Call Of Duty: Warzone Devs Stage Walkout Over Layoffs

Thread: Call Of Duty: Warzone Devs Stage Walkout Over Layoffs
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Call Of Duty: Warzone Devs Stage Walkout Over Layoffs [Update]

Activision QA staff and other developers protest surprise cuts at Raven Software
kotaku.com kotaku.com

Quality assurance testers and other developers at Raven Software, the Activision studio in charge of the extremely lucrative free-to-play battle royale Call of Duty: Warzone, are walking out on the job today to protest surprise layoffs that were foisted on staff beginning last Friday. The group told Kotaku in a statement it has only one demand: give all QA testers, including those just laid off, full-time positions.
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"Activision Publishing is growing its overall investment in its development and operations resources," a spokesperson told Kotaku in an email. "We are converting approximately 500 temporary workers to full-time employees in the coming months. Unfortunately, as part of this change, we also have notified 20 temporary workers across studios that their contracts would not be extended."

Management at the Wisconsin-based studio informed QA staff at the end of last week that they would have meetings starting over the next month to decide which employees would get converted to full-time with raises and which ones would be laid off. As part of the first wave of meetings, 30 percent of Raven's QA team saw their contracts terminated (effective January 28), while others await news of their fate as they head into the holiday season.

"These personnel cuts come after five weeks of overtime, and before an anticipated end of year crunch," protesting Raven staff wrote.
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TO clear it up they are all being fired on Friday so they left early? Or other people are being fired and they are walking out in solidarity?

Because if they are part of the layoff a walk off is basically exactly what the company wants....
 
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cryptoadam said:
TO clear it up they are all being fired on Friday so they left early? Or other people are being fired and they are walking out in solidarity?

Because if they are part of the layoff a walk off is basically exactly what the company wants....
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The latter.
 
Management at the Wisconsin-based studio informed QA staff at the end of last week that they would have meetings starting over the next month to decide which employees would get converted to full-time with raises and which ones would be laid off.
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Um thats not not being laid off. Thats having your contract terminated or simply not renewed. Games like CoD require hundreds of temp QA testers. Hell when I lived in LA it was called "QA season" when Activision would cut all the excess QA after a COD launch.
 
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Arkam said:
Um thats not not being laid off. Thats having your contract terminated or simply not renewed. Games like CoD require hundreds of temp QA testers. Hell when I lived in LA it was called "QA season" when Activision would cut all the excess QA after a COD launch.
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We've had a few contractors at my job. They are typically really shitty at their job, some of them are decent. But most are shit.
 
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That must suck. A lot of angry people over at Blizzard over this and all the sexual harassment charges. Must be a warzone over there.
 
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I assumed this was all normal. Ramp up for release and then wind down. My buddy is a contractor in the industry and he always knows when his time is up.
 
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I guess the next step will be for these jobs to be outsourced to a low cost country.
 
Yeah this makes no sense at all. A fixed contractor for sure I imagine would want a full time gig, (and in the UK I think if you're continuously employed on rolling fixed term contracts after 3 years the employer is required to make your position full time) but equating the end of a fixed term contract with being laid off is indeed the definition of retarded. These staged walk outs will achieve nothing but the outsourcing of the jobs elsewhere.
 
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congrats you just played yourselves

probably way easier to find more shit-tier grunts to replace the walkouts than it would be to justify full time positions for the people who got laid off had their contracts expire

but hey lol solidarity fight the machine eat the rich
 
Yeah maybe I'm missing some details, but not extending your contract to a couple dozen QA testers seems like business as usual for the entire industry. But again, I could be missing something.
 
Update: An Activision Blizzard representative provided a comment to GamesIndustry.biz, saying, "Activision Blizzard is carefully reviewing the request for voluntary recognition from the CWA, which seeks to organize around three dozen of the company's nearly 10,000 employees. While we believe that a direct relationship between the company and its team members delivers the strongest workforce opportunities, we deeply respect the rights of all employees under the law to make their own decisions about whether or not to join a union.

