Activision's Call of Duty Game Testers Plan Walkout Over Job Cuts (bloomberg.com) 44
A group of workers at an Activision Blizzard division supporting the Call of Duty franchise plan to call out of work Monday in protest of job cuts that took place last week. The move reflects a broader labor movement taking hold at the embattled video game publisher. From a report: The workers sent a letter to management of their studio Raven Software, which is owned by Activision and works on Call of Duty: Warzone. In it, they ask the company to reinstate the dozen people who were terminated, according to a copy of the email reviewed by Bloomberg. "Those participating in this demonstration do so with the continued success of the studio at the forefront of their mind," they wrote. The job cuts targeted a team of contractors primarily responsible for testing Call of Duty: Warzone, ensuring the free-to-play game operates smoothly and without errors. The staff wasn't given a clear justification for the dismissals, said Alex Dupont, a QA tester on the team and a spokesman for the workers who are striking.
Obvious answer (Score:2)
" The staff wasn't given a clear justification for the dismissals, said Alex Dupont, a QA tester on the team and a spokesman for the workers who are striking."
Who needs to pay for QA when the general public will pay to be QA (read "buy the game")?
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Upon RTFA, I find this to be a sensationalized story:
"Raven has almost 40 testers, according to the staff letter. The studio informed a dozen people on Friday that their contracts will be terminated in late January. A few were promoted to full-time positions. Others were told they will not find out their job statuses until this week."
Some people were promoted, some people were cut, some people are still in limbo. All in all, sounds like a standard reorganization?
Title/summary makes it sound like only cuts h
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Some people were promoted, some people were cut, some people are still in limbo. All in all, sounds like a standard reorganization?
Maybe they are protesting some jerk got a promotion... are the people who got portions striking I wonder?
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While with labor relations the Truth is usually somewhere in the middle, of the strikers and the corporate stance. Where neither the Union nor the Company really should be trusted.
Activisions action may be legal, however they may had been a jerk on how they did it, in which created some animosity.
When I see stuff like this happens, I often see the guys no one really likes, and never gets stuff done, being promoted, because they steal all the credit, while the guy everyone likes and gets all the work done g
Re:Obvious answer (Score:4)
According to your linked article: 12 out of 40 people are being terminated. That is 30% of the staff. How is that "sensationalized" if 30% of your staff were to be cut. Austin O'Brien [twitter.com] who works at Raven software, outlines some outrage in the details:
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.
It seems that they were telling these people for months they would increase their wages but before the holidays, "Suprise! You're being fired."
The other part of it is that the title for which Raven does QA, Call of Duty: Warzone makes $5.2M a day [dotesports.com] so this is not a case of a title that is not making money needing to trim some people.
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QA is an entry point for the video game industry (Score:3)
Some people were promoted, some people were cut, some people are still in limbo. All in all, sounds like a standard reorganization?
At some companies QA is an entry point for the video game industry. As a new game is being finished and/or is in the early stages of release there are many temps working in QA. They all know they are temps. They also know some small number of them may get promoted to full time when things quiet down and fewer people are needed.
A similar thing happens when a game goes into maintenance mode, more bug fixes, few new features, the QA demands drop.
QA can be highly competitive. Aspiring designers, artists,
Getting fired, so you... walk out? (Score:3)
>Dupont said they could extend their strike indefinitely if the company doesn’t acquiesce.
"We're not fired. We're permanently striking!"
Don't seek to enable your enemy by remaining (Score:2)
Leave and you deny your enemy the product of your work. If you're any good you'll already have other offers for the taking.
Why help your enemy? There are other employers after all.
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Leave and you deny your enemy the product of your work. If you're any good you'll already have other offers for the taking.
Why help your enemy? There are other employers after all.
Considering many temp positions were converted to full time, but a few of the temps were cut... this does not appear to be a case of an "enemy" employer. On the face of it, and without seeing the performance reviews of the ~20 who were cut, it does not seem outlandish considering >95% of the temp employees are being kept and converted to permanent employees.
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12 out of 40 were cut. That is 30% of the staff according to my math. 95% of the employees are not being converted to permanent.
Testers, yes.
According to the article: "Activision said in an emailed statement that it decided to end contracts for 20 temporary workers across its studios as part of a restructuring that will convert about 500 temps to full-time."
So, my math was incorrect, but not in the direction you think it was.
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Again the outrage specifically was about cuts at Raven Software. What point does citing numbers at places other than Raven Software accomplish?
Pedantic much?
Who own's Raven? Activision! Ergo, the numbers matter. Else no numbers matter.
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The ENTIRE article is about how Call of Duty developers are upset about the job cuts at Raven Software.
Not true. Try reading the article again.
