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Execs don't get wages, because that's taxable income and taxes are for poor people. They get stock options and other forms of compensation that don't get taxed.
@@accelerator8558 that's how it works. This is the "loophole" people keep talking about. You bet your ass if I knew how to do it properly I would too. F taxes.
My son worked at EA as a QA person, he did his work and kept asking for more, some weeks by Tuesday afternoon he had finished all the work he had been allocated for a week. Yet his supervisors seemed to think he was troublesome because he was more efficient than the other employees. He was being paid about the same as workers at McDonald's. They eventually parted ways. It's tragic: game companies don't even know how to recognize talent, and they hire friends of friends, etc. and if one employee is more efficient than the other ones it's the productive one who gets flagged. I can't imagine how much money is wasted due to having hired the wrong people at higher levels.
Sounds about right with activison I met somebody who work in one their projects from 2014 from what he me told was about the same with how they treat their employees in disregarding them
It's the nail that stands up that gets hammered down. Weak minded people do this, instead of capitalizing on said talent and being the name that found them. Yeah, everyone remembers Rocky when I mention the movie, but I'm willing to bet plenty of people still know who Mickey is. Be someone that people want to thank on their way up, and maybe they'll float *you* a couple hard-sought tiers when they land.
Yup, totally real. I used to work as a debt collector for an autoparts company, by the time i get to them i had over 5 years of experience in the field and for me was quite easy, so My normal job was 8 to 6:30 and sometimes by 3 i was out of work, the boss actually called clients multiple times to confirm that i did My visits cause she didn't believe i was that fast, instead of being happy with my work she basically keep inventing new tasks for me to keep me busy cause You know if i do all My job well and quick i must be lazy.
This sounds pretty standard in a lot of corporations. There is such a thing in corporate america as doing too good a job. There's people out there who will view workers like your son as a "showboat", or a "kissass". Somebody who's making waves and making "the team look bad".
ALL rich people are above the law. People underestimate just how easy it is to bribe people. Either you bribe the police to destroy the evidence or you pay an assassin to murder the police refusing to be bribed AND destroy the evidence. Even if 4 out of 5 cops in the police department are never gonna accept a bribe you can just pay the 5th cop to kill the other 4. The only thing that changes is who you pay and how much the going rate is. This scales all the way up even to the point of bribing politicians to pull strings and there is nothing you or anyone can do about it. The only time rich people actually lose is if they get assassinated as death is the only thing that doesn't care how much money you have.
Everyone can get away with a lot of things, money or not. The difference is that CEOs, in their corrupt mindsets and power trips, actively spend time, effort, and resources, to find every possible legal loophole to do whatever they want to do while avoiding legal trouble. The common layperson (such as myself) or what have you don't typically tend to spend as much time, effort, or resources, on finding those loopholes and the like. We're too busy trying to make ends meet and do other things we find more important. Where there is a will, there will be a way. The morally sound layperson won't feel as insecure in their actions so as to look for those loopholes that morally corrupt CEOs and similar would look for because they fear the ramifications.
This reminds me of when there was an explosion at an oil facility and they listed lost assets with 1 fatality. The lost assets were dead contractors whom companies don't even consider people. The 1 fatality was a manager.
It may be the case that the oil facility had pre-paid the contracting costs, pre-paid expenses are included on an entity's balance sheet as an asset. Still messed up, accountants are weird people. Source: Former Accountant
@@rockon8174 I'm assuming you're replying to me. I never worked for an oil company as an accountant, only ever did external audit. I'm not vouching for the oil company, even I know they're pretty unethical by the looks of things. All I know is that there are international accounting standards used in the preparation of financial statements by corporate entities, in Burgerland those accounting standards are called GAAP, everywhere else Accounting Standards are set by the IASB in London. The oil company probably had to prepare a release to their investors in the wake of the explosion, which would've included the amount of loss to FTE headcount (not including headcount of contracting firm) and the amount of impairment included against their prepaid expense (asset on balance sheet). I'm definitely not defending the oil company, I don't even know which one they are, I'm just saying that (while still impersonal) there are details that most non-accountants don't even pick up on. Not defending the loss of life, but if it helps others to be a devil's advocate at times...
If Activision Blizzard can afford over $200 million bonuses in CEO pay, they can afford higher salaries and better working conditions for their employees
Hell, they should make a joint union with professional wrestlers. Imagine having Bobby Kotick deal with a Union Rep that could punt him through a wall if he goes too far, or Vince McMahon dealing with a team of nerds who could probably make him think that they could hack his steroid dealers' cell phones.
EA is bad because they're greedy. Actiblizz pisses all over them because they're greedy and cruel to their own people. All because a worm boy wants all the money for doing jack shit (compared to his employees). With Bobby the cruelty seems to be an essential part of his MO.
It's "funny" to see just how far companies can go before employees starts even considering unionising in the US. Meanwhile here in France people go on strike for monthes, and sometime years
All of American society and its politics regardless of political party is designed around empowering corporations & capitalists and causing precarity for workers. American politics have been aggressively anti-union for at least 30-40 years. Most ppl live paycheck to paycheck; without that paycheck you cant afford rent, you cant buy groceries, and without a job you probably dont have access to healthcare bc health insurance is tied to employment for many. If you protest you may lose your job. If you try to unionize you may lose your job. It's not technically legal but there are dozens of broad loopholes. The US doesnt house the homeless bc homelessness is a threat that is hung over the heads of workers. It's all very intentional. Even with this being the case, US capitalists still continue to push to acquire larger and larger shares of wealth. Cost of living, especially rent, rises faster & faster while wages remain largely stagnant across decades. In the midst of incredible inequality the federal minimum wage has not risen in over a decade and was already very low; it should now be approaching triple what it currently is, but doubling it is treated as a political impossibility. Anything that addresses the material needs of the workers and poor of America is treated as a political impossibility, if not laughable, by politicians and mainstrean media. The US economy is already at unsustainable levels of inequality, but inequality continues to increase year after year with direct contribution from the government. It's a death spiral that gets more dystopian all the time. Politicians are too corrupt to reckon with the reality, so they manufacture delusional alternate realities that appeal to the biases of the minority of the public they cater to and operate in these little bubbles. It all just keeps getting worse.
the right wing has a developed a cult of work in this country, where working as hard as possible for crumbs to make rich assholes like Kotick richer is seen as virtuous
I remember a quote from an old disney movie about ants and grasshoppers Grasshopper : "Those puny little ants outnumber us 100 to 1. And if they ever figure that out there goes our way of life! It's about keeping those ants in line" Perfect quote for Activision execs
All of the employees who aren't backing down after all of this are heroes. Thank you for standing up for what is right and finally giving the gaming industry the wake up call that's been needed for a long time.
Sadly, in the end, it will likely be the employees that suffer the most. Due to loss of hours, possibly being "let go" for whatever reason Activision comes up with to skirt the law.... Bobby K on the other hand, if he gets "fired" or "let go" will get a huge golden parachute worth millions and millions of dollars so he can live like a king. When you become untouchable money wise, there is a huge chance you will become a POS. Think about it. No matter what, Bobby will live a life of ultra luxury. His employees can feel like they "won" but... what did they win. They still struggle to support their families and Bobby will never ever have to wonder where the money for the next beach penthouse is coming from. The ultra rich don't learn lessons. When you are untouchable bank account wise, aside from getting thrown in prison (which is highly unlikely because, again, you make the rules with that much money..) there is no lesson for you to learn except "I've won in life and other people are my slaves". Sad but true. Welcome to capitalism!
@@pleasuretokill I suppose all it takes is one man with a gun to be in the right place at the right time and aim in the right area towards a man whom we all could do without and, well... *...Let's be honest with ourselves, we'll all look down on said person and condemn them with a thousand curses, but it's all expected PR fluff that, at the end of the day, hides our true relief and gratitude for getting rid of one of many giant leeches that plague the modern world, so I expect your answer to be in disgust, but our pleasure to be inevitable when it does eventually arrive to one as deserving as Bobby Kotick himself.* *After all, the right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. ;)*
@@pleasuretokill I mean I agree. I'm very anti-capitalist for those reasons. One of my most recurring anxieties is that when the climate crisis hits its peak and people are losing their homes and loved ones due to rising sea levels, unstable temperatures, severe hurricanes and tornadoes, the ones responsible for refusing to do anything about it when it was preventable will be zooming off in their space yachts away from it all. Just thinking about it makes my blood boil. Bobby Kotick, Bezos, all of them. None of them give a fuck about anything and it's so irritating. That amount of power and greed just never mixes well with humans...
