Quality assurance workers at Activision Blizzard subsidiary unionize

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-05-23/quality-assurance-union-at-activision-blizzard-subsidiary

by dangle1 • 4 years ago

134 64 4 years ago

falcolas2• 4 years ago

Good on them. From my experience, QA, especially game QA is looked down upon by leadership and developers - peers - alike. Collective bargaining can only help them.

TameAntelope• 4 years ago

I really try to be understanding, but my time in QA, working with QA as a dev, and then organizing testers on a team has not left me with many favorable memories.

paulryanrogers• 4 years ago

In what sense? With the company treatment of QA? QA team behavior?

bsnal• 4 years ago

Well, QA is what it is.

JaimeThompson• 4 years ago

That doesn't mean they have to be treated like lesser beings.

seneca2• 4 years ago

From my experience, QA, especially game QA is looked down upon by leadership and developers - peers - alike.

If you have a dedicated QA team that is staffed by people who don't write software, those people are at best technicians. They are not peers of the engineers, they're a different job function with a much much lower barrier to entry. They're closer to the customer support team than they are to engineering.

That's not to say that they are somehow undeserving of basic respect. They are (as are support personnel), but given the choice between QA and engineering, almost anyone would choose engineering. The reason QAs aren't on engineering teams is that they can't pass the interviews. The inverse is not true.

None of that is to bash QA. But pretending they're peers of engineering and lamenting that they aren't treated as equals is just based on a fantasy.

mrpopo2• 4 years ago

But pretending they're peers of engineering and lamenting that they aren't treated as equals is just based on a fantasy.

You have just built an elaborate strawman. No one argued for equal rights/equal salary/equal treatment of QA people with their dev peers. They are just looking for better work conditions and better job security.

wincy• 4 years ago

In my experience a QA is to an engineer what a nurse is to a doctor. They take measurements and can have a good eye for what might be going on, but they don’t know the code. A QA automation engineer is more like a nurse practitioner.

It doesn’t mean they aren’t smart but if they could write code they would, unless you’re working somewhere that compensates QAs and engineers the same (which I’ve never seen). Had a QA coworker try to learn to code and he just couldn’t quite get it.

de_nied• 4 years ago

But pretending they're peers of engineering and lamenting that they aren't treated as equals is just based on a fantasy.

Being QA is not that much different from engineering. During my childhood I quite enjoyed breaking games if I could. I hated being restricted, and I loved hacking[1] them. Speedrunning works much in the same way. This is what lead me into engineering. Of course one requires much more education, but I'd argue that the time, dedication, and thought process is about the same.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_culture

bombcar• 4 years ago

The workers at Raven Software, which is a Wisconsin subsidiary of Activision, voted to form the union Game Workers Alliance with the Communications Workers of America. Nineteen workers voted in favor of the union, with three voting against, the National Labor Relations Board tallied Monday. Two additional challenged ballots were uncounted, but do not change the outcome.

A small group but maybe if it doesn’t cause the death of the world it will continue.

The small team makes a game called “Call of Duty” so it’s definitely up from an indie studio.

outside12342• 4 years ago

Will be interesting to see if this expands up into Activision

nhinck2• 4 years ago

Just QA for some parts of Call of Duty.

outside12342• 4 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20220523223728/https://www.latim...

charcircuit3• 4 years ago

I'm sure you can find 19 people who want to be paid for playing video games. There are many places where QA isn't paid. It's an honor to help out the development of games and see things early.

turtledove6• 4 years ago

You aren't paid to play videogames. You are paid to test videogames.

It's asinine to think they are just playing the games - QA has complex skills necessary to succeed, from technical writing to careful test planning to cross organizational planning. QA is some of the least rewarding and most difficult work in a games studio.

It's like asking why camera operators in film sets "get paid to watch movies". We've decided we like games, so we better pay people for the labor in making them.

Fuck off with this "it's an honor" bullshit. It's work. It deserves good working conditions.

charcircuit3• 4 years ago

It's asinine to think they are just playing the game

There are bad parts of every job. The fun part of SWE is coding, but that doesn't mean I don't have to write design docs, coordinat between different teams, etc.

It deserves good working conditions.

I agree, but that doesn't mean you should make a union to do that.

seattle_spring• 4 years ago

Least rewarding? Sure. Most difficult? I'm not so sure about that one.

dang• 4 years ago

You broke the site guidelines with this. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. Note this one:

"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

A4ET8a8uTh0• 4 years ago

Eh. I will admit that this comment struck a chord a little.

It is a little upsetting, but I can see OP's perspective given that some people actually pay for early alpha access ( I am still annoyed at myself for purchasing BG3 demo that will come.. who knows when ).

This weird disregard for someone else's time is oddly widespread.

It is not an honor. It is a job. If you want it to be done well, one should be compensated for it.

chaostheory• 4 years ago

Despite the poor tone, he has a point. The most difficult part of manual game testing is the sheer boredom of extremely repetitive work. Given the game industry’s never ending allure, it’s much easier to replace every worker in it vs other industries. It’s probably the same reason why the pay for similar positions is historically lower than other industries.

ProfXponent5• 4 years ago

This is such a stupid and naive take.

QA is a valuable skill set that is regularly underpaid and overworked. A good QA team makes or breaks a project, and there are plenty of examples of this in modern gaming.

Fuck “honor”, whatever the hell that means, and pay people what they are worth.

The game industry needs to be reorganized around the people who make the games instead of finance them.

Aerroon2• 4 years ago

I disagree. I don't think a lack of a good QA team breaks a project. Modern gaming is actually a great example that it doesn't. A lot of (most?) video games released nowadays are riddled with bugs. And yet they still make a lot of money through sales, micro transactions, seasonal passes, dlc etc. Even when a game releases with no major bugs it doesn't attract new players who will spend money.

The game industry needs to be reorganized around the people who make the games instead of finance them.

I don't see how this would work. Somebody has to pay all the salaries, legal expenses, expensive equipment and software etc. Expecting people that want to work on video games to pull that kind of money out of pocket to fund a project that may or may not make any money is unreasonable. Nobody that wants to invest their money is going to give it to people who won't give them a return.

8note• 4 years ago

Sounds like you should start a mechanical Turk equivalent for video game testing?

charcircuit3• 4 years ago

Sites like that already exist.

turtledove6• 4 years ago

Good for them! More of this in the industry is needed, especially in game dev where workers are treated especially poorly.

Activision is likely to drag their heels on negotiating for years, unfortunately.

seventytwo• 4 years ago

Congrats to them!

phendrenad2• 4 years ago

Unions seem to result in people staying at the same job for longer, right? It'll be interesting to see what happens when the same QA team works together for a long time, instead of the company laying everyone off as soon as the wind blows the wrong direction.

Manuel_D5• 4 years ago

"Have unionized" as in, have formed a group to represent themselves collectively? Or, as in all QA developers at Blizzard now have to be a dues-paying member of this new QA union?

What strikes out at me is that only 19 of the 350 people at the company are unionizing. It's as though someone like specifically release engineers are going on strike, and 80+% of other developers are not. What keeps the company from just reassigning building releases to the other 80% of the developers?

Quality assurance workers at Activision Blizzard subsidiary unionize

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