Myriame・．🦂

Drew a little fakemon for a @truegreen7.bsky.social community contest a while back! It was fun to try something different just for fun :)
#fakemon

I really appreciated the opportunity to talk about death in games with Chris! It's a topic I go back to (a few times!) and I have lots of feelings on it, personally and creatively.

You can listen to have an existential crisis in real-time! It's a nice podcast, I promise.

devastated for my colleagues today. they, and we, deserve so, so much better than this.

I’m so sorry Matt. I’ve always enjoyed interviewing with you and wherever you end up to will be incredibly lucky to have you 🖤

Today, IGN Entertainment announced that it would be laying off eight members of the IGN Creators Guild. This is 12% of our bargaining unit, and comes just days after our sister union, the Ziff Davis Creators Guild, underwent similar layoffs impacting 15% of their members. It also comes just months after our multibillion-dollar parent company, Ziff Davis, instituted a company-wide buyout that shrunk our unit numbers, with the express intent of avoiding future layoffs. And it comes just a little over one year after three of our members were laid off almost immediately after our union went public. The company has told us that the reason for this layoff stems from a Ziff Davis-mandate to cut costs despite several quarters in a row of year-over-year revenue increases, to which IGN Entertainment responded by coming for our members' jobs. This is perplexing to us, as we are told again and again that IGN Entertainment has had a tremendously successful year thus far thanks to their hard work. In just the last few months, our members have been absolutely essential to major events and livestreams, including San Diego ComicCon, Summer of Gaming, and IGN Live. Every single person impacted today was involved in and critical to the success of those events. Meanwhile, IGN Entertainment continues to spend money on costly acquisitions, only to turn around and gut those companies in the same way it is cutting away at IGN itself. For instance, last year, it acquired Gamer Network, and almost immediately laid off a number of staff critical to making those sites successful. The company has not responded to the union's questions about whether its budget for future acquisitions is being reconsidered as a cost-saving measure alongside these other apparently necessary personnel cuts. At a time when it is more necessary than ever to support its creators, IGN Entertainment is choosing to eliminate the individuals who ensure IGN remains competitive as generative AI

threatens our reach. We have been told that expert opinion pieces, original interviews, and work that leverages our staff's deep knowledge of gaming, tech, and entertainment are all essential to combating AI summarization and regurgitation of our work. Management has responded by cutting several individuals who do that exact work, as well as others whose job it is to ensure that these written and video pieces are published in a speedy manner — another component of combating AI we're told is critical. This continued cycle of repeated, aggressive cuts to our staff and being asked to do more with less, only for management to continue to spend on new business it isn't interested in sustaining cannot continue. We will enforce our interim agreement that guarantees better severance and other protections to laid off members, as well as demand additional support for those impacted. We will continue to bargain over our first contract with the aim of enshrining even better protections against further layoffs, working conditions continuously degraded by understaffing, and the encroachment of generative AI. And we won't stop fighting to ensure IGN remains the best destination for trustworthy, original, exciting, and creative work covering video games, entertainment, and tech. While IGN Entertainment management may not value us, we value one another and the incredible work we can do together. Behind the articles, videos, social posts, playlists, and maps of IGN are human beings, not just numbers on a spreadsheet to be pushed around when some number at the top isn't big enough. Without us, there is no IGN.

Today, IGN laid off eight extremely valuable members of our union and workforce via directive from our parent company, Ziff Davis. This, after two incredibly successful live events IGN Live and SDCC, and yet another corporate acquisition.

Please take a moment to read and share our full statement:

New spot on Mont-Royal!! “Onigiri Shop” between Clark & Saint-Urbain — they make them all on order and are SO tasty!

(i’ve always wanted piercings but never did because of a real bad experience when i got my lip pierced as a teenager and i am so happy i finally decided to give it a go 🥹)

sad and depressed and burnt out which i usually “fix” by getting a new tattoo or hair color but it’s dead middle of the summer so no way i’m getting a tatt & i still like the grey hair

anyway, i just got three piercings and some fresh onigiri

it's now bandcamp friday!!! if you were on the fence, we received a test print and yall.. this vinyl came out so gorgeous. grab one before they're gone forever (the preorder closes when bandcamp friday ends)! h-v-b.bandcamp.com/album/past-f...

nothing like just hanging out on Discord with some folks from your team on a Friday night talking about random fun stuff while verifying bugs on JIRA 🥰

ahaha.

i am tempted to go with Hummus closer to launch.

i’ve usually been just changing it when i start at a new studio aha but plink is definitely getting to me now.

which one did you go for 👀

Slack, remind me tomorrow at 9:30am

« my favourite regular frozen breaded chicken thingies just heckin go missing for months » made me chuckle

This free Steam game is a reminder of the importance of living This free Steam game should be experienced by everybody at least once.

really love this writeup about Seasonala Cemetery -- the author understood exactly what we were going for and it feels so good to see that

I don’t *hate* it per say, but I’m tagged « watch » on everything to keep track of things, and with nearing 300 tickets it’s A LOT of notifications lmao

I shall add this to my vocabulary

I am not fully at my WNF stage, but I did say something similar to Ed a few times today. 😌

i am at the saying « NO » and « leave me alone » out loud to absolutely no one anytime i get a JIRA notification on Slack stage of game development

Back to a classic with @mllepilgrim.bsky.social! 👨‍🌾⛏️🐟

🥰🥔🖤

this is what gets me from the "itch is just in it for the money and they folded to capitalist forces willingly to get rich"

you have always been able to pay them literally 0%

LMAO I called Visa’s customer support service - the guy on the other line was like “are you ALSO calling about the video game payment processing? Please send us emails instead.”

Keep up the calls, folks, we’re definitely gumming up their works

Digital graphic with the text "anti-censorship campaign" and screenshots of headlines about how multiple storefronts have removed NSFW content due to pressure from payment processors and Collective Shout.

I know we're upset about itch, but they're not the only ones

Payment processors harassed companies bc of a 1,000 email hate campaign

But we can EASILY top 1,000!

I prewrote an email + got the contact info - you just have to send!

↻💬♡ to boost

We CAN make a difference 💕

#itch #censorship

1/🧵

Hey, as someone who makes a living off selling adult games, I would really appreciate people helping to push back against censorship by payment processors. These puritanical extremists pressuring them have been successful because they've made a lot of noise, so we should be making even more noise!

The thing about all this Itch had no choice handwringing is that it reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how corporate culture works.

Visa and Mastercard have caved to Collective Shout because they believe the reputational threat is a real risk.

They need to be shown the alternative is worse.

Did you know that unionizing the games industry could standardize game crediting? If you worked on a game, you deserve to be properly credited.

day immediately feel ruined anytime i see one irl ☠️

A piece of plain white paper, with printed text that reads "A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE SPITEFUL OR HORNY THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER MAKE ART"

OMG THE HAIR