@@CrimsonOptics The point I'm trying to make here is that hopes/dreams don't matter at all. The ultra rich rule this world and there's nothing you or I can or will do about it. Reality is that "Its good to be king". When you are, you are untouchable and you live the life of a God while here on Earth. Hate them or do your best to become them. Either way, you arent going to defeat them. (If you can't tell, the above is a complete anti-Capitalism campaign!) In our current system, you have one choice.... acknowledge your masters and lick their boots. Thats it! Enjoy your choice! They will get richer and rule over you and I even more. Now, if we got violent and ushered in a new system.... well....
@@RCmaniac667 at least the people are working on these games would have a more healthier environment to work in. This was never about “making better games”
I hope they do. But I dunno how well unionizing is gonna work. Like I'd prefer that over anything, but I feel like any attempt is gonna be shut down the second the media looks away from it.
This last decade, Activision prove to be one of the most greedy, predatory and out of touch publishers ever. At this point, it's too late for redemption. Might as well shut down Activision for good, and clean this filthy stain off the gaming industry.
@@sytherwusky If those people are threatening to unionize then its common sense as those billions of dollars they just made will be the last you will ever see come out of them.
@@Hybris51129 thats a load of bullshit. Speaking from direct experience, unions make companies plenty of money, they are just making sure employees get their cut as well. You would be disgusted by the pay-to-profit ratio of these companies, they can afford it.
@@moronicalmeister LOL! A textbook example of blind loyalty to the union. Ask the oil field workers how that worked out for them the keystone pipeline. Or the retiring UAW guys during the bailouts. The unions serve the union agenda and take power away from the employees and employers, it is a story that we have seen play out too many times in too many fields to believe the decades old propaganda that some how they are still a relevant concept.
Just want to say this now, I have waited for years for something like this to happen and it's finally happening. And it puts a big old smile on my face. Eat your heart out Bobby Kotick, I hope you cry yourself to sleep.
I’ve heard arguments of the government getting involved, but they are same people who gave them power despite the “violent” video games. The ESRB is composed of video game publishers who make the rules with very little oversight. I know the ESRB just “rates” games but they also affect labor practices in the industry.
I donated what I was able to. It's the Christmas season, I just moved in August, I'm getting married next year and I had a mold outbreak in my storage unit, so money is a little tight right now. But I'm willing to do what I can to support this endeavor. The game industry slipped under the union radar for decades and took every advantage of it they could. It's time things change. I fully support these amazing people and I look forward to the day when I can proudly pick up the latest Blizzard game and know it was made by people in control of their own futures.
At this point, it just sounds like the company's days are numbered, and the executive leadership over there are milking as much money as they can before jumping ship to another publisher/company. It's sickening. On another note: _Sylvannas redemption arc_ - *“it's great work”*
Just wait until the union is equally as corrupt. It happens all the time. The only difference is now the union can save shitty workers from getting fired.
@@zozzledwolf4653 Look at the pay and benefits of a Teamsters Union worker compared to the average pay and benefits of those without a union. To say that Unions don't help employees is truly the opinion of someone who hasn't been in the workforce for very long or who hasn't been a part of a good union. Across the board they get paid better, have better benefits and better protection against scumbags like Bobby K. Are there some bad employees that benefit? Sure. I'd rather them benefit than some ultra rich corporate scumbag.
Boy does this protest fill my heart with absolute glee, activision is finally getting a wake up call and they are being made an example of for every other game company out there* (for odysseus) who condones the things bobby psykotic does. Dont get caught or it'll will be your ass 🙂
I wish I could believe he will actually be held accountable, but it's highly unlikely. At worst he'll leave the company and move to another company, still in an executive position and still making hundreds of millions of dollars.
I commend these guys for not flipping out at the news. Like destroying whatever was inside the office when they were unfairly let go. I would've lost it.
I really hope Activison employees unionize, that could set a precedent causing the whole industry to follow suit. The more power that can be taken away from those corporates the better.
@@Hiromashi1234 no it is not unionized is a way to gatekeep what devs belief are and who joins union if you.domt want to join Union treat you like garbage and if you do join but don't have there same political beliefs your screwed and if you personally have a problem and it Didn't effect the mass your complaint go unheard
From the sounds of it they basically fired a bunch of established QA testers and made a bunch of temps permanent employees to take their place so they can save money. This is definitely not a smart move since their biggest problems revolve around their games being buggy. People need to stop buying their games period until the people up top get fired and replaced. Otherwise it'll just get worse.
Exactly, when you need to keep raising wages of long lasting employees, the greedy higher ups will see a quick swap out for cheap new blood as the obvious option. I used to work in a company like that. Hiring kids right out of school and kicking them to the curb before they're 20 to avoid having to give them a raise. As for the bugs, isn't it a sick standard these days that all games release in a horrifically buggy state that they can just patch up later? Looking at Todd Howard at how casually that factor of gaming is treated. With live service models continually raking in more and more money, that release now and fix it later mindset is only spreading wider.
Must me new here doesn't matter who's at top as long as investors exist in this industry the push for more profits at all costs will continue till the end of time this is the beginning of the second video games crash like we had in the Atari era
Unions should be the norm not the exception when you are dealing with massive companies like this. They are the only way billionaires will acknowledge the rights of workers.
@Lalana is it better to have relatively bad working conditions or no job and the new workers have no rights and it destroys our economy and strengthens China's?
Unions aren't the issue, creepy fucking suits drinking breastmilk from their female employees and sexually exploiting a woman to the point where she commits suicide amongst other horrible exploitative things blizzard and Activision have done are. You guys would advocate slavery if conservatives said it was going to stop China lmfao delusional fucking people dude. Who do you fucking think told you these things about unions in the first place? Probably media controlled by billionaires XD
Problem - they don't want a worker's union for improved conditions, like leftists at other companies, what they're asking for is political control to remove non-leftists from the business and from the customer base.
The severe lack of trade/labor unions in the US is so baffling to me, especially in the video game indsutry. It's about time these people finally unionize! Best of luck and strength to all of them 🤞
@@socasack let's go down the list of best-selling videogames, shall we? :) minecraft: sweden GTA 5 : scotland tetris: russia wii sports: japan pubg: brendan greene is irish, a lot of the developers are korean, not 100% sure but it sure as hell isn't the US super mario bros: japan pokemon RGBY: japan mario kart 8: japan wii fit: japan get fucked
@@socasack "Best" is a very subjective term, but I'd rather choose a game with worse graphics, but from a studio that treats it's employees like human beings.
I'm sick to my ass of illegal anti-union actions (and they are illegal) being perpreated daily, nationwide, without consequence. What's the point of having labor laws if the government doesn't fucking enforce any of them?
From european viewpoint it looks so silly that americans basically dont have unions What exactly is your tool to enforce your side of the bargain? In here we can have almost entire sectors of industry shutdown by strikes if need be, and when it comes to that it usually works
@@joule400 Well we do have unions, it’s just that unfortunately there are law firms practically dedicated to busting unions here. So it’s pretty damn difficult to get one off the ground.
I worked at several places where, as part of onboarding, they would say that unions are bad and that joining one is bad. But they never say why they are bad, just that they are bad. The fact is, the gaming industry is ridiculous. They need to do something.
I worked for a company that had the CWA union come in, and help us unionize. They helped us tremendously! We got a raise, double time on major holidays (instead of time and a half), helped us get better equipment, and protected some good people from getting fired. All this stuff we asked for for years, and the company barely listened. Once we had the support of the union, most of what we were asking for happened within the first few months. It was an airline job. Envoy to put it out there. No longer work there, but damn did they help fix a lot of what was broken. 11/10 would recommend
Then the honeymoon period ends and realty sets in. The new equipment ages, the good people retire, and suddenly in order to do the same thing the dues grow just a little. Then the cycle continues as lesser people are moved up and the dues just keep going up. In the end the union with serve its own interests over that of the employee that created it and the employer that both created the circumstances for its creation and tolerated it thereafter. The destruction of the union is one of only two options alongside full automation (Obviously for now that doesn't apply to video game development) to counter 3rd world economies that are about to out produce our own economy through sheer pragmatism.
I love that the "growth at all costs" mentality is having all of its bullshit aired out. Unionization is the only option at this point for game devs. Otherwise EA and Ubisoft will clamp down hard to prevent this shit.
@@DragonShared sometimes, examples are often more effective than policing. Remember they used to hang people for crimes in the old West, and it often worked for a decent amount of time.
@@scottydu81 People need jobs to keep feeding their kids. If a company fails too much, sooner or later there will be no company. If all those workers could find another job I would completely agree with you.
