“I think this industry is over”: not quite Disco Elysium Summer Eternal studio on the chances of improving the situation for game developers

It’s been a pretty depressing year for the gaming industry, with more layoffs and cutbacks than anyone can remotely justify, while corporate dragonflies continue to take home huge compensation packages or roll on golden parachutes. Developers are trying to counter this wave of misfortune as much as they can, but it is a hard task, as the developers from the not quite successor to Disco Elysium, the Summer Eternal studio, know perfectly well.

When announcing the formation of the collective, the group made it clear that they believe it will not be a perfect solution to all the problems the gaming industry is currently causing for game developers, but rather something that will have to try and exist as best as possible. this is possible within the established system. With this in mind, I recently asked some of the creators of Summer Eternal what they think about the chances that the gaming industry can actually be changed to provide developers with a better future than our current, dismal status quo, as part of the interview you conducted I can read the main excerpt here.

“The strikes and pickets we are currently seeing at Ubisoft headquarters are the first step towards more power for workers in the industry,” Aleksandar Gavrilović, who played a huge role in developing the structure of Summer Eternal, told me: “I personally attribute to the acceleration view that the only way to achieve better conditions is to enter crises that highlight social contradictions and force us to rebuild the world.

“The last few decades have been still for game developers, and my efforts to unionize had only narrow success (few collective agreements signed locally) because the time was not right. Now, after tens of thousands of layoffs, it seems it’s time for game developers to defend their rights against systemic greed.

“I’m still eagerly awaiting a second crisis that will highlight the biggest structural problem in game development – the fact that one-third of all PC revenues from all developers (from indies to AAA) are funneled into digital fiefdoms, from which Valve is the most egregious example.” , which I can imagine in the near future with more staff, but I lack the imagination to imagine replacing Valve with a community-owned alternative. This ‘winter lock’ won’t fall that easily, but we should at least start openly discussing alternatives.”

Meanwhile, former ZA/UM writer Dora Klindžić said: “It’s true that Summer Eternal won’t fix the gaming industry, although a byproduct of our actions could be a panacea for agriculture, astronomy, faulty bus timetables, fraudulent news targeting your mom , local elections and syphilis. I think this industry is over. But fortunately for everyone, video games are not over.”

For more reflections on the state of the video game industry in 2024, when it seems like the good (great video games), the bad (layoffs and closures), and the ugly (layoffs and closures, too) are flowing down the river of our hobby at a more dizzying volume and faster than ever before, check out this feature.