Feels like we’re rehashing the origin story of waves hand every other creative and production union. Relatively high pay and labor demand masks exploitation in growth industries for a while, but eventually something will exist to counter it.
I mean, maybe those people who walked out know something I don’t. I can believe that. On the other hand, if the people they’re fighting for were on a contract that ended, I’m not sure how we can fault the business for following through on the contractual offering.
Should businesses be forced to hold jobs for people “for the inevitable next projects” if they don’t know if or when those inevitabilities you assume suddenly appear? I’m not sure that’s a legitimate way to run a successful business?
I don’t think that we’re using the term “contract” in the same way. These are not small business owners accepting a bid to complete a task for an estimated length of time or level of effort. These are skilled individuals hired via traditional full-time employment funnels but told they must accept an independent contractor status until being promoted based on performance. We can fault the business for exploiting the employees’ lack of bargaining power in order to skirt protections that are otherwise in place for full-time employees.
If there’s one thing you can practically guarantee in the games industry, it’s that QA is getting mistreated.
@thatdudeguy is right: Nearly every contract position in the games industry is of indefinite length and comes with a promise to hire full-time when possible (usually with a timeline–start of the next project, when we sign a new deal, etc–that evaporates sooner or later). It’s institutionalized instability.
I’m probably too starry-eyed but to me it seems better to employ QA people full time, and when they’re not getting a launch out the door, have them make released titles that are still selling better, test tooling, and so on. That would improve quality, probably uncover issues in yet-to-be-released games, and the increased quality would support higher title, DLC and subscription price points so the even staffing levels would pay for themselves. And instead of yo-yoing headcount, you’d increase the knowledge and skill of your people over time which would feed into the benefits for the game.
I think you are overestimating the skill required to be a QA contractor. This is the most entry-level position in gaming and it requires zero experience. These positions are generally filled by people straight out of college, and no specific degree or line of study is necessary.
I’m sure situations you suggest do exist, but I would not say it’s the norm. In my experience contractors are specifically engaged for specific projects and there’s no confusion about what their role is.
Of course there are companies that notoriously used contractor relationships to avoid the financial and legal entanglements of full-time workers (Microsoft in the 90s/00s/10s famously misused contractors and I think they lost a lawsuit about that.
I don’t think any of us know whether Activision does the same thing.
Let’s all be honest here. Most people who are reading this story are predisposed to think Activision (Raven) is at fault no matter what the actual circumstances. And if it were Electronic Arts, the same would be true. If it were a more beloved company, it’s likely that the reverse is true. “Let’s wait for more information”, would be the cry.
It’s easy for gaming news outlets to drum up hits with this kind of thing right now specifically because it’s Activision, regardless of the actual circumstances of the layoff.
Here’s a job listing for a contract QA tester for Bethesda. When the project ends and this person has to find a new job, is everyone here going to be similarly up in arms?
Job Description
Role: QA Tester
Location: Bethesda, MD
Duration: 9 months contract
Visa: GC-EAD, GC or USCRequirements:
QA Tester / Experience with Manual and Automated Testing. Some performance testing experience is preferred but not required
JIRA
Preferred: HR application experience, specific apps listed below
Migrating from PeopleSoft to Oracle HCMQA Tester Job Summary:
looking for a Project Catapult Testing Support Resource on a short-term (9) months) assignment to assist with an application testing effort. Candidate will work with the iT Project Test Lead to load/import test scripts into the testing tool (JIRA), coordinates test scripts. Candidate must have experience working with applications and be a quick learner.
Attention to detail required.
Experience with the Microsoft Office suite of tools with a focus on Excel required.
Prior application testing experience is required.
Prior experience with JIRA or other testing tool a plus.
Prior experience working on a project team in a fast-paced environment a plus.
College degree preferred.Alliance Global Tech Inc.
Address
Bethesda, MD
USA
Industry
Technology
To, ahem, “adjust contractor headcounts” is an institutionalized practice within the larger tech industry – not just video games. There is increased chatter and scrutiny nowadays, potentially because the gig economy added rideshare drivers to the conversation, but the cycle of allocating amount of personnel based on current projects, contracts and stuff has been A Thing for West Coast software engineers and the like since like the '70s.
This talk reminds me of the contractors I worked with when I was at Microsoft. I assumed that they mostly were working as contractors in hopes of getting hired on as FTEs at some point, and most probably were. But I worked with a few that liked their situation as contractor - as @Menzo pointed out, MS really abused folks with contractor status and basically changed the status so that if you were a contractor you could only work for one year at a time, then had to go on a three month (I think, if memory serves) hiatus, then you could be re-signed for another year. And some folks really liked that setup, treating it as if it were a three month vacation. I mean, unpaid obviously, but I guess you could sock money away during that year and goof off for three months.