@@otakuConn A few slackers are probably better than widespread sexual assault, globally low wages, physical abuse, death threats, wage theft, mass layoffs, corporate profiteering, etc etc etc
At this point, ActiBlizzard employees and even other Gaming Companies should make the most use of the situation and get what they need to continue within the Industry because the way this is going if nothing comes out of this, these companies will surely do multiple changes to have an even tighter grasp over their employees to never allow this to happen again!
Reality is 98% of their players don't care about this kinda news. Or do you expect that people who play COD or Candy Crush care about their employees or gaming news in general ? lol
@@IskandarTheWack not everyone walks out since there's no 100% you'll get paid if you do walk out, granted they stated indefinite, but howmany are walking out? when we saw it on the video it was around 250k that would compensate them (might be more now, haven't checked, but for the sake of the argument i'll use 250k) say for the easy examples an employee makes around 1k a month (no idea, just an example) if 300 people walk out, you're not getting an full months worth of money from the walk out, you might still get what you owed for the other days. On the other hand, you really think that they care in what state the game launches? Warzone had literally re-introduced the same glitch (stim glitch) like 4 or 5 seperate time after resolving the same glitch the same amount of times. They won't care, they know these things will at some point blow over, but honestly they have to start keeping an low profile.
@@DarkDyllon Great, 5 people can make each cod game on their own, can't wait till call of duty: stick figures. Activisions shares are also taking a huge hit.
I remember when Activision still had Bungie and the Forsaken Expansion for Destiny 2 brought the highest amount of sales in the entire franchise and Activision said it “didn’t meet expectations”
They set impossibly high expectations on purpose, both so they can have an excuse to punish workers for the financial success they brought the company, and bc most corporations subscribe to the absurd fantasy of constant growth; no matter how successful they are, they should always be making even more profit. This is why companies that are already making insane amounts of money suddenly fire large numbers of workers despite financial success, why the quality of their products suddenly takes a huge nosedive as they try to cut costs, why they are always trying to shake things up and create new modes of monetization; bc they always have to make MORE money.
The sole goal for a corporation is to suck up as much money as humanly possible for the top brass and shareholders of that corporation. Low level workers are nothing more than meat for the grinder. They aren't meant to be "happy". They are meant to be hard working fodder to make the ultra rich even ultra richer! (and don't say they are "needed" there is literally an endless supply. Lots of starving people need those jobs). If the company can afford to cut them, welp, that's one less person to pay a salary and benefits for. We can get the other worker bees to pick up that slack! Welcome to crony Captialism. System working exactly as intended.
All these employees deserve better. If Bobby Kotick is forced to step down that would be great. I hope they'll be a lot of great changes as a result of that. But if the corporates continue to shield him, then I hope that as soon as possible, all these devs get the chance to find space in other studios where they can thrive financially and creatively. Studios that won't treat them like s** objects as well as disposable robots. People like Bobby Kotick don't deserve these devs at the slightest and all these top execs deserve to go broke for their incompetence. I'm correcting myself from my previous statement I do not want Activision as a whole to go bankrupt because that will not solve anything in regards to the people who actually work there
Hope is a dangerous thing. if Bobby decides to be a captain sinking with this ship, to leave only when the company is bankrupt, well, he'll be vilified for life but everyone also loses, no one gets paid for a while. Hope. Hope that it only goes as far as the executives realizing that bobby is too much of a liability and forces him to step down before its too late
@@xMeatbalL420x We need new companies, Activision can die and go f* all their administrative management, only by punishing imoral actions it will guarantee to generate better companies.
Investors aren't necessarily the issue, they have a good mindset for the Heath of a company most of the time... The real issues have always been the executives\CEO's in charge.
As opposed to whom? I’d love to know where this idea that the people with zero financial stake should run the company. I own my business. When I was starting out, there were weeks when I had no pay. As in, I took NOTHING home. In fact, I still had to pay my employees, right? So I did by paying out of my savings. You see, when you’re an employee you get paid no matter what happens. I’ve yet to see employees in collapsing companies demand to be liable for the debt, strange, isn’t it? No, it’s only when the company is established and making profit that everyone wants to buy in. I am liable for my company’s debt, if it fails, my employees get their last check and walk away, while I go bankrupt. And you’re telling us that I should still be on the hook if it goes tits up, but if it is doing well then my employees should be in charge. It’s no different for a large corporation, save that there are many owners. And if it goes tits up, those owners lose their money, and the employees walk away with zero liability.
you know why? because it is the investors who put in the money and CEOs to manange those money. as long as who controls the money, nothing will change.
They think they hold all the power if every single person in the company walked out and threatend to quit all at once watch how fast all that power goes right down the drain and they wont be able to replace everyone that fast so they would be screwed but people are scared of losing their jobs and thats what they want so you wont speak up
@@SeasoningTheObese Anthem was announced way back but in reality only had 18 months of development time at most. The real mystery is where the original EA trailer came from, since basically no work had been done up to that point.
There was a time I though (and still think) "Evil never goes punished huh?" when seeing things that range from murders and politic stuffs, to even things like Bobby Kottick and other people ruining something like the videogame industry that is meant to be fun, turning them into their own agenda. I say this, because seeing this makes me believe that there may be some form of Justice.
Never relocate for a company unless they'll offer relocation assistance AND will put into writing that you're got guaranteed employment for at least one year. No company will and those shows how much commitment they have to you as an employee!
Its one thing if you are a 'seasonal' or contractor type worker expecting to only being doing small projects, its another to be utilized as a core member of development and then cast aside for no reason after investing time and energy into the team. Opportunity cost is everything, to a manager numbers on a page may matter, but as a Human Being your time on this rock is limited. So value yourself and make sure you find a company or project that shares your passions.
Reminds me of when my business studies course covered Human Resources. Originally built as a way to value the resources humans bring to a company and how to better mediate between company and employee needs, yet with time corporate manipulation literally made it into treating humans as the resource, an expendable and renewable resource.
shit like that is exactly why i think unions in the games industry is a bad idea, if everybody is disposable then unions will accomplish nothign other create another pressure group which is only going to make life working in the industry harder. If game devs get blocked by unions for not joining or having the wrong politics (more than already) than things will get even worse.
That's how it is you get fired after a year or 2 your contract gets terminated it's not about what work you did it's about not being an actual employee has benefits and such they don't want to deal with that so you get terminated that's just how the dice role back to finding a new job but instead these people complain why I don't know why the media is with this is very weird I don't Rember Yong yea covering the whole naughty dog thing when they did this or when almost all studio in gaming expt Bethesda for some reason
I'm such a Boomer I remember when Activision had cool easy going hippies running the show that coded great games like Pitfall! on the Atari 2600 console .... how things change ..... :(
@@full-timepog6844 yup they're long gone... I sometimes wonder what they think of what became of their legacy and what they could have done to avert it.
It's indeed ironic Activision in the 80's were the nerds fighting against the corporate suits. Long story short Atari didn't allowed developers to take credit for their work so game devs wouldn't got offers for other companies that were willing to pay them more so a bunch of Atari employees just gave them shaft and formed Activision which ended up being more successful. and now 40 years later they are the suits now. And yes I'm aware that virtually none of the OG Activision staff is around the company anymore but is still sad. IMO this happens to every studio sooner or later Blizzard went to a very similar process.
The executives need to be yeeted and the whole company ought to be made into a co-op run and owned by the workers. Look into a documentary called "The Take" from 2005, its about ordinary-ass people being gigachads and taking their jobs back from corporate bastards. Needs to happen across the whole bloody industry.
It does suck they lost their jobs, but what did they actually do because all the games coming out nowadays doesn't seem like QA teams are doing anything with all these games being broken on release ALL THE TIME.
With all the pressure from multiple sources, something is going to snap on Activision eventually. It can only bend so far. Kotick must either be incredibly drunk on power or self-aware that at this point no other company would touch him with a ten-foot pole if he left. At this point even most Presidents or CEO's would happily abandon ship with their golden parachute.
It has to be ego keeping Bobby stubbornly clinging on to the company. He's already more than set for life, even without the golden parachute he'd no doubt be happily handed if he'd just resign. He just can't stand to fail or be seen as a failure, so he's hoping to stick it out until it blows over.
@@pbjent The median lifetime earnings for people living in the US is 1.7 million dollars. The median life time earnings for those with a doctorate is 3.2 million dollars. Kotick is estimated to have 7-8 billion dollars of wealth. Even without gaining another dime, that's thousands of lifetimes worth of money so it's probably safe to extend how many generations could live off it even further.
