to 'have your company stolen from you' you first have to own the company. you have to be ownership. you have to be, dare I say, part of the ownership class. the class that owns companies. trying to remember what that class is called!
"mr storylets"
- he/him
- brunodias.dev/
writer (derogatory). lead designer on Fallen London.
http://twitter.com/notbrunoagain
THESE POSTS ARE PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE POSTS OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE POSTS.
Bluesky
brunodias.bsky.social
Letterboxd
letterboxd.com/notbrunoagain/Backloggd
www.backloggd.com/u/notbrunoagain/You must log in to comment.
in reply to @bruno's post:
owning a company does not make one a member of the bourgeoisie for the same reason owning a nice car and a big television doesn't make one rich. there's power and there's systemic power and i've known plenty of broke queer people who started companies that tanked, or worse, got successful enough to be nuked from orbit and cannibalized by bigger companies with scummier business practices. there are actually, like, degrees of difference here beyond simply "owning" and "not owning"
Can I check that you have the context of what I'm annoyed about in this post?
I'm reacting to Robert Kurvitz trying to build a narrative that he's a 'worker' who is being alienated from his labor by evil capitalists when in reality he's someone who made quite a lot of money off very successful IP that a lot of other people's labor went into – people who never saw a lick of equity in that company or in that IP. And it's frustrating, to me, to see people use this very nonsensical narrative he's spinning to minimize the labor issues at play that are really widespread in the games industry.
I'm definitely not trying to claim that anyone who, like, owns an etsy store or something is some evil capitalist who wields vast systemic power. But Kurvitz clearly has that kind of systemic power and access; he's been able to access capital to start fairly large studios not once but twice at this point, in spite of how he got screwed over by his business partners. It feels like people want to impose some kind of ownership-labor dispute narrative on a dispute (between Kurvitz and the other shareholders) that is very clearly not that.
I daresay, Kender was the one with the power/connections and access. Kurvitz basically deferred to him in all such matters (silly), and that was essentially when the studio numbered in the couple of dozen people.
What he's started with the Chinese seed capital is highly unclear, I know next to nothing about it, personally.
Also, according to him, the very reason he was fired was because he wanted access, which he didn't really have. I'd imagine even a minority shareholder like him would have access to all of this by default, but this raises the question of whether all this info was public. Maybe it wasn't, if he had to expressly request it.
The most glaring labour issue this whole shitshow brings up to me is how the Final Cut was scheduled and executed, on the heels of the terrible crunch they did to release DE. Also, how much of that crunch was avoidable in the first place with better production practices. Haavel was nominally a producer, but I honestly don't see him being up to the job.
"I'm not owner! I'm not owner!", I continue to insist as I slowly shrink and transform into a corn cob.
If I wanted the public on my side I would simply not release completely deranged statements and be a giant shitbag to my workers
sadly it seems to me like The Public reads this stuff very differently from basically anyone who has been inside a game production!