Employees under Activision-Blizzard are walking out again after the company fired a dozen QA testers working at Raven Software, a support studio that worked on Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Call of Duty: Warzone.
According to a tweet by Austin O’Brien (Associate Community Manager) at Raven Software, the company had promised a wage increase to QA, but are now being called in “one by one” to be let go. O’Brien continues that they were asked to move to Madison, Wisconsin to work at Raven Software. “It’s unfair to these people to string them along, promising something better, and then let them go.”
The ABK Workers Alliance tweeted in support of the QA workers saying: “We watched in shock today as our peers at Raven lost their employment in real time. With all of our efforts to improve the lives of our contractors, this is a great wound for all of us–and an incredible break of the trust the company has asked us for. Know we stand with you.”
As a result of the firings, employees under Activision-Blizzard walked out virtually and refused to work, the number reportedly reach around 200 people. Activision-Blizzard made a statement saying that they support their employees “right to express their opinion and concerns”. Regarding the layoffs, the company told the Washington Post that they are “growing its overall investment in [Raven Software’s] development and operations resources,”
Raven Software head Brian Raffel sent a studio-wide meeting saying he didn’t consider the layoffs as a termination, Raffel described them as “temporary employment agreements that weren’t renewed according to the people who were present at the meeting”.
An anonymous employee at Raven Software said to the Washington Post “It feels like Activision’s toxic culture is starting to bleed into Raven. The people who were let go seem to have been chosen completely at random, and the rest of us have survivor’s guilt because we know our teammates deserve to still be here.” By Friday, the QA department had already lost a third of its size.
Jonathan Sanchez
Article Team