Bobby: "What did you do?" Tester: "All the work for the week." Bobby: "You're fired. What about you?" Nervous employee: "I...uh...stole all the mommy milk." Bobby: "Now that man is a real go getter!"
Activision: "Why pay for QA testing when we can get paid for QA testing?" I mean, it's basically become an industry standard for players to pay for the privilege of being their QA testers.
@@Droogie128 yes and no. Dean Hall stated how long it would take, then a month after that he left... Now 7 years later while improvements have been made... The Arma 3 DayZ mod is more stable and less buggy, a mod is better than the stand alone title... The road map was presented as 2 years and again it's been 7.
The days of game testers being important are simply gone. Think how long it's been since a game came out without blatantly obvious game breaking bugs. Back in the ancient times when games got printed on CDs and a critical programming flaw would cost the company tens of thousands to reprint games, it was important to test these games to avoid immense losses. Now? Game comes out fucked up and they just roll out patches everyday for a week and all is good(sometimes). The players are the testers now, something they do for free. The sheer fact that activision still even has testers is mind blowing and I'm 100% certain it's something they plan to get rid of moving forward. I should note quality assurance is actually highly valued in other industries, because crucial software for business, banking and medical doesn't get a pass for being glitchy and broken.
I'm a software quality engineer. In my industry we are full-time salaried employees. In the gaming industry, 'QA' are usually contractors hired just to test a specific game. And testing usually entails testing one tiny piece of a level over and over ad nauseum. Once the game is finished, whatever QA is left is usually sent packing.
QA is often not allowed to even do their job in most companies as well. They are told not to talk to devs at all, so you never get the bugs they find reported and fixed, and thus you have current day video games.
@@Master_Viccc getting them for free obv doesnt make them revenue, but i agree with general sentiment - either dont play, or pay for any mechanics their games give. As long as they dont get any money - anything will work i guess
Don't ever let a company tell you a union is a bad thing, without unions there would be no minimum wage, no breaks of any kind and no one to stand up for the workers if any of them got into trouble.
That’s a bad idea, because once the union is gone and can’t muscle a corporation into accepting limits on how they treat their workforce and the rights of laborers, those limits and those rights will immediately disappear. Unions are not immune to corruption if they’re left totally unchecked and insular, but they are a vital and necessary part of a healthy and ethical economy.
I like how thorough your videos are in explaining everything. As someone who doesn't even work at Act/Blizz, this whole thing is just so frustrating to watch. Like it feels like there should be some law that should have him removed from the company at a legal standpoint, due to the facts and evidence in this case, it's criminal activity. Not just him, everyone involved, regardless of their position of the company. And all his minions on the board. They all should be put in prison.
Hell, yes. Heretic and its immediate sequel, Hexen, were the first major literal DOOM clones. Medieval theming, inventory, expanded physics, ambient sound, character classes, horizontal terrain movement, scripting, open multimap levels-all awesome additions to the classic DOOM engine.
THAT'S THE WAY!!! - Organize, Unionize, Socialize. The Developers and support staff - who are responsible for creation of the very products the corporation STAND'S ON - can take control of their work, efforts and reap the lions share of the benefits!
This all sounds like boss retaliation against the workers to me, which is a violation of labor law. They all need to file a unfair labor practice grievance with their states board of labor dept.
I’d say any time is a great time to unionize in the gaming industry since even good companies seem to be bought out by the worst parent companies and then they get run into the ground. Unionize so that your future and the future of your coworkers is protected!
It’s not about what was happening, it’s about feeling like they had agency. It’s a common symptom of abused people to think they can literally do no better and are stuck where they are, feeling like they’re powerless. The more the resentment has built over time and the more walk outs and sit ins that have happened over the past few years maybe emboldened them and helped them realize that they and their coworkers deserve more.
Oh it's a "termination" is it? Well if those people are terminated than I guess the terminated employees have no reason to not permanently terminate the "cash cow" they helped make. Seriously if this were me or my colleagues, I'd shred the codes for the projects I was working on.
@@Entropic_Meat_Machine Considering that things were done and made under the promise of better treatment/jobs/pay then have the rug pulled from underneath them, the company didn't uphold their end of the bargain. At that point all's fair in love and war.
It's about high time to unionize. There needs to be a body whose priority is workers being treated right to balance out the relentless profit motive of the corporation.
In company I work for fridge is open and people only touch things they bring in to the point that someone forgot cheese and it was expired for like 3 months. So it had to be there for more than half a year and nobody touched it.
All that "record year money" goes to upper management i.e. Board members, Cheif Officers, ect. They want their bonuses at all costs and don't give a sh** about anyone else. It's absolutely disgusting.
Its always amazed me that QA is treated in such disregard, and just honestly treated like crap. When QA is VITAL to a games development ahead of release and the initial success of the game
They don’t feel like they need qa anymore. Just release broken unfinished game and then we pay 60$-70$ for said game. Then make us the QA 😂 Getting paid for the quality assurance of their product It’s perfect. Maximization of cutting costs
Could’ve said so better myself. We shall see. To be honest that is so justice. Hope to see that guy get kicked out of the business (who would remain nameless). That starts with a “b” and ends with “k”.
I've work in QC/QA for decades and production managers always looks at QC/QA as a department that doesn't generate money and can only lose money for finding defects. If everyone double checked their own work we wouldn't need inspectors and testers. The only reason this hasn't happened is indusrtial standards require it. Less testers wil lead to less bugs being found yet QA will be blamed for any "escapes."
This action from Activision Blizzard feels like they're trying to punish their workers for daring to have them to acquiesce on a fraction of the dev's demands for better treatment. Grotesque.
These are the kinds of things you'd hear about in 80's cartoons. Like yes, the villain stole the breast milk of these mothers and now their children will go hungry unless Optimus Prime, Captain Planet, and the kids from the Magic School Bus stop them. Like what the actual fuck man
What I don't get is why the shareholders have not fired Bobby Kotick. The fact that they are waiting to see what happens, is another level of wrong entirely.
Yep I'm honestly shocked people took that as a good thing. Anytime I ever heard pay restructure I immediately started busting my ass or looking for a new job, because "restructure" means to shift around money. Not to ADD, to MOVE. That means the money is coming from somewhere and you can just about guarantee it's not coming from upper management. Most of the time it's jobs being rendered redundant or multiple similar jobs being condensed into less. They do have words for no danger raises mind you, stuff like "Base pay increase", "Blanket raise", etc. Not once has restructure ever been a positive one though XD
"Consider that you won't be able to represent yourself but the union will do it." Well, still probably better than talking to HR. I'm surprised they haven't hired Plank from Ed, Edd and Eddie to work at AB HR. It seems like that'd be just as good as the current HR.
@@TemhotaTech Even EA managed to release a couple of bangers over the past few years. By the way, I also heard that they're actually nice towards their employees
@@riatorex8722 Really? I thought they treated their workers badly. And I'm pretty sure they lay them off when they shut down a studio when a game fails. But when it comes to employees I presume they're nowhere near as horrid as Acti-Bliz.
Remember people. The employees and us customers hold all the power, because we have to. They will be no more if enough of us decide it. Their bullying and BS are exactly as stated, Fear tactics and its weak as hell. These overpayed scum bags wouldnt have money if it werent for us, and we can certainly take it away.
Unions are often just as corrupt. And they usually result in shitty performance at work because they know their corrupt union will protect them. If people think games are bad now just wait till the dev knows it basically impossible to fire them.
@@zozzledwolf4653 my aim isn’t to improve in work performance- I have been doing that for 15 years with no reward. My aim is to extract as much money as I can while I can, same way as the shareholders I work for. And currently there isn’t anything they can do to stop us.
@@craigthebrute1446 yeah they'll be great. Why should any industry care about their performance? Surely nothing bad will result from every industry across the board just getting lazy as fuck.
@@zozzledwolf4653 exactly. Why should we? We are living hand to mouth anyway. I don't own a house & never will. Hopefully you can join us in suffering when your stock portfolio plummets. I understand you aren't too keen, but it isn't so bad, really ;)
Hey there. Game Designer here that started as a QA tester. My first QA job was in an outsource company that provided QA for plenty of major AAA titles. I can tell you that such treatment is not exclusive to Blizzard Activsion, QA testers are treated like cheap workforce everywhere. Hiring 50 people just to fire them all 3 months later is a common practice all across the industry. After I quit the outsource company after over 2 years I joined a smaller AA dev studio which consisted of around 40 people back then. This is where it all went uphill. Not only my salary went up ( which is really ironic because the budget of the studio is less than 1% of what COD makes ) but also the respect I got from my coworkers. Developers respected me and my feedback about the game. My point is: You deserve to be respected as a QA tester as everyone outside these corporations know that being a QA is HARD WORK. You DON'T have to work for these corporate assholes, there is a place out there for each of you that will grant you decent working conditions and well deserved respect.
