// KOTAKU — GAMING
Our Interview With Tim Schafer About Unionization At Psychonauts Studio Double Fine
This morning, Kotaku published a lengthy report exploring what happened at Psychonauts studio Double Fine this past May, when a union petition was filed and then, two weeks later, abruptly withdrawn. You can read the full report right here.
As a part of this reporting process, I reached out to Microsoft/Xbox, Communications Workers of America, and Double Fine CEO Tim Schafer to ask for their responses to what we discuss in the article. CWA shared a statement, which I have included in the report, and Xbox declined to comment. Schafer, however, was willing to sit down for an interview.
I spoke with Schafer for nearly an hour in an effort to ask him everything I could about what happened: his feelings, his responses, what he knew and what he didn’t know, and why things played out the way they did. I also asked him about some of the more challenging topics that came up during my interviews with 15 current and former employees about their experiences at Double Fine surrounding unionization, and about his own role and responsibility as studio head.
Below, I’ve published a nearly-full transcript of our conversation. For transparency’s sake: this has been very lightly edited for clarity, even less so than I normally edit interviews published in this format in an effort to preserve as much of Schafer’s intent as possible. A few questions and their answers have been omitted, as their subjects were removed from the published report and were no longer relevant.
Kotaku: So, Double Fine had a union petition. And then it was withdrawn two weeks later. That’s what’s public, that we know. When did you first find out that there was a union effort going on at Double Fine?
Schafer: I mean, there’s always been union activists at Double Fine. And they post freely in our Slack, and that’s fine. It’s their right to do, and it’s up to them. That’s what a lot of this is. This is like their issue to discuss, not really mine. But, so there’s always rumors of it. And I think nothing was, it was that letter being posted that I was like, so this is really happening. But it’s been talked about for years.
I mean, like I’ve always known, there’s always been rumors that there are people talking about it, meeting about it, and stuff like that for many years.
Did you have any conversations in the lead-up with Microsoft about it beforehand?
I mean, just what’s rumors about it. We hear about it. And they have insight. They have a relationship, you know, Microsoft’s relationship with the union that I don’t have. CWA, they have that? They’ve done stuff before, so they have contacts and stuff like that. And I was pretty new to CWA.
Okay, so this notice goes up in Slack, and you find out that, okay, they’re doing something serious.