One reason those people are picked is because they can be more easily exploited. They will work a night shift, they will work extra hours on short notice, they can be paid less (and paid much less for overtime), etc.
No. You know how I know something unjust happened here? I listen to the people who were affected. The QA team at Raven is walking out because of these terminations. You think they’d be doing that if it was just another standard end-of-contract release?
Pretty sure that’s a QA job located in Bethesda, MD, but not at Bethesda Softworks.
Even so, you’ll obviously see a position described as a one-year contract, but then when you go in for an interview you’ll always be told that that’s just a formality and if you do well you’ll be hired on full time at the end of that, or before. And then instead contractual terms will just get extended and you’ll be told that X game underperformed or there are restructuring plans or whatever. Trust me, this is how it works.
Yes, that’s what “entry level” jobs are. They are for people who are just starting. Are you suggesting that there should be no difference in pay between people who literally just graduated (or maybe didn’t even go to college at all), and those who have years of experience? Of course the pay is lower.
Oh, well, if you say so. I guess you know, then, exactly what every one of these contractors was told. In any case, I don’t recall seeing any allegations of people being told falsely that they were going to be moved to full-time employment. There are accusations that people were told that a raise was coming, and in fact a raise did come to those employees that were kept on, which was the vast, vast majority.
IGN updated their story. Unsurprisingly, Raven management isn’t interested in keeping unnecessary contractors on payroll.
https://www.ign.com/articles/call-of-duty-warzone-devs-qa-walkout-raven-software
Update 12/6 11:12 am PT: Workers on the walkout have provided an update saying over 60 Raven employees have joined the walkout in support of the QA team. However, they have called leadership’s response to the walkout “disappointing” saying, “Leadership have repeatedly said that these are not ‘layoffs’, but a termination of contract.”
Despite announcing an intent to promote 500 contractors, walkout employees say it will “not stand for a core part of the studio being the source for most, if not all, terminations.”
It’s interesting that the gaming industry has had such a hard time adjusting to the realities of being a seasonal, risky industry. Then again, it’s not like movies are not a f***** up industry.
The point being, most large studios choose a high-volume, low-skill approach to QA. They do it because those employees expect fewer benefits and worse treatment. I’m speaking from the experience of being a QA lead at a game studio that had a smaller-and-more-skilled team of fulltimers (many still entry level) that then brought in a QA manager from EA who turned the department into a large-team-of-warm-bodies-paid-a-pittance approach with a day and night shift. I have seen the differences first-hand.
The rest of the QA team seems to think they’re necessary.
I think it’s an unsustainable combination of that riskiness plus the constantly rising standards of quality historically. You can prepare for risk, but not if every project is larger than the last, with new technological risks you haven’t dealt with yet.
This I definitely agree with. I shudder to imagine budgets in the PS6 generation, because we can’t keep ramping up production costs so dramatically every generation.
When I started in the games industry in 1996/97, you could make a game with 20-ish people for around $3 million. Fast forward to the Xbox 360 era and budgets grew to the $30 million range. Now modern AAA games cost well in excess of $100 million to make with teams in the hundreds. That’s why big publishers focus on existing and licensed franchises, because it’s so expensive to create a failure.
Are we going to see the first $500 million game in the coming years (not counting Star Citizen, that’s cheating)? It’s crazy to even think about.
It has always been shitty and should always be shitty is a odd mentality to have.
Based on the IGN article
The statement also revealed that several members of the team who were laid-off recently moved to Wisconsin, where Raven is headquartered, “without relocation assistance from Raven, due to reassurances from the studio that their workload was consistent.”
It seems like it was promised, though not in contract form, that they would be hired on full time after the contract was up.
Yeah, I had heard that too. Lawyers call it “fraud in the inducement.”
If true, that is a really really shitty thing to do.
More posts on social media from those in the know said that they were promised that they would be receiving raises as the company was restructuring their testing deals.
Nobody is complaining that people who had contract work were terminated, it seems like in this situation, the company, probably working hard to attract talent, were making promises that they ultimately didn’t keep.
Good luck keeping that high reputation, really good at keeping and attracting talent.
The problem is that the industry is managed as if it’s a normal industry from the perspective of the workers, whereas in reality it’s anything but that. There can be no job security when every project needs to go viral to succeed, and where bad public reviews at release time could mean the end of the company. These kinds of markets are massively high risk. I’m actually surprised the industry doesn’t have more outsourcing project-based companies, both for QA and for programming and art. No single company is safe to work at, but the industry as a whole will always need programmers, artists and QA people. I’d expect companies offering these services to other, riskier companies to prosper and be able to offer job safety.