“Activision Blizzard is carefully reviewing the request for voluntary recognition from the CWA, which seeks to organize around three dozen of the company’s nearly 10,000 employees. While we believe that a direct relationship between the company and its team members delivers the strongest workforce opportunities, we deeply respect the rights of all employees under the law to make their own decisions about whether or not to join a union.
Across Activision Blizzard, we remain focused on listening closely to our employees and providing the improved pay, benefits and professional opportunities needed to attract and retain the world’s best talent. Over the past couple of years, this has included raising minimum compensation for Raven QA employees by 41%, extending paid time off, expanding access to medical benefits for employees and significant others, and transitioning more than 60% of temporary Raven QA staff into full-time employees.”
Earlier this week, Microsoft announced its intentions to purchase Activision Blizzard in a massive $68.7 billion dollar deal. If the union is successful, it would later have to negotiate with Microsoft.The formation of a union comes in the wake of several public protests related to Raven and Activision Blizzard. Last summer, the state of California sued Activision Blizzard after a two-year investigation, exposing, among many things, a “frat boy” culture. Then, this past December, Activision Blizzard unexpectedly laid off a number of quality assurance testers at Raven not long after a number of them had moved to Wisconsin, where Raven is located.Support for labor organizing is on the rise in video games, following the formation of North America’s first video game developer union, and an industry poll suggesting a majority of game developers would support a broader shift towards unionization.Follow Patrick on Twitter. His email is patrick.klepek@vice.com, and available privately on Signal (224-707-1561).If you work at a video game company and are talking about (or thinking about talking about) unionization, I want to hear what those conversations are like. My secure email is patrick.klepek@protonmail.com and my Signal number is 224-707-1561.