“I think this industry is over”: Disco Elysium spinoff studio Summer Eternal has little idea about the chances of things getting better for game developers

It’s been a pretty depressing year for the gaming industry; There have been more layoffs and cutbacks than anyone could remotely justify, with corporate tycoons still taking home huge severance packages or waltzing in with golden parachutes. Developers are trying to fight back against this wave of misery as best they can, but it’s a difficult task because developers aren’t doing very well. Disco Elysium successor studio Summer Eternal I know very well.

When announcing the formation of the collective, the group made it clear that they believed that this would not be an ideal solution to all the problems the gaming industry currently causes for developers, but rather something that should strive to best exist. may be within the boundaries of the installed system. With this in mind, I recently asked some of Summer Eternal’s developers, as part of an interview, what they thought about the possibility that the gaming industry could actually be transformed to offer developers a brighter future than our current bleak status quo. to be read the main part here.

“The strikes and pickets we see at Ubisoft facilities these days are the first step towards more power for workers in the industry,” said Aleksandar Gavrilovic, who played a major role in creating the structure of Summer Eternal. “I also believe that the only way to achieve better conditions is to highlight the contradictions in society and force us to I attribute it to the accelerator view, which suggests that entering into crises that force the world to re-create.

“The past decades have been quiet for game developers, and my efforts to unionize have had only limited success (a few collective agreements have been signed locally) because it just wasn’t the right time. Now, after tens of thousands of layoffs, it seems the time has come for game developers to defend their rights against systemic greed.” right of defence.

“I’m still looking forward to a second crisis that will shed light on the biggest structural problem in game development; the fact that a third of all PC revenue for all developers (from indies to AAA) flows to digital fiefdoms that include Valve. The most egregious example of this is more workers.” “I can imagine a near future where there will be power, but I don’t have the imagination to imagine replacing Valve with a community-owned alternative. This ‘winter fortress’ won’t fall that easily, but we should at least start openly discussing the alternatives.”

Meanwhile, former ZA/UM writer Dora Klindézcaron;ić said: “It’s true, Summer Eternal won’t fix the gaming industry, but as a byproduct of our operation it will produce everything for agriculture, astronomy, false bus schedules, fake messages targeting your mother, local elections and syphilis.” “We can produce a cure. I think this industry is over, but fortunately video games are not over.”

To think further about the state of the video games industry in 2024, it’s arguably more dizzying than ever before as we feel the good (great video games), the bad (layoffs and shutdowns), and the ugly (also layoffs and shutdowns) flowing down the river. It’s a hobby with a lot of pace, take a look this feature.