I hope you cover more stories like this to highlight workers rights and workplace conditions. I know many people don't see the impact it has on people and they just care about what video game they get at the end of the day. But highlighting this is important in building working class solidarity.
Thanks a lot for your dedication on covering this in such great detail, this topic needs to stay alive to add power to the employees that it is not them vs they, but everyone vs they
As a dev, I hope they unionize. Our profession is so imbalanced toward the corporation having all the power, leading to greed at the highest level screwing their workers out of a living or just making them miserable.
If you'd like to directly support Activision Blizzard employees, here's the Go Fund Me they set up to support striking workers: www.gofundme.com/f/abk-strike-fund
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The hole gets deeper
Execs: "We promise we will raise the wages."
Devs: "Finally."
Execs: "Not you guys. Us."
accurate
sad this is true
Execs don't get wages, because that's taxable income and taxes are for poor people. They get stock options and other forms of compensation that don't get taxed.
@@ahmataevo this sound even worse
@@accelerator8558 that's how it works. This is the "loophole" people keep talking about.
You bet your ass if I knew how to do it properly I would too. F taxes.
"Who needs testers when we have brainless consoomers willing to buy our broken products every year" - Bobby Kotick probably
*conzoomers
Yes. Where we pay developers to beta test their work
@@victorvargas9330 zoomers mostly dont have money so....
@@SorarikoMotone Zoomers smooch off their parents and their credit cards, so...
That's a fact. Starting with streamers without any kind of principles.
EA: “We are the worst game publisher in the world”
Activision Blizzard: “Look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power.”
😂
"Drinking milk from beans and cows like PEASANTS!"
We though EA selling gambling to kids was bad...we were so young
@@shydre Errr, it still is bad. Just because someone else did something worse doesn't make the other thing any better.
@@Eonflare55 I guess my sarcasm just doesn't translate some nights...
My son worked at EA as a QA person, he did his work and kept asking for more, some weeks by Tuesday afternoon he had finished all the work he had been allocated for a week. Yet his supervisors seemed to think he was troublesome because he was more efficient than the other employees. He was being paid about the same as workers at McDonald's. They eventually parted ways. It's tragic: game companies don't even know how to recognize talent, and they hire friends of friends, etc. and if one employee is more efficient than the other ones it's the productive one who gets flagged. I can't imagine how much money is wasted due to having hired the wrong people at higher levels.
Sounds about right with activison I met somebody who work in one their projects from 2014 from what he me told was about the same with how they treat their employees in disregarding them
It's the nail that stands up that gets hammered down. Weak minded people do this, instead of capitalizing on said talent and being the name that found them. Yeah, everyone remembers Rocky when I mention the movie, but I'm willing to bet plenty of people still know who Mickey is. Be someone that people want to thank on their way up, and maybe they'll float *you* a couple hard-sought tiers when they land.
Yup, totally real. I used to work as a debt collector for an autoparts company, by the time i get to them i had over 5 years of experience in the field and for me was quite easy, so My normal job was 8 to 6:30 and sometimes by 3 i was out of work, the boss actually called clients multiple times to confirm that i did My visits cause she didn't believe i was that fast, instead of being happy with my work she basically keep inventing new tasks for me to keep me busy cause You know if i do all My job well and quick i must be lazy.
This sounds pretty standard in a lot of corporations. There is such a thing in corporate america as doing too good a job. There's people out there who will view workers like your son as a "showboat", or a "kissass". Somebody who's making waves and making "the team look bad".
A bunch of lib arts majors being selfish and nepotistic??? Well color me surprised….
It never ceases to amaze me just how much a CEO can get away. They are literally immune to every single law in existence.
They probably don't know he exist they are out of touch
ALL rich people are above the law. People underestimate just how easy it is to bribe people. Either you bribe the police to destroy the evidence or you pay an assassin to murder the police refusing to be bribed AND destroy the evidence. Even if 4 out of 5 cops in the police department are never gonna accept a bribe you can just pay the 5th cop to kill the other 4. The only thing that changes is who you pay and how much the going rate is. This scales all the way up even to the point of bribing politicians to pull strings and there is nothing you or anyone can do about it. The only time rich people actually lose is if they get assassinated as death is the only thing that doesn't care how much money you have.
@@setcheck67 Gyaddaym Shadow the hedgehog, Very bleak o. o
In America you are above the law if you have enough money
Everyone can get away with a lot of things, money or not. The difference is that CEOs, in their corrupt mindsets and power trips, actively spend time, effort, and resources, to find every possible legal loophole to do whatever they want to do while avoiding legal trouble.
The common layperson (such as myself) or what have you don't typically tend to spend as much time, effort, or resources, on finding those loopholes and the like. We're too busy trying to make ends meet and do other things we find more important.
Where there is a will, there will be a way. The morally sound layperson won't feel as insecure in their actions so as to look for those loopholes that morally corrupt CEOs and similar would look for because they fear the ramifications.
Saying "these aren't layoffs these are terminations of contract" is like saying "it isn't murder, it's externally enforced cessation of life"
“I’m just sending them to heaven”
‘Compulsory euthanasia’
I’m ending their membership.
They’re not micro transactions they’re “surprise mechanics”
"It's not murder, we just stopped helping them stay alive"
This reminds me of when there was an explosion at an oil facility and they listed lost assets with 1 fatality. The lost assets were dead contractors whom companies don't even consider people. The 1 fatality was a manager.
That's so dark. Fuck.
That gives some new meaning to every company that uses that "The most important Resource at our company is our workers." line.
It may be the case that the oil facility had pre-paid the contracting costs, pre-paid expenses are included on an entity's balance sheet as an asset. Still messed up, accountants are weird people.
Source: Former Accountant
Which oil company. Source or you're just full of sh*t!
@@rockon8174 I'm assuming you're replying to me. I never worked for an oil company as an accountant, only ever did external audit. I'm not vouching for the oil company, even I know they're pretty unethical by the looks of things. All I know is that there are international accounting standards used in the preparation of financial statements by corporate entities, in Burgerland those accounting standards are called GAAP, everywhere else Accounting Standards are set by the IASB in London. The oil company probably had to prepare a release to their investors in the wake of the explosion, which would've included the amount of loss to FTE headcount (not including headcount of contracting firm) and the amount of impairment included against their prepaid expense (asset on balance sheet). I'm definitely not defending the oil company, I don't even know which one they are, I'm just saying that (while still impersonal) there are details that most non-accountants don't even pick up on. Not defending the loss of life, but if it helps others to be a devil's advocate at times...
I hope the entire industry unionizes. Game devs do all the actual work and these suits have been sucking the life out of games.
If Activision Blizzard can afford over $200 million bonuses in CEO pay, they can afford higher salaries and better working conditions for their employees
@@mattwong5403 well said. Bobby Kotick alone takes millions in bonuses each year and he's already a multi-billionaire.
Hell, they should make a joint union with professional wrestlers.
Imagine having Bobby Kotick deal with a Union Rep that could punt him through a wall if he goes too far, or Vince McMahon dealing with a team of nerds who could probably make him think that they could hack his steroid dealers' cell phones.
Welcome to capitalism!
Based
I never thought the day would come when I would say:
"EA is not the worst game company."
Lmao all major american corporations are trash
EA is bad because they're greedy. Actiblizz pisses all over them because they're greedy and cruel to their own people. All because a worm boy wants all the money for doing jack shit (compared to his employees).
With Bobby the cruelty seems to be an essential part of his MO.
At least EA can publish a decent game. And they’re willing to give independent developers a chance.
No matter, the both of them need to be gone for good.
At least some EA games are getting better.
It's "funny" to see just how far companies can go before employees starts even considering unionising in the US.
Meanwhile here in France people go on strike for monthes, and sometime years
All of American society and its politics regardless of political party is designed around empowering corporations & capitalists and causing precarity for workers. American politics have been aggressively anti-union for at least 30-40 years. Most ppl live paycheck to paycheck; without that paycheck you cant afford rent, you cant buy groceries, and without a job you probably dont have access to healthcare bc health insurance is tied to employment for many. If you protest you may lose your job. If you try to unionize you may lose your job. It's not technically legal but there are dozens of broad loopholes. The US doesnt house the homeless bc homelessness is a threat that is hung over the heads of workers. It's all very intentional.
