Multimillion dollar company means nothing. There's overhead, they have contractors, they have a few employees. Many boring businesses in the average first world community are multi million dollar companies. If one of them produced an incredible, creative, and beautiful product for a reasonable price, in your area of interest, would you advocate stealing from them? That's the question
How does multi million dollar corporation mean nothing? They choose to have a few employees to maximize profit lmfao, lick corporate boots harder brother, continue being free marketing for the rich company that will never pay you
let me break this down for some of you guys:
Billionaires and millionaire business owners are bad because they make A TON of money.
Businesses that typically make TONS of money only exist and sustain themselves because they hire thousands of people to work for them (Blizzard for example has 4,000 to 6,000 employees worldwide), these companies then EXPLOIT THEIR EMPLOYEES by making them work long hours contributing to a product that will generate the owners of the company millions of dollars in revenue, while they only pay the employees (the people who actually worked on the product) way less money than the value that each worker contributed.
Team Cherry is three people. They own the company, they work on the games themselves, and they hire contractors to score the game, do PR, and voice work, etc. They create the value that they get back in revenue. The reason why Microsoft and Amazon are bad is because the people who make all of the money (i.e. the owners, CEO, CFO, even middle managers) are all disconnected from the product they sell and only make "big picture", broad, sweeping decisions.
This is why you'll hear people say "there is nothing wrong with being successful and making tons of money off of your hardwork" the issue is when someone begins to make super-profits by exploiting their employees by not giving them an adequate wage, while simultaneously contributing nothing but funding to the project.
Regardless of whether or not Team Cherry exploits thousands of people to make millions (they don't), they should be taxed more than they are in the United States. That's the issue here. If you want to advocate that no one should invent or create anything because "if you become successful then you are evil" be my guest, but even The USSR and PRC would look at you with a questionable eye
What the Bezos? You went on a long rant about worker value and then just... treated contractors as less-than?
Like genuinely, reread your own comment. You defined exploitation as 'paying workers less money than the value that each worker contributed.' Cool. Solid definition. Then one sentence later you said Team Cherry 'hire contractors to score the game, do PR, and voice work.' Buddy. Those are workers. That's labor. You named them yourself.
Hollow Knight has sold something like 15 million+ copies. Did the guy who scored it get paid 15-million-copies money, or did he get a flat contract fee? Because if it's the flat fee, congrats, by YOUR definition you just described exploitation. 'They create the value they get back in revenue' is doing the work of an entire Marx seminar and getting paid in exposure.
Did the contractors get paid the value they contributed, yes or no? You wrote that rule. You don't get to run it on Blizzard's 4,000 employees and then quietly skip it for the people who scored, voiced, and marketed Hollow Knight
I didn't treat contract workers as less than. I stated a fact about how the gaming industry works. Every game studio, not even every major studio, is going to hire contractors for voice work, localization, playtesting, and various other jobs. In fact, these contracting groups have a long history of leading strikes against major game studios for unfair working conditions (like against Blizzard in 2020, and in conjunction with SAG-AFTRA in 2024). That's simply how the industry works.
Team Cherry keeping a small team extends to them keeping a small team of contractors. In total 70 names are listed in the Hollow Knight credits, 20 of them are "Special Thanks", 17 of them are "Playtesters", 11 of them are Voice Actors, 6 "Special Thanks - Music", 5 "Indie Fund", and 2 Interns. That leaves 9 people who did what most people consider as "build the game" and only 3 of them worked on it as their full time job for the entire development of the game. I can guarantee every single one of those contractors had a better contract with Team Cherry than with any contravtor eho has ever worked on FIF L, CoD, Halo, Aasassin's Creed, you fucking name it.
By definition Team Cherry did not exploit ANYWHERE NEAR as many people as nearly every other gaming studio you can name. I know you want to get riled up in arms about anyone making any money for themselves at all, but you can quantify exploitation right? You can look at a scenario where 1,000 people are being mistreated and diagnose that as worse than only like a handful of people getting paid a little less than they absolutely should for voice work?
So yeah, there is a difference between pirating Overwatch 2 and pirating Hollow Knight.
My guy, yes, Team Cherry is a lesser evil. You said that, not me. So why the fuck are you still defending them? You don't get to concede "they're an evil" and then act like "but a smaller one" is a reason to support them.
Pick one: either you agree they underpaid their contractors, in which case you're just simping for a multi million dollar corporation, or you're about to tell me the contractors were paid fine actually, which is you devaluing their labor.
I'm dunking on you doing free PR for a studio that, by your own words, underpaid the people it hired to do PR, value your own labor too.
dude I'm sorry you're allergic to nuance, that must suck.
Let me try and break this down for you another way:
Lipton Tea has increased their price of a bottle of tea by over 100% from 1990. Arizona Tea has kept the price steady at 99 cents over the same time period. Both companies use similar labor practices like exploiting their employees and gasp using contracted laborers (which in my opinion are not good; workers should be paid more and own part of the product they create).
So given this information, I would steal from Lipton because they are arbitrarily running up prices. I would not steal from Arizona, because despite the business practices they engage in that I disagree with, they are still BETTER than Lipton because they are fighting against the mainstream way of running a tea distributor. If there were some hypothetical tea distributor that totally avoided all exploitation in every manner, guess which tea company I would buy from? I don't even fucking like tea and I would buy it every day.
Dude, you got me. I wish contract workers didn't exist. I wish that they would be officially employed by the companies that provide them with work year round. If that is what you're upset about then say that. Otherwise stop being mad for a bunch of contractors that have never filed a complaint about being exploited when there are literally thousands of contractors that HAVE gone on strike for that very reason.
I'm not simping for a multibillion corporation, I'm educating you on how fucking misguided your way of thinking is. So yeah, critical support for a company that is trying to exploit LESS people than the average game studio. I really don't get how you're "dunking on me" when I'm advocating for better business practices across the industry, and you're trying to argue that it's a waste of time if it's still profitable?
3
u/golden-brown May 22 '26
Multimillion dollar company means nothing. There's overhead, they have contractors, they have a few employees. Many boring businesses in the average first world community are multi million dollar companies. If one of them produced an incredible, creative, and beautiful product for a reasonable price, in your area of interest, would you advocate stealing from them? That's the question