But the legal coop structure can support those values when the shit hits the fan. Which will definitely happen in game studios. So I always want to encourage folks to try!

In the end I care more about the values than the legal structure: There are legal coops that are extremely exploitative-- making all their money off of underpaying contractors. There are non-legal coops functioning almost identical to a legal coop.

What is *so unique* about games that makes it a bad fit? Animation studios, production companies, artist collectives, tattoo studios, and countless other businesses that have similar needs to game studios all have thriving coops-- that's one of the places we looked when forming.

The structure "not being fit for game dev purposes" is sometimes used in good faith, but is just as often a way for small business owners to maintain some form of control. As someone who has a game dev coop, that statement automatically raises my defenses.

This can be malicious but more often than not it comes from a lack of knowledge. Forming a legal coop means understanding, implementing, and being legally bound to a baseline of member protections. You can't write internal procedures for a legal protection you've never considered.

As someone who has run a game coop for about 5 years now, I think it is important to note that there is a real downside to doing things without a legal structure: many studios that go this route don't meet the legal requirements for workers' rights protections that an actual coop would have to.