Even with this being the case, US capitalists still continue to push to acquire larger and larger shares of wealth. Cost of living, especially rent, rises faster & faster while wages remain largely stagnant across decades. In the midst of incredible inequality the federal minimum wage has not risen in over a decade and was already very low; it should now be approaching triple what it currently is, but doubling it is treated as a political impossibility. Anything that addresses the material needs of the workers and poor of America is treated as a political impossibility, if not laughable, by politicians and mainstrean media.
The US economy is already at unsustainable levels of inequality, but inequality continues to increase year after year with direct contribution from the government. It's a death spiral that gets more dystopian all the time. Politicians are too corrupt to reckon with the reality, so they manufacture delusional alternate realities that appeal to the biases of the minority of the public they cater to and operate in these little bubbles. It all just keeps getting worse.
the right wing has a developed a cult of work in this country, where working as hard as possible for crumbs to make rich assholes like Kotick richer is seen as virtuous
@@iqbaalannaafi761 the American dream is for the rich and corporations
That might be because there's a history of state sponsored violence against unions in America. Unions in the US do not have nearly as many protections
You can easily go from having your home to being homeless very quickly in America
I remember a quote from an old disney movie about ants and grasshoppers
Grasshopper : "Those puny little ants outnumber us 100 to 1. And if they ever figure that out there goes our way of life! It's about keeping those ants in line"
Perfect quote for Activision execs
Bug's Life is political without being overly obvious about it. Back when Disney/Pixar were animation kings
@@charlescaulkins8306 Indeed it was...
It sums up how powerful people operate in general lol
Disney Pixar's A Bug's Life. You can still see it over on Disney Plus.
Perfect quote for 2021 politics as well...
All of the employees who aren't backing down after all of this are heroes. Thank you for standing up for what is right and finally giving the gaming industry the wake up call that's been needed for a long time.
Sadly, in the end, it will likely be the employees that suffer the most. Due to loss of hours, possibly being "let go" for whatever reason Activision comes up with to skirt the law.... Bobby K on the other hand, if he gets "fired" or "let go" will get a huge golden parachute worth millions and millions of dollars so he can live like a king. When you become untouchable money wise, there is a huge chance you will become a POS. Think about it. No matter what, Bobby will live a life of ultra luxury. His employees can feel like they "won" but... what did they win. They still struggle to support their families and Bobby will never ever have to wonder where the money for the next beach penthouse is coming from.
The ultra rich don't learn lessons. When you are untouchable bank account wise, aside from getting thrown in prison (which is highly unlikely because, again, you make the rules with that much money..) there is no lesson for you to learn except "I've won in life and other people are my slaves". Sad but true. Welcome to capitalism!
@@pleasuretokill I suppose all it takes is one man with a gun to be in the right place at the right time and aim in the right area towards a man whom we all could do without and, well...
*...Let's be honest with ourselves, we'll all look down on said person and condemn them with a thousand curses, but it's all expected PR fluff that, at the end of the day, hides our true relief and gratitude for getting rid of one of many giant leeches that plague the modern world, so I expect your answer to be in disgust, but our pleasure to be inevitable when it does eventually arrive to one as deserving as Bobby Kotick himself.*
*After all, the right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. ;)*
@@MasterLPG yeah. But the ultra rich know that 99.99% of all that is just talk and will gladly take the chance to be filthy rich. They win again :(
@@pleasuretokill I mean I agree. I'm very anti-capitalist for those reasons. One of my most recurring anxieties is that when the climate crisis hits its peak and people are losing their homes and loved ones due to rising sea levels, unstable temperatures, severe hurricanes and tornadoes, the ones responsible for refusing to do anything about it when it was preventable will be zooming off in their space yachts away from it all. Just thinking about it makes my blood boil. Bobby Kotick, Bezos, all of them. None of them give a fuck about anything and it's so irritating. That amount of power and greed just never mixes well with humans...
@@CrimsonOptics The point I'm trying to make here is that hopes/dreams don't matter at all. The ultra rich rule this world and there's nothing you or I can or will do about it. Reality is that "Its good to be king". When you are, you are untouchable and you live the life of a God while here on Earth. Hate them or do your best to become them. Either way, you arent going to defeat them.
(If you can't tell, the above is a complete anti-Capitalism campaign!)
In our current system, you have one choice.... acknowledge your masters and lick their boots. Thats it! Enjoy your choice! They will get richer and rule over you and I even more.
Now, if we got violent and ushered in a new system.... well....
Hopefully this will change positively in the gaming industry.
Games won't be better because of this
@@RCmaniac667 at least the people are working on these games would have a more healthier environment to work in. This was never about “making better games”
@@RCmaniac667 Game Quality isn't the main thing at stake here, it's human decency and workplace rights.
Guess again!
Lol wise up OP. One company in a pantheon of garbage
Imagine being fired for reporting that you don't feel safe at your workplace. Hope they all get something in return for this.
I hope they do. But I dunno how well unionizing is gonna work. Like I'd prefer that over anything, but I feel like any attempt is gonna be shut down the second the media looks away from it.
This last decade, Activision prove to be one of the most greedy, predatory and out of touch publishers ever. At this point, it's too late for redemption. Might as well shut down Activision for good, and clean this filthy stain off the gaming industry.
right?bobby kotick evolved into basically cartoon villian status
Devs: "Our game is a financial success!"
Boss: "Good. You're fired, now get the £uck out."
Could you imagine firing someone who made your company billions of dollars just because they were an egomaniac
They aren’t firing devs. They are firing QA staff.
@@sytherwusky If those people are threatening to unionize then its common sense as those billions of dollars they just made will be the last you will ever see come out of them.
@@Hybris51129 thats a load of bullshit. Speaking from direct experience, unions make companies plenty of money, they are just making sure employees get their cut as well. You would be disgusted by the pay-to-profit ratio of these companies, they can afford it.
@@moronicalmeister LOL! A textbook example of blind loyalty to the union. Ask the oil field workers how that worked out for them the keystone pipeline. Or the retiring UAW guys during the bailouts. The unions serve the union agenda and take power away from the employees and employers, it is a story that we have seen play out too many times in too many fields to believe the decades old propaganda that some how they are still a relevant concept.
Just want to say this now, I have waited for years for something like this to happen and it's finally happening. And it puts a big old smile on my face. Eat your heart out Bobby Kotick, I hope you cry yourself to sleep.
I’ve heard arguments of the government getting involved, but they are same people who gave them power despite the “violent” video games. The ESRB is composed of video game publishers who make the rules with very little oversight. I know the ESRB just “rates” games but they also affect labor practices in the industry.
Even if he leaves, he will have a severance package more than I will ever earn. So it not much of a kick in the butt.
He cant cry, he aint human.
@@victorvargas9330 LOL that is a good point.
@@tiewkiat all the money in the world doesn't change the fact that he's a piece of crap.
Activision PR be like: "This isn't sexual harassment, it's surprise foreplay."
This shouldn't be as funny as it is man
Lmao wow 🤣🤣🤣
I... I feel bad for laughing...
I donated what I was able to. It's the Christmas season, I just moved in August, I'm getting married next year and I had a mold outbreak in my storage unit, so money is a little tight right now. But I'm willing to do what I can to support this endeavor. The game industry slipped under the union radar for decades and took every advantage of it they could. It's time things change. I fully support these amazing people and I look forward to the day when I can proudly pick up the latest Blizzard game and know it was made by people in control of their own futures.
At this point, it just sounds like the company's days are numbered, and the executive leadership over there are milking as much money as they can before jumping ship to another publisher/company.
It's sickening.
On another note: _Sylvannas redemption arc_ - *“it's great work”*
Devs: We’re going to unionise.
AB: You can’t do that!
Devs: Why not?
AB: We’ll have to start treating you fairly and pay you well!
AB: "Oh the lies I've told! The lives I've *ruined*! Wait, this isn't helping me.."
Just wait until the union is equally as corrupt. It happens all the time. The only difference is now the union can save shitty workers from getting fired.
@@zozzledwolf4653 Look at the pay and benefits of a Teamsters Union worker compared to the average pay and benefits of those without a union. To say that Unions don't help employees is truly the opinion of someone who hasn't been in the workforce for very long or who hasn't been a part of a good union. Across the board they get paid better, have better benefits and better protection against scumbags like Bobby K. Are there some bad employees that benefit? Sure. I'd rather them benefit than some ultra rich corporate scumbag.