"Across Activision Blizzard, we remain focused on listening closely to our employees and providing the improved pay, benefits and professional opportunities needed to attract and retain the world's best talent. Over the past couple of years, this has included raising minimum compensation for Raven QA employees by 41%, extending paid time off, expanding access to medical benefits for employees and significant others, and transitioning more than 60% of temporary Raven QA staff into full-time employees."
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www.gamesindustry.biz

Call of Duty QA workers vote to unionize

QA testers at Raven Software have voted to unionize with the Communication Workers of America, according to a Polygon r…
www.gamesindustry.biz www.gamesindustry.biz
 
ManofTwo said:
Goodluck idiots.
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I wish we could be a little more thoughtful about QA and/or laid off engineers in general. I understand the perception around QA is unskilled or not good enough to be developers but it's not always the case. We all like polished software that is relatively free of bugs and glitches, and the only way it gets there is through testing, bug finding, and having someone add pressure to getting issues fixed.

And frankly, QA is not a desirable role. There's a reason for that. Heaps of responsibility and very little honor or praise.

Yeah, it's been the mantra of every development team I've been part of that QA is unnecessary and often a waste of payroll when the developers are doing the full job they're supposed to. Well... that's bullshit too. Have you ever tried to proofread your own essay? You'll never catch every mistake you made.

When I was a software tester, I was especially good at uncovering unintended behaviors. My most prized features were the ones that would elevate my privileges. -evil laugh-
 
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Optimus said:
I wish we could be a little more thoughtful about QA and/or laid off engineers in general. I understand the perception around QA is unskilled or not good enough to be developers but it's not always the case. We all like polished software that is relatively free of bugs and glitches, and the only way it gets there is through testing, bug finding, and having someone add pressure to getting issues fixed.

And frankly, QA is not a desirable role. There's a reason for that. Heaps of responsibility and very little honor or praise.

Yeah, it's been the mantra of every development team I've been part of that QA is unnecessary and often a waste of payroll when the developers are doing the full job they're supposed to. Well... that's bullshit too. Have you ever tried to proofread your own essay? You'll never catch every mistake you made.

When I was a software tester, I was especially good at uncovering unintended behaviors. My most prized features were the ones that would elevate my privileges. -evil laugh-
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I use to be sympathetic till I found how out the demands being made. It made no sense from a structural vs core perspective. You have a core workforce and then you have a structural (temps) Making structural part of core is ridiculous especially especially given the work load and payment structure from said workload.


When I was an analyst we had the same structure in banking. Core and structural. I was initially part of structural before being promoted to core. Atleast on average 80.0% of the structural is always temporary and space in core is limited. At first you feel its unfair and you wanna unionize till you realize that you're job is based on margins. It's gets MUCH worst as you move to core and understandably so.


However when the analyst department tried to unionize. The demand the structural have the same perks as core but not the same amount of work ?? That lost me. I would imagine it be the same for QA testers.

That's why I'm no longer sympathetic.
 
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ManofTwo said:
I use to be sympathetic till I found how out the demands being made. It made no sense from a structural vs core perspective. You have a core workforce and then you have a structural (temps) Making structural part of core is ridiculous especially especially given the work load and payment structure from said workload.


When I was an analyst we had the same structure in banking. Core and structural. I was initially part of structural before being promoted to core. Atleast on average 80.0% of the structural is always temporary and space in core is limited. At first you feel its unfair and you wanna unionize till you realize that you're job is based on margins. It's gets MUCH worst as you move to core and understandably so.


However when the analyst department tried to unionize. The demand the structural have the same perks as core but not the same amount of work ?? That lost me. I would imagine it be the same for QA testers.

That's why I'm no longer sympathetic.
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Ehhhh... your job is/was based on margins? Working for a bank, your job was based on margins... Yet the largest banks in the world are raking in record levels of profit, but your job is/was based on some margins....

I hear what you're saying, but that all sounds like a finely constructed excuse to protect the other kind of margin... the profit margin. :)
 
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Optimus said:
Ehhhh... your job is/was based on margins? Working for a bank, your job was based on margins... Yet the largest banks in the world are raking in record levels of profit, but your job is/was based on some margins....

I hear what you're saying, but that all sounds like a finely constructed excuse to protect the other kind of margin... the profit margin. :)
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Yep.....you have to pull in a certain allotment and target to be retained and bank margins are important due to regulatory requirement. If bank didnt maintain a certain margin, the Central Bank would impose restrictions to reduce financial risk to the remainder of the system.....

