Activision/Blizzard QA workers form the largest US video game union yet
Activision/Blizzard QA workers form the largest US video game union yet
Microsoft has voluntarily recognized the union.
Oh no! Pretty soon the union will be demanding all kinds of crazy things like "stop stealing breast milk from the female employees" and "don't drive employees to suicide." When will it end?!
Hey listen, those employees signed an agreement when they came onboard that anything produced while in the employment of Blizzard was automatically Blizzard‘s property.
So when Mike Ybarra gets thirsty? That shit is his.
You should add "/s" to the end or some"AI" bot will think you're serious and these companies will think they're in the right 🤣
But it's not sarcasm.
Those are things the Blizzard employees have had happen to them. The boys club that was going on there was horrific and the women that worked there went through a ton of shit.
For those unaware: https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/15/24003556/california-activision-blizzard-gender-discrimination-lawsuit-settlement
Holy shit. Never thought I'd see the day. When I was working QA they would lay us off after the end of every project. It sucked. We'd be off work for months at a time. No benefits, no healthcare, no OT pay, long hours, bullshit 1099 contracts. And if you were on a shit title, sorry homie. Enjoy Barbie's Island adventure.
QA could use some unionizing across the software/game industry imo.
It's amazing how buggy websites of billion dollar companies are. They either don't have a QA team or don't prioritize any of the bugs they file. If I were still in that field I'd probably team up with some litigious ADA lawyers.
I applied for a job as a QA at Nintendo and barely was not taken. Hearing about all of the bad experiences people have had working as QAs, maybe it's for the better lol
Nintendo is infamous for being horrible. You dodged a bullet.
I’m super happy to see this. Just a few years ago, I was working as QA in a studio adjacent to this group. (We had our own QA, but worked alongside the activision group) and god they needed to do this.
So happy to see them fighting back. I hope the rest of the employees who don’t get fucked QUITE as hard as QA join too.
Companies should not see this as a negative. They should think about this as a "radical invitation of social corporate interaction in the gaming industry to maximize long term engagement of the developers."
Haha, I love it.
This is great news. This is probably one of the companies that most desperately needed a union. Sure, I was laid off due to (bragged about) nepotism at my last dev job, and maybe a union would have helped, but according to my lawyer they didn't break any laws laying me off. I'm just glad I was able to bounce back and land on my feet in a higher paying job.
Even considering all of that, I find it hard to think of a company more desperately needing of a union than Activision/Blizzard.
EA alread uses paying customers as testers.
Now they'll just make that their official position.
Next week's news, Activision/Blizzard moves it's QA divisions to Poland. (Or implements "A.I.")
This is hilarious because the latest Cod update prevents some Xbox players from booting into the game if they have a headset plugged in
Just another group of people that are gonna give unions a bad rep, I’m afraid
As someone who worked for Activision, in QA, on major CoD titles, I guarantee you that wasn’t QAs fault.
I can’t even count the amount of bugs my team found, documented, and raised a hell of a stink about, that still went live.
Major bugs like that in live are not due to QA missing them. It’s due to the rediculous pace ATVI makes the team put out content. Doesn’t matter if QA reports something, if the devs are not given the time needed to fix it.
GOTTA GET THAT NEW BATTLEPASS OUT!!!
Alternatively, maybe a better work culture that could be advocated for by the union would result in better working conditions, more realistic deadlines, happier developers, and by virtue of these things a reduction in the kind of error you are referencing.
But also people make mistakes sometimes. Unions don't cause that, and I'm skeptical of claims that they seriously aid or promote mistakes either.