CoD Warzone employees are demanding better working conditions, saying: This makes for good games

A while ago, Call of Duty: Warzone developer Raven Software fired testers. This caused an uproar among the employees. Now they have formed a union and are demanding better working conditions. This should also improve the quality of the games.

This is the situation:

• At the end of 2021, Activision, the parent company of developer Raven Software, fired a number of testers, although they “did nothing wrong”.
• The remaining quality assurance employees then went on strike, but did not receive an answer for a long time.
• Now the employees formed a union to demand better working conditions. According to Bloomberg This is the “first union at major game companies in the United States”.

“Shorter development time sacrifices the quality of the project”

What kind of union is this? The Game Workers Alliance (GWA) is an association of 34 employees from Activision and Raven Software. They are part of the Communication Workers of America (CWA), the media industry’s largest union, according to Bloomberg.

The employees themselves are 34 members of quality assurance. The department is responsible for ensuring that games run smoothly and without errors – something that seems to be urgently needed in Call of Duty. Warzone and Vanguard were a “shambles full of bugs” at the end of 2021 and Vanguard’s Season 2 was even postponed to allow the team to work on bugs.

MeinMMO author Maik Schneider took a closer look at the whole situation. His assessment as a CoD expert is: Call of Duty is in its worst condition in years. With the demands of the GWA, that could change, at least in the long term.

What is the union asking for? The employees first ask Activision to recognize the union. That could prove difficult, however, as unions are frowned upon in the US and tech giant Microsoft recently announced it would buy Activision Blizzard. A union might get in the way.

The union wants management and workers to work together to create a “healthy and prosperous work environment.” In a series of Tweets the GWA speaks of several goals that they want to achieve. Among them are:

• Sustainability: Developers shouldn’t have to “crunch” to finish.
• Transparency: Management decisions should be communicated clearly.
• Equality: Quality assurance should receive the respect and compensation it deserves.
• Diversity: Minorities should have a voice.

When it comes to diversity, Blizzard 2021 has a huge scandal. It was about sexism and inappropriate behavior, a so-called “Frat Boy Culture”. The GWA wants to ensure equality.

However, the point of sustainability in particular sounds important here. The GWA emphasizes that reduced development time “sacrifices the quality of the project”. This means: the less time there is to complete a project, the more stressed the employees are. This also affects the game.

“Crunch” as a problem in development

What exactly is the problem? Often games are designed to meet specific deadlines in order to appear at specific times. The “holidays”, i.e. the holidays around Thanksgiving and Christmas, are popular here. Publishers expect particularly good income here.

However, this repeatedly forces developers to work overtime, a so-called “crunch”. A particularly public case was Cyberpunk 2077 (2020). The developers worked overtime there and many gamers didn’t care.

However, such circumstances usually have an impact on the games themselves. Cyberpunk 2077 was so broken when it was released that the PS Store took it out of the offer. Even more recent examples such as Battlefield 2042 show how too short deadlines cause unfinished games and bad ones.

Is there another way? Many indie studios would rather make a game good than make it out quickly. They are not bound by any publisher guidelines and can take as much time as they want. That’s why indie games do some things better than AAA titles.

But even with large studios, it is worth investing more time. The latest example here is Rainbow Six: Extraction. This resonates with gamers because it just feels “done”. Unlike Call of Duty or Battlefield, there are hardly any bugs. Even if the game doesn’t bring much “new” to it, it still delights fans just because it plays well.

However, there is also a downside here. Due to the postponement from formerly 2021 and the rather small release, Extraction hardly gets any attention. Gamers may need to get used to the fact that good games last longer. Or how do you see it?