Terrifying wood shards aside, it still pleases me a great deal that we launch multi-million dollar ships by basically hurling them at the sea.

You can hoon large ships now!

Don't forget that some older reports claim that Pistorius had something like 6 licensed guns. http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/05/wor…

Give me one example of him being exploited. One. Anything.

Actually, as an employee of the agency, he was entitlred not to work for free on the weekends, and not to work overtime without being paid for it.

You're not supposed to be exploited (in the negative connotation of the word.) But you are supposed to be temporary. Contractor (freelance) work is temporary. That's the nature of the business. If he expected permanent employment, he was naive.

"For a QA strike to work, you'd have to get not only all the currently employed QA contractors to strike, but all the not-employed-but-looking people too... and a lot of us like to pay our rent."

I'm not sure if it's Marx who said this or some later philosopher, but this sort of divide is exactly what the wealthy count…

Collective bargaining doesn't work with contractors unless the contracts are directly handled by the company, which they aren't. That said, there's a few problems with collective bargaining in this instance:

I agree with all of this.

First off, working on quality assurance can definitely be a way to get some great experience in the gaming industry, and can sometimes lead to bigger and better jobs. The idea that you should never, never work in this area, or that there needs to be a strike, or that you should never sign a contract, are all complete…

He wasn't exploited. Yes, contract positions suck. You pretty much sign it, agreeing to work for the length of the contract. That's why they're called contractors. Sometimes contractors are hired on full time, but it's not a guarantee. It's never a guarantee. OP just has entitlement issues, and should realize…

Thank you. I worked QA for a year, before transitioning into my career. It was a great experience (I had no real design on being in the gaming industry, it was just a job I enjoyed with cool people) and the hours were fine. Your game is going gold in a month and a half? You better believe OT and DT is happening. My…

Your point is invalid. He was not exploited.

I couldn't not star this.

It's not slave work and its ridiculous to even say it is. You know what you are signing up for, you are warned of the hours clearly. If you're not game for those hours, they won't give you the job.

I'm going to wade in.

Seriously. "Hi, Im Dick McLazyfuck and I got lucky with music once. Im really good at music, but I have no degree to prove it and zero credentials other than a small contract with MTV that, apparently, I never took advantage of. I work at a thrice removed QA position that someone once told me I could maybe get hired…

Also he had one of the better contract QA positions. For many, having the opportunity to speak to a dev/producer isn't even possible.

So you didn't even finish the cycle on one game, and you were expecting something permanent?

Yeah, this guy sounded like he expected to get converted to a design or audio job because he suggested names on maps and got to know the other people on the team.