Just a few days ago we told you that Raven Software’s QA (quality control) group, made up of 34 workers, had unionized for better working conditions and asked for the approval of the parent company, Activision Blizzard. The North American company has approved it, but now we have learned that Activision Blizzard decides to separate Raven Software’s unionized workers into different teams with an intention that has raised certain suspicions. This has been made known by the Polygon portal, which has been able to access an email from Brian Raffel, head of Raven, the studio in charge of maintaining Call of Duty: Warzone.
Raven Software studio head Brian Raffel emailed staff today regarding structural changes at the studio — embedding QA into different departments like art, design, and engineering. Unclear what this means for Raven’s QA union efforts. pic.twitter.com/sIk9jsGJQH
— Nicole Carpenter (@sweetpotatoes) January 25, 2022
“Soon we will have a meeting where I will explain the last organizational change that is underway in the studio to enhance the work we do. In November, we began the process to convert our temporary employees to FTE (full-time worker) status. Now, I’m excited to share that our QA colleagues integrate directly into various equipment throughout the studio, including Animation, Art, Design, Audio, Production and Engineering,” Raffel said in an email to unionized quality control workers who have been on strike for the past seven weeks.
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While the employees have gotten what they wanted, with an integration within Raven Software and with better and more stable conditions work, Activision Blizzard has chosen to separate them into different departments of the studio, such as trying to prevent future organizations among themselves in search of rights. Be that as it may, this is only the last episode of this serial, which might not have come to an end. And it is that unionization in the video game industry in the United States is very rare. In fact, this one on Raven is one of the first to be produced in a triple-A studio.