@@zozzledwolf4653 maybe do some research into the CWA Union before spewing generic anti-union rhetoric.
@@zozzledwolf4653 so they should just do nothing then? huh sounds like a good idea.....
When a company talks about "positive changes" they never mean the individual, they lways mean the company.
Cutting costs = more profit
Boy does this protest fill my heart with absolute glee, activision is finally getting a wake up call and they are being made an example of for every other game company out there* (for odysseus) who condones the things bobby psykotic does. Dont get caught or it'll will be your ass 🙂
Bobby Psykotic is a good name lmao
Since we’re wanting them to do something and chance, I guess we can say it’s a “Call of Duty”
There*
I wish I could believe he will actually be held accountable, but it's highly unlikely. At worst he'll leave the company and move to another company, still in an executive position and still making hundreds of millions of dollars.
@@lordodysseus thanks because thats the real issue here 👆🏼
Amzing how consistenly the Gaming Industry manages to be a micro-cosm of every single fucked up thing about capitalism
Gilded Age of Capitalism in the digital age, child raping robber barons with social media accounts.
@@CplYakob this ain’t capitalism, this is Kroney-Corporatism.
@@xostler this ain't poopism this is diarrheaism
@@josiah2224 thank you for understanding! Pooping is a completely normal and healthy way of life.
Diarrhea means there is an illness.
@@xostler Hit the nail on the head. Too much of anything can be bad, but that doesn't mean some of it can't be good.
I commend these guys for not flipping out at the news. Like destroying whatever was inside the office when they were unfairly let go. I would've lost it.
I really hope Activison employees unionize, that could set a precedent causing the whole industry to follow suit. The more power that can be taken away from those corporates the better.
And alot of employees will quite because that shit is the worst
@@EmperorDxD unionizing? It's literally what keeps this shit from happening
@@Hiromashi1234 no it is not unionized is a way to gatekeep what devs belief are and who joins union if you.domt want to join Union treat you like garbage and if you do join but don't have there same political beliefs your screwed and if you personally have a problem and it Didn't effect the mass your complaint go unheard
@@EmperorDxD You appear to be experiencing symptoms of propaganda overdose.
@@2020-p2z what propoganda I'm not on twitter and shit I learned this trough experience
From the sounds of it they basically fired a bunch of established QA testers and made a bunch of temps permanent employees to take their place so they can save money. This is definitely not a smart move since their biggest problems revolve around their games being buggy. People need to stop buying their games period until the people up top get fired and replaced. Otherwise it'll just get worse.
Exactly, when you need to keep raising wages of long lasting employees, the greedy higher ups will see a quick swap out for cheap new blood as the obvious option. I used to work in a company like that. Hiring kids right out of school and kicking them to the curb before they're 20 to avoid having to give them a raise.
As for the bugs, isn't it a sick standard these days that all games release in a horrifically buggy state that they can just patch up later? Looking at Todd Howard at how casually that factor of gaming is treated. With live service models continually raking in more and more money, that release now and fix it later mindset is only spreading wider.
Must me new here doesn't matter who's at top as long as investors exist in this industry the push for more profits at all costs will continue till the end of time this is the beginning of the second video games crash like we had in the Atari era
yup
Sadly there are still sheeps who buy broken messes due to blind brand loyalty.
Unions should be the norm not the exception when you are dealing with massive companies like this. They are the only way billionaires will acknowledge the rights of workers.
Unfortunately it's also a sure way to offshore everything to China where rights are just rumors
@J So we should allow inhumane working conditions just because shitty nations exist elsewhere? Your reasoning is antiquated
@Lalana is it better to have relatively bad working conditions or no job and the new workers have no rights and it destroys our economy and strengthens China's?
Unions aren't the issue, creepy fucking suits drinking breastmilk from their female employees and sexually exploiting a woman to the point where she commits suicide amongst other horrible exploitative things blizzard and Activision have done are. You guys would advocate slavery if conservatives said it was going to stop China lmfao delusional fucking people dude. Who do you fucking think told you these things about unions in the first place? Probably media controlled by billionaires XD
Problem - they don't want a worker's union for improved conditions, like leftists at other companies, what they're asking for is political control to remove non-leftists from the business and from the customer base.
The severe lack of trade/labor unions in the US is so baffling to me, especially in the video game indsutry. It's about time these people finally unionize! Best of luck and strength to all of them 🤞
And yet the best video games are made in the US... go figure
@@socasack That notion is entirely subjective and does in no way have to do with a lack of unionization. Better luck next time.
@@socasack let's go down the list of best-selling videogames, shall we? :)
minecraft: sweden
GTA 5 : scotland
tetris: russia
wii sports: japan
pubg: brendan greene is irish, a lot of the developers are korean, not 100% sure but it sure as hell isn't the US
super mario bros: japan
pokemon RGBY: japan
mario kart 8: japan
wii fit: japan
get fucked
@@socasack Your name suits you
@@socasack "Best" is a very subjective term, but I'd rather choose a game with worse graphics, but from a studio that treats it's employees like human beings.
I absolutely love how ActiBliz is getting hit by all sides at the moment. Death by a thousand cuts is very fitting.
They wanted all the smoke and thought they were invincible and now they're catching bullets.
I'm sick to my ass of illegal anti-union actions (and they are illegal) being perpreated daily, nationwide, without consequence. What's the point of having labor laws if the government doesn't fucking enforce any of them?
And that's why unions need to be a thing in the private sector. Employees need protection from what are effectively economic dictatorships.
From european viewpoint it looks so silly that americans basically dont have unions
What exactly is your tool to enforce your side of the bargain? In here we can have almost entire sectors of industry shutdown by strikes if need be, and when it comes to that it usually works
@@joule400 Well we do have unions, it’s just that unfortunately there are law firms practically dedicated to busting unions here. So it’s pretty damn difficult to get one off the ground.
I worked at several places where, as part of onboarding, they would say that unions are bad and that joining one is bad. But they never say why they are bad, just that they are bad.
The fact is, the gaming industry is ridiculous. They need to do something.
@@rosesweetcharlotte "Because -we- God -decided- said so." Yuck.
I worked for a company that had the CWA union come in, and help us unionize. They helped us tremendously! We got a raise, double time on major holidays (instead of time and a half), helped us get better equipment, and protected some good people from getting fired. All this stuff we asked for for years, and the company barely listened. Once we had the support of the union, most of what we were asking for happened within the first few months. It was an airline job. Envoy to put it out there. No longer work there, but damn did they help fix a lot of what was broken. 11/10 would recommend
That's great to hear. Jobs these days that are refusing to pay hourly pay so people can live are causing a great depression.
Then the honeymoon period ends and realty sets in. The new equipment ages, the good people retire, and suddenly in order to do the same thing the dues grow just a little. Then the cycle continues as lesser people are moved up and the dues just keep going up.
In the end the union with serve its own interests over that of the employee that created it and the employer that both created the circumstances for its creation and tolerated it thereafter.
The destruction of the union is one of only two options alongside full automation (Obviously for now that doesn't apply to video game development) to counter 3rd world economies that are about to out produce our own economy through sheer pragmatism.
@@Hybris51129 blizzard exec's in the comments
I love that the "growth at all costs" mentality is having all of its bullshit aired out.
Unionization is the only option at this point for game devs. Otherwise EA and Ubisoft will clamp down hard to prevent this shit.
Ugh the last thing we need are more unions. These companies should just be allowed to fail
@@scottydu81 Wouldn't it be better for circumstances and consequences to force these companies to be BETTER, instead of dying out entirely, though?
@@DragonShared sometimes, examples are often more effective than policing. Remember they used to hang people for crimes in the old West, and it often worked for a decent amount of time.
@@scottydu81 People need jobs to keep feeding their kids. If a company fails too much, sooner or later there will be no company. If all those workers could find another job I would completely agree with you.
@@otakuConn A few slackers are probably better than widespread sexual assault, globally low wages, physical abuse, death threats, wage theft, mass layoffs, corporate profiteering, etc etc etc
When you think it can't get any worse ->
Jesus It's like Activision got extremely jealous of EAs Golden Poo award and DESPERATELY wanted to have it.
At this point, ActiBlizzard employees and even other Gaming Companies should make the most use of the situation and get what they need to continue within the Industry because the way this is going if nothing comes out of this, these companies will surely do multiple changes to have an even tighter grasp over their employees to never allow this to happen again!
@@kobra6660 You have no idea how game development works. AAA games take more than half a decade to make.
Reality is 98% of their players don't care about this kinda news.
