I'm not saying the games industry isn't terrible, its probably one of the worst industries to work in. I don't think unions in the games industry would change a damn thing except reducing net efficiency, adding 1-2 years to every dev cycle without much gain for really anyone.
I personally think, with the exception of those explicitly dedicated to violence or war, American-style unions are the most evil organizations on the planet. If someone paid me to invent a social structure with worse all-around incentives, I probably couldn't do it.
If your unions turn out to be evil, then organize them differently. What will however not work is hoping that governments and industries will protect the rights of employees and workers without them somehow organizing.
Police and teacher unions are great for their members (protecting the incompetents, make-work); so are guilds like AMA (artificially limiting the supply of doctors, including qualified immigrants) but terrible for society.
The general pattern is that unions are parasites, so they can only go 2 ways - they can make the host weaker or kill it off; or if the host itself has captive audience (e.g. taxpayers) they just make it worse for everyone on average, while transfering some of the remaining reduced pie to their members. Note how much teacher unions hate private and charter schools - they really don't want people to be able to escape the system, it would interfere with milking the taxpayers with nothing to show for it.
did you mean reducing unpaid overtime and crunch mode death marches?
The cost to deliver your product with employees that work 40 hr weeks, normal PTO, and limiting your “crunch” to 2-3 sprints a year is the cost of doing business.
What does the games industry look like if it takes 1-2 more years to create the same products and with significantly less people?
Where do all the formerly employed QA testers, developers, project managers, etc. go? Start their own business? With what capital? Do they have to pay union rates and fees too? If so, how would it not be somewhere around 5 years before they can make a game? Thats an unsustainable model for anyone but the largest most profitable corps.
Healthier. An industry where people can work for a career instead of a 3-5 year stint in their 20s and then quit for something resembling a sane work life balance.
We have to take a step back here. If the games industry can’t exist without mountains of unpaid labor then we already can’t afford it. The idea that devs and artists should apparently just volunteer the extra 40 hours for the benefit of daddy corporate is insane. And the fact that one of the only paths to getting paid fairly is forming a union is total failure of our existing labor laws. Something something wage theft outweighs all other theft combined.
These kinds of things don’t and shouldn’t need a union but it’s the only tool available when your government fails you (or let’s be honest captured by corporate interests). I guaran-fucking-tee you that eliminating the overtime exemption would overnight kill the desire to these workers to unionize.