Action Against ActivisionÂ
Raven Software, Call of Duty: Warzone developer, team members have staged a walkout today. The walkout is following the termination of twelve Raven Software Quality Assurance testers.Â
In a statement released to press, members of Raven Software detailed the December 3rd lay offs of the QA testers. The reaction, in the statement, presented by the Raven Software team is one of betrayal and anger directed at Activision. The statement described the state of the department leading back to March which included a lack of standard promotions or raises.Â
Some workers at Call of Duty Warzone maker and Activision subsidiary Raven are walking out today, protesting the surprise dismissal of a dozen game testers on Friday and demanding that all are offered full-time jobs.
Call of Duty is among the most lucrative series in the world pic.twitter.com/DlrSmXAPmc
— Stephen Totilo (@stephentotilo) December 6, 2021
Associate community manager at Raven Software, Austin O’Brien, tweeted about the situation.Â
“My friends in QA at Raven were promised, for months, that Activision was working towards a pay restructure to increase their wages.” Said O’Brien in the tweet.Â
On the contrary, the promise of increased wages appeared to be a mirage as the lay offs began. In addition, now terminated, QA testers stories are described in the statement.Â
“Several of those let go recently relocated to Wisconsin…They did so without relocation assistance from Raven.”Â
Surprisingly, these lay offs come at the time of a new update to Call of Duty: Warzone. The game mode, according to the statement, currently earns $5.2 million dollars a day. Activision itself earned over $2 billion in earnings in the last quarter of 2021, according to a financial statement.Â
“It’s unfair to these people to string them along, promising something better, and then let them go.” Said O’Brien in a tweet.Â
Raven team members made sure their statement was clear. The statement reads that every QA tester needs full-time positions, including those terminated. Team members state that the fired QA testers were in good standing. Â
Activision released a statement saying, “Activision Publishing is growing its overall investment in its development and operations resources. 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.”