Activision QA Workers Vote to Form Largest US Video Game Worker Union to Date

https://www.ign.com/articles/activision-qa-workers-vote-to-form-largest-us-video-game-worker-union-to-date

by toomuchtodo • 2 years ago

207 54 2 years ago

https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/quality-assurance-worker...

glimshe• 2 years ago

I wish good luck to the new union. I really do. At the same time, I fear for the outcome of this action: having worked for years in the game industry, game QA is one the game industry's jobs with lowest entry barrier, employing the least paid and qualified professionals. I know a lot of great and hard-working people doing game QA, but they are among the easiest to replace and outsource. This actually explains why they would want to create a union, and we will all now see what happens.

actionfromafar• 2 years ago

What is your fear exactly?

Avicebron• 2 years ago

I'd imagine the fear is they get crushed, replaced with the cheapest option available located in a place with even less rights. And everyone moves on with the narrative and another move towards labor rights dies with a whimper

mysterydip• 2 years ago

Probably something like this: https://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-music-layoffs-google...

ldoughty• 2 years ago

It's not uncommon for businesses to "realign their business strategy" in a way that fires everyone in the union...

In this case, as the parent stated, outsourcing would be a likely outcome

_cenw• 2 years ago

from what I heard from PirateSoftware about working QA at Blizzard making you a second-class citizen (and working at Blizzard in general sucks) and a friend who worked at a Call of Duty studio as QA who got treated bad enough to be a "stress casualty" (and never returned to the games industry) their standing can only improve.

elif2• 2 years ago

Yeah if they push too hard, more developers will go the "early access IS QA" route. game devs have already started gamifying bug reporting for in game loot, skins, etc.

No one is more eager or qualified to give feedback about games but the gamers themselves. The downside in this industry is minimal. No one can sue a game dev if a bug slips out, assets can be rolled back or whole systems changed to negate their impact with no recourse available to consumers.

MichaelZuo2• 2 years ago

All the widely anticipated games have more than enough folks nowadays willing to endure through janky private alphas and betas. So much so that it's common for a lot of bugs identified in later beta stages to not even be fixed.

So a large QA team is only needed nowadays for games that nobody is really that hyped about, or games that cannot risk any chance of plot-lines/art leaking before release.

ryandrake• 2 years ago

QA is not just about running the software, observing problems, and filing them. As you say, eager beta testers can do that!

QA is also about: 1. Exploring every corner of the software, comparing it to the written spec, and measuring any discrepancies, even those not visible to the user. 2. Exploring beyond the corners of the spec and using that exploration to improve the documents. 3. Writing software to automate this exploration and to automate defect-finding in general. 4. Fuzzing and other “red team” penetration testing. 5. Participating in design reviews and contributing towards the testability of the product. In other words working side by side with the developer to ensure the hooks are there to make the software testable and automatable. 6. Monitoring metrics and telemetry to find trends that are emerging post-deployment and getting them documented and reported before they are widely noticed.

And so on.

QA should be a highly skilled, highly technical job, a level equal to developers. If QA at your company is just waiting for a new build to get thrown over the wall so they can manually test it in a vacuum, your company might be doing it wrong.

jayd165• 2 years ago

Actual QA and the fan feedback are just not the same. For one, you won't get hate mail from QA when something is nerfed.

scrps• 2 years ago

Even early access fails for QA. I was randomly selected for a private beta of a game, played it, sent feedback, about 20+ bugs none of which were fully game breaking but I'd say some were pretty severe... Every bug was present on release. Every. Bug.

Corporate thinking being what it is, I don't hold out hope they will ever learn you can't lean and bean-count a creative industry, it isn't a widget factory.

Upside is when they lean so much their financials get shakey because gamers are staying away you can pick up their entire catalog for 75%+ off, even better if you pick a game with a solid mod community that patches and adds functionality.

dotnet00• 2 years ago

With how common extremely buggy, near unplayable releases are these days, I'm surprised QA testing is still a thing at AAA studios, because it certainly doesn't show.

ffsm8• 2 years ago

It doesn't show because the management has the same opinion as glimshe.

That's opinion is wrong though, because testing is more then just playing the game a little.

You get the same issues in companies that straight up don't value tests whatsoever. Unsurprisingly, bugs become increasingly frequent, especially if the software is developed by multiple people.

Methodically testing something in a reproducible manner, potentially through scripting to enable regression testing is challenging, in some cases more challenging then writing the code/behavior you're testing.

glimshe isn't wrong about how hard this is going to be for the QA people though. These companies don't value quality, which is precisely the reason why they're hiring the people that are easiest to replace. Most QA workers currently just go through the motions of a "manual acceptance test", with the result you just mentioned.

CharlesW• 2 years ago

I think “blame QA” would be a valid response if QA had actual power to delay product launch dates in order to meet quality standards.

kevingadd• 2 years ago

It's largely outsourced to cut costs, you get what you pay for.

jayd165• 2 years ago

Good QA is not easily replaced but it's a job you under hire for a large part of the game lifecycle. It's cheaper to gut the team after a release and bite the hiring cost on the next game than to hold on to them. You don't need a legion of folks testing a prototype.

Pretty sad because good QA folks provide a lot of value despite what I'm reading in some of the other comments here.

bmicraft2• 2 years ago

Well, if they have to keep their QA team employed now, maybe it will lead to a longer testing period before launch. One can dream.

whateveracct• 2 years ago

I was in a union as a grocery store bagger. That seemed to work.

horrysith• 2 years ago

Just leak the source code so we have stuff to read through already

xchip• 2 years ago

Good call, if executives are against this is because it gives you an edge when negotiating with them

project2501a• 2 years ago

Go QA! Next, sysadmins turn LOPSA into a union!

anticensor• 2 years ago

Hmm, Guild Of Professional System Administrators.

reassembled• 2 years ago

I worked in game testing at two major Japanese game companies in the Bay Area for a few years before switching to doing QA in the video industry. As game testers we’d write up a ton of bug reports but generally only the most egregious crashes and console manufacturer’s standards violations would get fixed (think using the wrong Sony or Microsoft terminology or symbols in the game UI).

By the time most games reached our offices for testing they’d already undergone most of the core testing in Japan or at their developer’s studios. We were essentially just there to make sure last minute bugs didn’t slip through the cracks. Management rarely prioritized gameplay or even functionality bugs to be fixed, unless it was easy to reproduce and clearly prevented overall progress in the game.

We shipped one big fighting game and wrote up a bunch of bugs that clearly showed that online play was nigh-unusable, and nothing got fixed. The game came out and was ripped apart in reviews for the low quality of its net code. But it had a bunch of single player modes that were rock solid so they let the online modes slide. This was a few years before fighting game developers started seriously considering the importance of online play, and taking major steps to improve its quality.

Activision QA Workers Vote to Form Largest US Video Game Worker Union to Date

Related Stories