The image is from the website of the publisher of the video game "Call of Duty."
One of the studios responsible for Call of Duty's success is laying off QA testers that are reportedly earning $17 an hour for their work on the franchise. According to reports by Kotaku and The Washington Post, Raven Software has laid off a third of its contract quality assurance testers.
Austin O'Brien said that team members were being called into individual meetings to be told if they would still have a job on January 28th. The company has laid off about a third of its testing staff, but it is possible more could follow. The Post quotes an anonymous contractor who said that everyone was told that they did nothing wrong after being told the bad news.
A Better ABK says that many employees moved to Wisconsin without getting help from the company. The company promised raises to team members after it restructured its pay structure, but it may be a lie, as Kotaku reports that the workers who get to stay will receive a raise from $17 an hour.
The people were asked to move to Madison. On January 28th, they are out of a job.
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Our team does incredible work but this will increase their workload and cause them to lose their sense of purpose.
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If you know of any open positions in the industry, please share them.
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Austin O'Brien posted on December 3, 2021.
Some of the people that he spoke to won't know their status until next week, which means they'll have to endure an uncomfortable weekend before they find out if they'll have to spend the holidays job hunting. The studio's developers learned about the layoffs via word of mouth, instead of an official announcement, according to a report.
I've been in touch with many of the Raven testers. The company is letting them know if they're being laid off. They head into the weekend not knowing if they still have jobs because their meetings don't start until next week.
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December 4, 2021.
As Kotaku points out, a pattern of layoffs has been shown by the company. Bobby Kotick, the company's CEO, announced that the company's financial results were the best in the company's history. The company laid off around 50 employees, giving them three month's severance and $200 Battle.net gift cards, after Kotick received a large amount of money. The second largest game launch of the year was Call of Duty: Vanguard.
The company has been in the spotlight for having terrible work conditions and for not acting on claims of abuse and sexual assault from employees. Kotick had a history of harassment and there are allegations that he knew about it. The expansion to Call of Duty: Warzone will be released in less than a week.
The company didn't reply to the request for comment.
