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.
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.
Gotta update it for 2026 because millionaires are broke bitches. Basically part of the permanent underclass that will never escape the singularity at this point.
But more seriously, your view of what constitutes the proletariat is skewed off of its contemporary meaning.
If you can't retire today and never work again without having to worry about money, you're part of the proletariat. You don't have to be poor, you just have to be a laborer. That's... almost all of us.
Also, attribution of the quote to Steinbeck would be apocryphal, but the core idea behind the oft-misattributed phrase has never been more true than it is today on social media and internet forums, so I wouldn't say the quote itself is apocryphal.
Worker proportion of total company profits is at a historic low, but “unions bad” is often the most that the HN contingent can come up with. A lot of it is “I once knew a union guy who was lazy” kind of discourse. The consistency of the anti-union takes reads to me like a lot of well-internalized propaganda. Many people have bought the SV exceptionalism lie hook, line, and sinker.
Just because you’re a few more months away from homelessness than somebody working a different job doesn’t make you part of the capital class.