this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
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Refresh the thread. He hired the fired foreigners when he was still director.^CX^
I'm not following, he hired some people, then 5 years after he left someone else fired those people? Isn't he more likely the good guy in the scenerio?
"How dare you give these people a job? That put them in a position where someone else could take away their job!"
It honestly depends how he hired them. If he offered them living wages, plus Visa fees, lawyers, and healthcare, he was a “good employer” when he hired them. The fact the union discord server is older than 5 years leads me to believe the visa dependent were offered less. So he exploited them knowing they can be deported as soon as the studio was done with them.
So the union discord existed when he was there and he didn't fire anyone involved. 5 years after he leaves someone else fires the people involved so... Fuck the guy who hired people and did nothing to prevent the discord server years ago?
I am not so sure why you are strawmanning my arguments. If he was aware of visa extortion practices during his tenure, is he a good director or a bad one?
I'm responding to the arguments and evidence you are presenting. I know nothing of the situation so do not understand the basis of the claims you are making, and you don't seem to be backing them up very well.
He was never the owner. It's a 45 billion dollar company, his net worth is said to be like 250 mill. He was paid a very high salary since he was one of the original employees of that subsidiary, and given some stock in the parent company as bonuses, so he's set for life and richer than most of us will ever be, but he never had any real say in the parent company's decisions. Take-Two is known for being absolute scum. They don't just own Rockstar Games, they also own the companies behind the Civilization series (which has Paradox-like DLC scumming) and the Borderlands series (remember when BL3 was Epic exclusive on PC?).
Technically if you'd started at, say, Microsoft as a software engineer or other similar role when he started at Rockstar, and stayed there until 2020, you could honestly be richer. Same for Google, some of their earliest employees became billionaires from the stock options. The Houser brothers made Rockstar famous, but they were never ownership class.
But even as a creative director, he was this oblivious to visa extortion contracted labourers?
Uh I'm pretty sure as creative director, he didn't see anyone holding a gun to anyone's head forcing them to sign a shit contract.
Why exactly do you think they were being extorted before any of this? If someone worked for a company for several years, I'm assuming they actually liked working there. Before someone at Take-two saw that there were a bunch of people at their subsidiary who'd unionized, some of whom were foreigners on visas and some locals. Why is the problem for you not that a bunch of people were fired for unionizing, but the fact that some of them weren't born on the island they were working on?
This reads as if you're ignorant on how much more visa workers pay to live somewhere than locals. Should 50+% of my income go to my residency status in a country where that income pars rent prices? Ignorance of visa extortion in the UK is your choice. But don't tell me Dan was ignorant to the exploitation.
But nobody was extorted into working there lol, they volunteered.
We're not talking about some village where people are forced into working the only job available so the boss can demand whatever. We're talking about people who chose to work at a particular company and knew the deal they were getting before moving. You don't change countries for a job without doing your research on cost of living first.
Also, Dan Houser has been living in the US for decades. He's a writer, not an HR specialist. Why does he have to be familiar with the exact situation of the UK labour market? Why does he get the blame and not the UK itself for having shit laws?
I swear some people just want to hate whoever's name sticks out when we truly don't know who knew what or what these employees salaries were.