this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
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I'm not the person you replied to at any point in the thread, and I agree that there is potential for a slippery slope in a similar way it happens with tipping culture.
But my understanding of the original comment was that workers should also get a share of profit after the game is released, with no changes to the salary they received during the production stage which is just covering for labor as it happens everywhere else. Upfront payment and royalties, proportional to profit. (This type of arrangement is unusual but exists, or used to exist, in publishing, for both authors and illustrators).
The idea wasn't to change it one for the other but hypothetically add it, but we know greed won't allow that to happen, which is used as a moral point for piracy: you are not hurting the people who did the hard work at all
But this just isn't how it works. These people aren't paid minimum wage. This will definitely be played in salary negotiation as part of the compensation and will almost certainly result in less base salary.
So now the studio is shifting some risk onto the workers.
We are not talking about what the most realistic case scenario would be if something like royalties were implemented. Of course companies will find ways to screw their workers, for example, with speculative profit as part of payment etc etc. I'm with you in that yes that's what's most likely to happen if it were applied in our society in this day and age and in some countries it would go worse than in others. We get that.
The whole point of this comment thread was what isn't happening, therefore, which morals or ethical considerations one doesn't need to mind because of that. It's not that "this payment style would be better if implemented", rather, " if payment worked that way, pirating would be harmful to the workers"