Ex-Sony Computer Entertainment Europe president Chris Deering does not believe recent layoffs across the games industry have been a result of corporate greed. Instead, workers who have lost their jobs should “drive an Uber” or “go to the beach for a year” until employment settles.
Deering was a guest on games writer Simon Parkin’s podcast My Perfect Console, where the pair discussed games industry layoffs.
“I don’t think it’s fair to say that the resulting layoffs have been greed,” said Deering. “I always tried to minimise the speed with which we added staff because I always knew there would be a cycle and I didn’t want to end up having the same problems that Sony did in Electronics.”
Totally tracks with the idea that the eventual destination here isn’t capitalism, it’s actually worse than that…it’s fucking neofeudalism.
They don’t want to produce a better product than the competitors, they want to extract rents from anyone unlucky enough to need to use the tools or knowledge in their fiefdom, and they want to use those rents to buy up more tools and knowledge to charge rents on.
I mean, rent seeking is the best case scenario for a capitalist. You just insert yourself in the supply chain without much investment and get money for simply being in the chain.
You’re right that every capitalist wants to be a landlord, but the distinction between the two groups is that capitalists aren’t there yet, and capitalists are largely also subjected to rents by those that already are.
A lot of the recent movements in software has been away from selling products and toward rents (i.e. away from capitalism and toward neofeudalism / technofeudalism). That is why everything has become a subscription service (even things that you used to pay once and be able to use as is until you wanted to “upgrade” like, for instance, Adobe Photoshop).
Doctorow explains the difference in this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-Tl6yIsCoY
I see the nuance you are making now and I agree.
SaaS does feel like technofeudalism where you pay but don’t own shit, a bit like fiefs working in the field and giving wheat in exchange for a land that they don’t own.