In an interview with Washington Post Live, Reggie Fils-Aime —the former boss of Nintendo America— and a veteran of the video games industry spoke about the current events regarding Raven Software and Activision Blizzard. Raven Software QA workers made history just yesterday, after becoming the first official major video game union in the US.
Related: Saudi Arabia acquired a 5.01% stake in Nintendo
Fils-Aime was asked about his thought on unions and he responded “They’re neither good nor bad”, and added leaders should always address what the employees want and expect these kinds of challenges and issues.
“Unions aren’t a good or bad thing”
The former Nintendo boss initially said, “As a leader, you need to look hard and if this is what your employees want, you need to address that and embrace it and move forward.” then added the following lines to his statement:
“I’ve worked in industries that have had high levels of unionization.This is not a good or bad thing. It is a situation that as a leader, as an executive, you need to manage just like any other challenge, issue, or opportunity that you face.”
While the former Nintendo boss has a positive attitude toward unionizing in the video games industry, Nintendo isn’t exactly known for showing a similar attitude to employee demands. Just about a month ago, there’s been multiple reports coming from Nintendo workers, in which they claimed they are being treated poorly, and another employee claimed they were fired after talking about unionizing, per Kotaku’s piece.
Either way, it’s nice to see a well-known name in the industry speaking openly about the issue and voicing a clear and strong opinion.