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In the first fine of the article: "A group of workers at an Activision Blizzard Inc. division supporting the Call of Duty franchise plan to call out of work Monday in protest of job cuts that took place last week." In the second paragraph of the article: "The workers sent a letter to management of their studio Raven Software, which is owned by Activision and works on Call of Duty: Warzone. In it, they ask the company to reinstate the dozen people who were terminated, according to a copy of the email review
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What article are you not reading?
Couldn't say for sure, but it sounds as though you stopped reading at the end of the second paragraph.
The third paragraph reads (note the instances of Activision in said article"):
Activision said in an emailed statement that it decided to end contracts for 20 temporary workers across its studios as part of a restructuring that will convert about 500 temps to full-time. “Activision Publishing is growing its overall investment in its development and operations resources,” a spokesman for the compa
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Activision said in an emailed statement that it decided to end contracts for 20 temporary workers across its studios as part of a restructuring that will convert about 500 temps to full-time. “Activision Publishing is growing its overall investment in its development and operations resources,” a spokesman for the company wrote in an email.
Did you even read your own statement? "ACTIVISION SAID . . ." . That is the one statement you seem to miss or ignore. Developers stated their exact criticism; Activision throws a red herring having nothing to do with their complaint. And you repeated their red herring without even acknowledging that is exactly what you and them are doing. The fact of the matter is yes 12 out of 40 people were fired. Yes they were from Raven Software. Yes other CoD Developers were upset over those EXACT firings. They are not
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Considering the first message in this thread, you're off topic, not me...
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The fact of the matter is you are now not talking anything about the article even though you kept insisting I did not read it. The article specifically states the grievances of the CoD developers. Specifically.
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Not accurate, but it's your fantasy.
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12 out of 40 were cut. That is 30% of the staff according to my math. 95% of the employees are not being converted to permanent.
FTFA:
Activision said in an emailed statement that it decided to end contracts for 20 temporary workers across its studios as part of a restructuring that will convert about 500 temps to full-time. “Activision Publishing is growing its overall investment in its development and operations resources,” a spokesman for the company wrote in an email.
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I get that a big part of this team was let go, but you're arguing as if this happened in a vacuum. The GGP comment above took issue with the idea of "enemy employer" by pointing out that a large number of temps were converted to full time, and those let go constitute a small percentage of the whole. While this QA team saw a disproportionate impact, that doesn't mean that the employer is out to get them or otherwise hostile to them.
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I get that a big part of this team was let go, but you're arguing as if this happened in a vacuum. The GGP comment above took issue with the idea of "enemy employer" by pointing out that a large number of temps were converted to full time, and those let go constitute a small percentage of the whole. While this QA team saw a disproportionate impact, that doesn't mean that the employer is out to get them or otherwise hostile to them.
You do understand that Call of Duty developers are specifically upset about the Raven Software terminations, right? That was their entire point of protest. It is right there in the article. How does pointing out other people were not terminated counter their very specific point?
Activision has QA? (Score:2)
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I'm starting to think that maybe software isn't meant to always function correctly. I'm not sure where I obtained the idea that it should do so, but clearly that idea does not reflect reality.
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There is truth to that. The product is always a compromise among features, price, and quality. There is no market for software that is simplistic and expensive, but well engineered. At least not for games.
Your point was saved by your last sentence. There is a market for software that is simplistic and expensive, but well-engineered. NASA/JPL writes such software to run in interplanetary robots. IBM is said to write such software for its Licensed Internal Code, the heart of their mainframes. I wouldn't be surprised if the US Department of Defense required its contractors to write such code for mission-critical applications.
Some people who write computer programs would live to write code that works. Sadly
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But QA just means "Quality Assurance", it does not describe any specific target quality properties.
Which are most likely along the lines of "ship it when it is not so much worse than what our competitors deliver that those morons will pre-order again, before our next release".
Hm... (Score:2)
Seems like piling on. (Score:2)
None of this strikes me as out of the ordinary for a company that adjusts its workforce over time. Seems like people might be using the moment to stake out their own borders irrespective of whether or not that's good for the company as a whole.
They decided not to pay you anymore. (Score:2)
Why employ (Score:2)
I'll take one for the team. (Score:1)
Anyone that mod's me down, is just another angry person that does not see real consequences from corporations. There will be more layoffs. They will happen over the next 2022 year.
To fix any of this, the state of California needs to put some executives in jail, or nothing is going to change.
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They are a big part of the problem.
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That's because HR is no longer about being "human resources" or being a bridge between workers and the corporation. They've turned into a meat shield for corporate instead. Many in corporate HR view their jobs as a blood sport now. Academics is no better too.
Time for an union in game DEV? (Score:2)
Time for an union in game DEV?