Its complicated but essentially if a bank saw a certain ratio or fall significantly below the average the central bank would step in and yes margins are important but at the end of the day it made me appreciate what the bank is trying to do and why they have temporary staffing.

If ppl want more permanent positions they should try to find it but trying to unionize and force permanency in an area that doesn't not necessarily deem permanent is going to end badly.

Way I see it is that the job is going to be outsourced now and Microsoft will look to sub contractors to take on that headache rather than retain the staff under their watch.
 
ManofTwo said:
I use to be sympathetic till I found how out the demands being made. It made no sense from a structural vs core perspective. You have a core workforce and then you have a structural (temps) Making structural part of core is ridiculous especially especially given the work load and payment structure from said workload.


When I was an analyst we had the same structure in banking. Core and structural. I was initially part of structural before being promoted to core. Atleast on average 80.0% of the structural is always temporary and space in core is limited. At first you feel its unfair and you wanna unionize till you realize that you're job is based on margins. It's gets MUCH worst as you move to core and understandably so.


However when the analyst department tried to unionize. The demand the structural have the same perks as core but not the same amount of work ?? That lost me. I would imagine it be the same for QA testers.

That's why I'm no longer sympathetic.
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This guy gets it! For those who havent worked in games before, you have to realize that the vast majority of development does not need a large QA group (or contracted artists). Most games spend much of their time with a small group of developers who build out the core components and POCs. Then when its gets near Alpha the team scales up a bit to fill out content and QA said components. Its only in Beta that a large QA force is actually needed.

So for COD as an example, my understanding is that they have 2-3 year dev cycle. So that means you only need a large QA force for <1 year of that dev cycle. Why on earth would you think carrying them on payroll (with benefits!) for the two years you DONT NEED THEM makes any sense.

Also as someone who started in games QA I can tell you that you need no more qualification than a pulse. Yes there are fantastic and brilliant testers.... but the bulk are just mouth breathers who wash out of the industry and move back to retail/service industry.
 
"We are converting approximately 500 temporary workers to full-time employees in the coming months. Unfortunately, as part of this change, we also have notified 20 temporary workers across studios that their contracts would not be extended."
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Little late to the party on this but basically they had 520 temporary workers and said that they're going to make 500 of them full-time employees, but they're striking over the 20 that aren't getting their contracts renewed? That's like 3.8%. Most redundances rounds would get rid of 10-20%.

Sucks for the people who don't make the cut, but honestly, that's reality.
 
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Kadayi said:
Little late to the party on this but basically they had 520 temporary workers and said that they're going to make 500 of them full-time employees, but they're striking over the 20 that aren't getting their contracts renewed? That's like 3.8%. Most redundances rounds would get rid of 10-20%.

Sucks for the people who don't make the cut, but honestly, that's reality.
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Always curious about this. I know some companies would get rid of higher paid staff to make room for lowered paid. So they have in their budget to allocate money to the lower paid from the savings made off the higher paid.

Wonder if its the same thing here.
 
ManofTwo said:
Always curious about this. I know some companies would get rid of higher paid staff to make room for lowered paid. So they have in their budget to allocate money to the lower paid from the savings made off the higher paid.

Wonder if its the same thing here.
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Probably more that they have assurances/confidence on a long term series of work that would utilize the additional staff during "off cycle". When I was QA at EA Tiburon, we were able to carry a 200+ headcount in QA (most temps) year round. We did this by doing QA for other EA studios that had a higher cost for QA (like Criterion, EARS, EA Chicago, etc). I can see how Activision ran the numbers and said, yep this QA group (in Wisconsin) is Waaaay cheaper than one in SoCal and sign them up to just roll between releases.
 
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cryptoadam said:
I don't get this... So they plan to unionize but they ended the strike until they unionize?
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The union prob would need to build a war chest. Also their union would prob be represented by a larger national union that would require payment.
 
If they had only just understood that they where just redundancies and not being fired for bad work, they could have asked for glowing recommendations that could've helped them find jobs elsewhere. Instead they choose to reeee... If I had a business in that field that was hiring temp positions I'd want to stay far away from these people.

They really should've just identified as someone from a disability quota...

 
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