In a report by Polygon it has been revealed the quality assurance workers within Raven Software – who are responsible for the quality of Call of Duty: Warzone – are unionizing. While in many countries it’s not extraordinary to unionize, this is the first time this happens in a large North American video game company.
34 employees of Raven Software have gathered a majority of signatures within the QA department of Raven Software to form a union. The union is called the Game Workers Alliance and cites the low pay, excessive overtime, allegations of toxic corporate culture and an expectationt o relocate as the reasons to unionize.
The past few weeks many Raven Software employees have been on strike, which started after Activision Blizzard laid off multiple Raven Software contractors.
sadly I am very much looking forward to the megacorp doing megacorp things as usual. Not sure if MS has any good history with unions so this might be unprecedented if they allow it this time, who knows. But yeah, tempura expectaciones even further than we have been for gaming events.
I hope Aaron Greenberg comes around and tweets “hey about the unions, just temper your expectations” and it really turns out that they’re gonna be doing the right thing actually! lol
I don’t even see why you need unions in such an in demand and competitive industry though. Perhaps Raven is in a place where there isn’t much competition?
Take it from someone who’s been through a few crappy IT jobs. It’s the kind of field where in some positions you’re invisible if you do well and get no recognition but if something wrong you’re on the chopping block.
Everyone should be unionized! That’s my take! And living in a country where a lot of people are unionized and the salaries of entire sectors
are decided by collective bargaining I can easily say there are only benefits.
I’ve had to go in to fix shit that broke when I was off the clock with no remuneration, having protection for workers is important regardless of job availability imo.
vfx industry in many places is fighting for the same with unionization. There’s been well documented instances of studios just shutting down entire location divisions just because they found a better tax haven somewhere else, leaving behind hundreds of employees without a job without much notice. It’s just real bad and hope these efforts continue and can realize in full force and ultimately just reduce instances of systemic issues creeping up on workforce wellbeing.
