Warzone’s quality testers ignored after 17 days of striking
ActivisionJust before Call of Duty: Warzone’s Pacific map launched, there was news of a strike among the developers’ quality assurance team. Now, 17 days later, their demands are apparently still being ignored despite the game’s quality issues.
It’s no secret that Warzone has a lot of bugs and glitches. In just the past week alone, Buy Stations have caused game crashes and console players have mulled retirement.
While people on social media are quick to flame the devs at Raven Software for these issues, those devs don’t seem very happy either. A few days before Pacific launched, it was revealed that a number of QA testers were laid off, despite earlier promises of better pay.
Then, in solidarity, “around 40 QA testers” decided to walk out in protest of those layoffs on December 6. Now, 17 days later, the devs explained that they are still on strike as their demands have not been met, let alone responded to.
Warzone quality testers still on strike
We have been striking for close to 17 days now with no response to our demand: those laid off from Raven QA must be reinstated. Soon we will be starting our paid holiday vacation (which was fought for by workers organizing).
— ABetterABK 💙 ABK Workers Alliance (@ABetterABK) December 22, 2021
As tweeted by the Activision Blizzard King Workers Alliance, “We have been striking for close to 17 days now with no response to our demand.” And the demand in question here is for the QA testers who were laid off to be “reinstated.”
Without any reply from Activision, it seems that workers will head into their holiday vacation while still on strike. It’s unclear what that means for the game and its current testing team, but there have been numerous patches since the walkout so not all activity has been compromised.
These people were asked to relocate to Madison, WI to work here. Now they are out of a job on January 28th.
Our QA team does incredible work but this will not only increase their workload but crush morale.
If any industry friends have open positions, please share them.
— Austin O'Brien – Woodmancy (@eyyohbee) December 3, 2021
The original alleged motivation for the strike was that QA testers were asked to move to Madison, Wisconsin, under promises of full-time employment following their contract work – which ultimately did not prove true for a number of employees.
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While Warzone is still patching issues and making adjustments, fans have been vocal about wanting more fixes (especially on console).
At the moment, it remains unclear if the QA team will be able to help with those fixes until after the holiday break. And, even past then, one has to wonder how long this strike can last without Activision responding.