Activision has released a third of testers from Raven Software -apkrig
Raven Software developers who have been involved in the development of the Call of Duty series since 2010, including Warzone, along with other mandated teams, have lost about a third of the testing department, or 12 people. According to the Washington Post, the study is currently undergoing restructuring, which includes canceling contracts with people who worked for Raven Software on a contract basis. All this, despite previous indications from the management of Activision, to which the studio belongs, that in addition to all the planned changes, the conditions for these employees will improve. But not everyone should have been lucky enough to achieve a better salary and a full-fledged employment contract and have to leave the studio.
I am gutted right now. My friends in QA at Raven were promised, for months, that Activision was working towards a pay restructure to increase their wages.
Today, one by one, valuable members of the team were called into meetings and told they were being let go.
— Austin O’Brien (@eyyohbee) December 3, 2021
“I feel broken and betrayed,” one former employee told the Washington Post. “Most of the people who were invited to the meeting were fired,” another staff member said, referring to meetings scheduled to take place at Raven Software from December 3 to 8. It is up to them that individual testers are to find out whether their salary will be increased to $ 18.50 per hour or whether they will have to look for another job. The meetings were supposed to start with words – you didn’t make a mistake, but… – after which they learned the bad news.
“I am just overwhelmed. For many months, my friends in Raven’s testing department were promised that Activision was working on a salary restructuring to increase their salary. Today, one important member of the team after another was fired, “wrote Austin O’Brien, the studio’s community manager, on his Twitter. He added that the testers had previously been promised to move to new offices in Madison, Wisconsin, but none of this is true and their relationship with Raven Software is due to end on January 28 next year. “It’s unfair to these people to promise them something better and then force them to leave,” O’Brien adds, not hiding his anger.
This has not only destroyed the morale of our workforce, but obliterated trust in the company that has been routinely asking us for patience in improving our work lives.
— ABetterABK 💙 ABK Workers Alliance (@ABetterABK) December 4, 2021
He’s obviously not the only one who doesn’t like the situation in the test department, so it was only a matter of time before other employees called and expressed their disapproval. This is what happened during today, when the staff of the testing and other departments came out in protest and demanded that management be offered to remain as full-fledged employees with the contract and all the benefits that flow from it. We are talking mainly about health insurance, which is not compulsory in the United States, but is a very important part of the contract in employment contracts. The studio staff also mentioned the recent successes of Raven Software – especially Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and especially Warzone, in which it participates the most. The working alliance to support the improvement of working conditions at Activision then stated on Twitter that a number of testers moved to Wisconsin at their own expense just to be able to work for the studio and therefore the management approach should be unfair and worth reconsidering.
But not everyone agrees with the criticism and protest marches. There are also comments that Raven Software, hence Activision, owed nothing to the people working on the agreement and that this is simply a reality. In addition, it is likely that after the media coverage of the whole problem, those 12 testers will find employment and calmly in Wisconsin, where new studio founded ZeniMax Online earlier this year.
