December 2007, Vivendi Games merged with developer Activision, forming Activision Blizzard. Nearly a year later, we get an email from a reader who claims to have been a QA Tester at Vivendi until the company merged. The full email is after the jump and (if true), it should provide an insight from how the merger was perceived by those on the ground.
I worked as a QA Tester at Vivendi until they got bought out by Activision (The Satanic equivalent of Wal-Mart but for Video Games). I don't have any really great news about ActiBliz as I have been laid off, along with many others. But I do have this picture (it's the sign on the QA floor at Vivendi Games) that I think is a funny representation of the final days at Vivendi before Activision went all Rambo on our asses and gutted the company. You don't have to go to any length to post it but I know about 150 recently unemployed gamers would get a kick out of it. It was sad to see Vivendi go, even from a peon QA tester's perspective. I know I personally was shocked, as well as many others, that Activision didn't keep Ghostbusters and Brutal Legend (while keeping Ice Age?! wtf). 50 Cent: Blood on The Sands, Riddick: Escape from Dark Athena, and World In Conflict have all found companies to publish them and supposedly Prototype is going to be tested on again soon (after about a half a year of inactivity). Activision is sleazy though and I'm not just saying that because I got laid-off, I'm saying it because Bobby Kotick is a douchebag whose master plan is to dominate the industry, replacing innovative games for real hardcore gamers with easily-marketable generic washed-up CRAP for the masses. The final days were really funny though, like a bad episode of survivor where the QA floor was an island and people were trying hard to form alliances in the hope of gaining immunity (from unemployment).