At Activision Blizzard, there are once again dozens of layoffs happening. Many quality assurance employees are being let go.
A new day, a new negative headline from Activision Blizzard. Just in time for the start of the Advent season, Activision Blizzard is currently in the process of laying off a number of employees. Over a dozen have already been terminated, while others are still worried about their jobs.
What happened? According to a report from The Washington Post, from December 3 to December 8, some employees from Raven Software are being called in for private discussions. The topic is whether the employees will be laid off or transition to a permanent position. Over a dozen employees in quality assurance – more than a third of that area – have already been informed about their termination.
Raven Software is a studio of Activision Blizzard and is primarily responsible for games such as “Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War” and “Call of Duty: Warzone”.
Employees in quality assurance, often referred to as “QA”, are essentially game testers who thoroughly check content. They write bug reports and frequently replay certain segments over and over again to test all eventualities and discover errors or problems that might not have been noticed by the developers.
QA employees are important for the vast majority of games, but often have the unjust reputation that their job only consists of playing video games.
“It’s embarrassing to work for Activision Blizzard”
An anonymous employee told the Washington Post that they feel “hurt and betrayed.” Most of the employees who were called into meetings have been terminated and were told that they had “done nothing wrong.”
Austin O’Brien, one of the community managers at Raven Software, stated on Twitter that he feels “burned out.”
He says:
My friends in QA at Raven were promised for months that Activision was working on creating a better pay structure and increasing their wages.
Today, one after the other, key team members were called into meetings and told that they are being laid off.
Apparently, even the project leads in QA were not aware of the upcoming layoffs, as another employee (Evan Avillanoza) reports:
Our team is devastated and absolutely no one will want to work, even if promoted. I had been thinking of leaving anyway, due to the reputation that Activision has earned in the past and I just don’t want to support this company any longer. … In my opinion, it is embarrassing to work for Activision.
The affected employees will still work for Activision until January 28, but can leave the company earlier if they wish.
