The McDonald’s coffee story is kinda interesting to bring up here, as it may not make the point you think you are making. It’s important to remember that, at the time, it was standard policy for McDonald’s to be serving hot coffee at ~190 °F. Far hotter than people would serve themselves, and dangerously hot to be handling in general. If I spill my coffee on me at work, I don’t end up with third-degree burns - just a stained shirt.
Not only, in that decade prior McDonald’s had received ~700 reports of people being burned this way.
The lawsuit determined that McDonalds was knowingly serving to people a dangerous product that had the capacity to cause significant, material harm and gave no warning to its inherent danger.
So, to circle back to the comparison here, are video companies creating products they know are addictive to the degree that material harm is caused and no reasonable person would have the wherewithal to foresee those addictive properties unless they were prominently displayed on packaging material prior to their purchase? I don’t think it’s quite like the McDonald’s coffee suit in terms of the intensity of [alleged]harm, but maybe in terms of how [allegedly] widespread it is? There’s more than sufficient academic material that sheds light on the addictive properties of some aspects of implementation of lootboxes and modern gaming rewards.
That being said, it’s foolish the leave this problem to be solved only from the industry or regulation. Shouldn’t it be enough for companies that include lootboxes or whatever somewhat addictive reward system just put a disclaimer or something? Parents shouldn’t be expected to keep up-to-date on reward mechanisms that encourage replay and enable additional monetization, but it should be more apparent if such mechanisms are used so parents can stop and say “Probably don’t want little Timmy playing this game…I remember what happened with the PokeMon cards” etc. etc.
McDonald’s Sources:
https://www.enjuris.com/blog/resources/mcdonalds-hot-coffee-lawsuit/
https://www.rd.com/article/hot-coffee-lawsuit/
https://www.morrisdewett.com/personal-injury-blog/2022/march/mcdonald-s-hot-coffee-case-the-real-story-why-it/
https://www.thedailymeal.com/1393392/infamous-mcdonalds-coffee-story-explained/
EU Commission Report:
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2020/652727/IPOL_STU(2020)652727_EN.pdf
That’s just…that’s just not how this stuff works m8. By and large no, “video game workers” are not gig/contract most of the time. It does happen, especially at lower levels; but it’s foolish to believe anywhere close to the majority of layoffs come from contracts. Those often have built in buy-outs anyways - this is talking about the full time artists/staff/programers who are always working on something
You don’t honestly think Infinity Ward laid people off after not getting the contract for Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010) following Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) do you? Or consider the time between Naughty Dog’s Crash Team Racing (1999) and Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy (2001) - That’s two years. Two years without releasing a game, yet they didn’t lay anyone off?
Buddy, there is always a next project. Project Managers will fill every single artist’s calendar of deliverables for supporting the current game (someone has to make DLC, though it is sometimes outsourced) and any future projects. They also do buy assets and employ contract work in these domains, but again, it’s small in the grand scheme of things.
Programmers will always be optimizing the engine, working on patches for an updated build, or again working on the next game because every business worth it’s salt isn’t going to fire experienced staff in preparation for the next project as demanded by the need for more returns
Unless other economic factors change - a company may choose to engage short term solutions to keep profits looking healthy. If it’s cheaper to lay people off then it is to compete on merit (make a new game) why would you from a business perspective?
These companies are run by bean counters; not artists and devs anymore. Almost every game company was started by people who wanted to make good games, and now these same companies are laying people off regardless of their position in the market.
Idk. Games come out way too frequently to support the idea that these people are getting laid off in between projects. It doesn’t add up. These layoffs are very recent in the grand scheme of the game industry.