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In January, Raven Software employees successfully created the Game Workers Alliance with the Communications Workers of America, with the support of a supermajority of workers.
In November 2021, quality assurance testers at Raven Software were informed that some would be getting a promotion and a raise, while others had less than three months to find other employment. Outrage among the workers ensued, spread to other parts of Activision Blizzard, and sparked a near-company-wide strike that lasted seven weeks.
“We were basically furious,” one worker said.
This event was one in a chain that has ultimately placed the video game industry on the precipice of widespread unionization for the first time. According to QA testers—who spoke to the Prospect under the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation—it was also the last straw for many workers across Activision Blizzard. The video game producer has been roiled in conflict, from strikes to lawsuits to demands for resignations, all amidst a major acquisition of the company by Microsoft.
The strike at Raven Software, a division of Activision Blizzard that is responsible for the massively popular Call of Duty games, was met by the company with apathy: Workers were offered only two paid days off as an initial gesture of goodwill. This, coupled with low pay, gendered harassment, and general workplace hostility, has led QA workers across Activision to attempt to unionize.
In January, the strike ended and Raven Software employees successfully created the Game Workers Alliance (GWA) with the Communications Workers of America, with the support of a supermajority of workers. GWA gave Activision the choice to voluntarily recognize the union, but they did not. The union participated in a recent hearing at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), as a step toward formal recognition and subsequent contract negotiation. The NLRB has yet to determine the parameters for a union election at the gaming unit.
According to current and former workers, the frustration and desire to unionize is growing among workers outside of Raven. GWA’s successful creation led some to realize that unionizing was not a “pipe dream,” and the sentiment changed from “‘this would be cool,’ to ‘we really need this,’” as one worker put it. There are currently three hubs of Activision involved in organizing a separate union: Texas, Los Angeles, and Minnesota.
When the strike was in full swing, some Activision QA workers were given a raise from $13 an hour to $17 an hour, raising the wage from below average to just above average. “I was making more money when I first started working at Activision than I ever have with the raise,” a worker at Activision Texas told me. They attribute this to the reduced hours and lack of overtime after the pay raise, although they still felt “very much overworked.”
Then, news broke that Bobby Kotick, CEO, was aware of and complicit in the “frat boy culture,” outlined in a lawsuit brought by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing. As The Wall Street Journal detailed, Kotick was allegedly personally involved in rape and harassment cover-ups that contributed to the overall “culture of sexual harassment” at Activision.
QA testers said they were then given extra time off for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and promised extra work that never came. “People were questioning, was that so people could say ‘We work at Activision and they have great benefits?’” according to the tester from Texas. Activision has found resistance to this narrative, and Kotick has faced mounting pressure to resign. The problems run deeper, however, as workers detailed the culture to me as generally toxic.
“If you were a female in the QA—it’s not intentional—but I feel like I’m treated differently,” said one tester from Minnesota.
That employee also expressed being undermined and underestimated. Taking on and completing a tough task was not met with praise or excitement, but instead with trepidation, suspicion, and redo demands from men in the same position.
Like many organizing efforts, Activision workers are at a disadvantage, because federal labor law does not facilitate easy unionizing.
The structure of the job is another point of contention for some employees. They are given two weeks of training—one for general training and another for project-specific training. Their contracts often have three-month gaps, and they all have to sign nondisclosure agreements.
Organizing efforts have been ongoing, and the desire is growing, according to Jessica Gonzalez, a longtime video game worker, former Blizzard employee, and founder of ABetterABK, a hub for organizers and sympathizers. When the Raven QA workers needed support for their grievances, they turned to Gonzalez and her platform of “current and former Activision, Blizzard, and King employees.”
Gonzalez has also posted some of the union-busting rhetoric that Activision workers have seen.
“Management has been dusting off the anti-union playbook,” Lane Windham, professor at Georgetown University, told me. An example of which are the mandatory anti-union meetings for workers, but also general anti-union propaganda.
Management at Activision is getting creative with it, as well. One source told me that the company uses Slack widely, and that there’s a channel for unionizers and allies called “ABK-Allyship.” Soon the channel was infiltrated by an anonymous account called “ABK Facts” that was used to post “union busting rhetoric” in the channel.
The workers did not take kindly to this, reacting negatively to the account’s posts and circulating a bingo card of anti-union rhetoric. The account “has never posted since.”
Like many organizing efforts, Activision workers are at a disadvantage, because federal labor law does not facilitate easy unionizing. Plus, “there are no penalties for [companies] breaking the law,” Windham said.
As the $70 billion Activision merger with Microsoft is pending approval and facing anti-competition claims, the strategy from management may turn to “delay, delay, delay,” according to Nelson Lichtenstein, professor of History at UC Santa Barbara. “Natural turnover robs the union of some of its people,” he told me, “and of course, some people get discouraged.”
Microsoft, like much of the tech industry, has not embraced union organizing either. In 2014, a group of 38 bug testers working for Microsoft’s temp agency Lionbridge successfully unionized and entered into contract negotiations. But Lionbridge laid off all of the workers in the union within a couple of years.
Nevertheless, there is tremendous momentum inside and outside of Activision. Vodeo Studios was recently the first American video game producer to unionize. And Activision itself continues to face ire from the public, including in a lawsuit as recent as this March that holds the company liable for an employee’s suicide.
For the workers though, it’s about winning more than one specific case. “Activision Blizzard needs to be held accountable for the toxic workplace culture that’s been plaguing the video games industry for years,” Gonzalez told me. “We need to be leading by example.”
