Activision Blizzard said today’s announcement had nothing to do with those labor efforts. “This conversion of nearly 1,100 QA workers at Activision and Blizzard does not have any relation to the petition pending at Raven studio,” a spokesperson told Gamesindustry.biz. “The Raven situation is limited to Raven. The testers whose contracts weren’t extended were welcome then, and now, to apply for any jobs at the company.”

A spokesperson for the CWA disagreed, however. “Make no mistake, all credit for Activision Blizzard’s latest move to give all temporary and contingent QA team members full-time employment and a raise should go to the workers who have been organizing, mobilizing and speaking out,” secretary-treasurer Sara Steffens said in a statement. “It’s especially galling then that Activision has excluded Raven Software QA workers, who have been at the forefront of this effort, from these benefits. The company’s assertion that the National Labor Relations Act prevents them from including Raven workers is clearly an effort to divide workers and undermine their effort to form a union.”

Advertisement

Warzone and other Call of Duty games have been criticized by fans in recent months for performance and quality issues. Organizing workers at Raven said last year that development efforts would be hampered by Activision Blizzard’s decision to lay off over a dozen QA staff in late January rather than convert them to full time.

The company is also currently awaiting a shareholder vote to approve its recently announced sale to Microsoft for $69 billion. The tech giant said it would not get in the way of any potential unionization agreement that is reached in the meantime. The FTC, which also has to approve the acquisition, will reportedly factor the potential impact on workers’ ability to unionize into its decision.

Advertisement

Update: 4/7/22, 3:47 p.m. ET: Added statement from CWA and more context around Raven QA being excluded from Activision’s new $20 minimum hourly rate.