Or do you expect that people who play COD or Candy Crush care about their employees or gaming news in general ? lol
They won’t have any games to buy if there are no employees
@@IskandarTheWack not everyone walks out since there's no 100% you'll get paid if you do walk out, granted they stated indefinite, but howmany are walking out?
when we saw it on the video it was around 250k that would compensate them (might be more now, haven't checked, but for the sake of the argument i'll use 250k)
say for the easy examples an employee makes around 1k a month (no idea, just an example)
if 300 people walk out, you're not getting an full months worth of money from the walk out, you might still get what you owed for the other days.
On the other hand, you really think that they care in what state the game launches?
Warzone had literally re-introduced the same glitch (stim glitch) like 4 or 5 seperate time after resolving the same glitch the same amount of times.
They won't care, they know these things will at some point blow over, but honestly they have to start keeping an low profile.
@@DarkDyllon Great, 5 people can make each cod game on their own, can't wait till call of duty: stick figures.
Activisions shares are also taking a huge hit.
I remember when Activision still had Bungie and the Forsaken Expansion for Destiny 2 brought the highest amount of sales in the entire franchise and Activision said it “didn’t meet expectations”
They set impossibly high expectations on purpose, both so they can have an excuse to punish workers for the financial success they brought the company, and bc most corporations subscribe to the absurd fantasy of constant growth; no matter how successful they are, they should always be making even more profit. This is why companies that are already making insane amounts of money suddenly fire large numbers of workers despite financial success, why the quality of their products suddenly takes a huge nosedive as they try to cut costs, why they are always trying to shake things up and create new modes of monetization; bc they always have to make MORE money.
That's exactly what they do with any SH they acquire.
You've done great deeds for this corporation!
Your work ethic is perfect!
Thanks you for your service!
You're fired.
The sole goal for a corporation is to suck up as much money as humanly possible for the top brass and shareholders of that corporation. Low level workers are nothing more than meat for the grinder. They aren't meant to be "happy". They are meant to be hard working fodder to make the ultra rich even ultra richer! (and don't say they are "needed" there is literally an endless supply. Lots of starving people need those jobs). If the company can afford to cut them, welp, that's one less person to pay a salary and benefits for. We can get the other worker bees to pick up that slack! Welcome to crony Captialism. System working exactly as intended.
I would be getting an attorney immediately if I relocated for a job and then was immediately let go without cause.
28:08 is the 21st-century version of the Pinkertons when they were busting the unions at Carnegie steel
AB: Goddamn they're still going???
Employees: _This isn't even our final form_
Correction: *You fools. This isn't even our final form*
*Distant clang of Hammer & Sickle* *Close echoing sound of Mechanical Keyboards & Mouse Clicks*
@@johnnyguillotine1673 Rise up workers of the world! All we have to lose is our chains!
This is your final paycheck!
All these employees deserve better. If Bobby Kotick is forced to step down that would be great. I hope they'll be a lot of great changes as a result of that. But if the corporates continue to shield him, then I hope that as soon as possible, all these devs get the chance to find space in other studios where they can thrive financially and creatively. Studios that won't treat them like s** objects as well as disposable robots. People like Bobby Kotick don't deserve these devs at the slightest and all these top execs deserve to go broke for their incompetence.
I'm correcting myself from my previous statement I do not want Activision as a whole to go bankrupt because that will not solve anything in regards to the people who actually work there
If they declare bankruptcy, won't that absolve them from paying anyone?
How can the employees get better if the company they work for is broke? Think before you post!
Hope is a dangerous thing. if Bobby decides to be a captain sinking with this ship, to leave only when the company is bankrupt, well, he'll be vilified for life but everyone also loses, no one gets paid for a while. Hope. Hope that it only goes as far as the executives realizing that bobby is too much of a liability and forces him to step down before its too late
@@xMeatbalL420x the vacuum will be filled. Hopefully by non public companies.
@@xMeatbalL420x We need new companies, Activision can die and go f* all their administrative management, only by punishing imoral actions it will guarantee to generate better companies.
The industry will never improve as long as CEOs and investors hold the power. This is a step in the right direction.
Investors aren't necessarily the issue, they have a good mindset for the Heath of a company most of the time...
The real issues have always been the executives\CEO's in charge.
As opposed to whom?
I’d love to know where this idea that the people with zero financial stake should run the company. I own my business. When I was starting out, there were weeks when I had no pay. As in, I took NOTHING home. In fact, I still had to pay my employees, right? So I did by paying out of my savings. You see, when you’re an employee you get paid no matter what happens. I’ve yet to see employees in collapsing companies demand to be liable for the debt, strange, isn’t it?
No, it’s only when the company is established and making profit that everyone wants to buy in. I am liable for my company’s debt, if it fails, my employees get their last check and walk away, while I go bankrupt. And you’re telling us that I should still be on the hook if it goes tits up, but if it is doing well then my employees should be in charge.
It’s no different for a large corporation, save that there are many owners. And if it goes tits up, those owners lose their money, and the employees walk away with zero liability.
you know why?
because it is the investors who put in the money and CEOs to manange those money.
as long as who controls the money, nothing will change.
They think they hold all the power if every single person in the company walked out and threatend to quit all at once watch how fast all that power goes right down the drain and they wont be able to replace everyone that fast so they would be screwed but people are scared of losing their jobs and thats what they want so you wont speak up
@@SeasoningTheObese Anthem was announced way back but in reality only had 18 months of development time at most. The real mystery is where the original EA trailer came from, since basically no work had been done up to that point.
There was a time I though (and still think) "Evil never goes punished huh?" when seeing things that range from murders and politic stuffs, to even things like Bobby Kottick and other people ruining something like the videogame industry that is meant to be fun, turning them into their own agenda.
I say this, because seeing this makes me believe that there may be some form of Justice.
Justice? Where? Who? When? -I cannot see any justice.
Never relocate for a company unless they'll offer relocation assistance AND will put into writing that you're got guaranteed employment for at least one year. No company will and those shows how much commitment they have to you as an employee!
Its one thing if you are a 'seasonal' or contractor type worker expecting to only being doing small projects, its another to be utilized as a core member of development and then cast aside for no reason after investing time and energy into the team. Opportunity cost is everything, to a manager numbers on a page may matter, but as a Human Being your time on this rock is limited. So value yourself and make sure you find a company or project that shares your passions.
Reminds me of when my business studies course covered Human Resources. Originally built as a way to value the resources humans bring to a company and how to better mediate between company and employee needs, yet with time corporate manipulation literally made it into treating humans as the resource, an expendable and renewable resource.
shit like that is exactly why i think unions in the games industry is a bad idea, if everybody is disposable then unions will accomplish nothign other create another pressure group which is only going to make life working in the industry harder. If game devs get blocked by unions for not joining or having the wrong politics (more than already) than things will get even worse.
@@triplehelix3207 What do you propose is the solution then?
That's how it is you get fired after a year or 2 your contract gets terminated it's not about what work you did it's about not being an actual employee has benefits and such they don't want to deal with that so you get terminated that's just how the dice role back to finding a new job but instead these people complain why I don't know why the media is with this is very weird I don't Rember Yong yea covering the whole naughty dog thing when they did this or when almost all studio in gaming expt Bethesda for some reason
@@Dumbird0 let the companies burn so that new blood can flourish. AA and indies aren't perfect but we have diamonds in the rough already
I'm such a Boomer I remember when Activision had cool easy going hippies running the show that coded great games like Pitfall! on the Atari 2600 console .... how things change ..... :(
What money does to someone...
those guys are gone D:
@@full-timepog6844 yup they're long gone... I sometimes wonder what they think of what became of their legacy and what they could have done to avert it.
It's indeed ironic Activision in the 80's were the nerds fighting against the corporate suits. Long story short Atari didn't allowed developers to take credit for their work so game devs wouldn't got offers for other companies that were willing to pay them more so a bunch of Atari employees just gave them shaft and formed Activision which ended up being more successful.
and now 40 years later they are the suits now.
And yes I'm aware that virtually none of the OG Activision staff is around the company anymore but is still sad. IMO this happens to every studio sooner or later Blizzard went to a very similar process.
@@Xfushion2 Pride cometh before the fall.....
Activision Blizzard needs to go away already this is ridiculous
It's not just blizzard It's Activision
The executives need to be yeeted and the whole company ought to be made into a co-op run and owned by the workers. Look into a documentary called "The Take" from 2005, its about ordinary-ass people being gigachads and taking their jobs back from corporate bastards. Needs to happen across the whole bloody industry.
Blizzard *AND* Activision.
Both need to go
Blizzard is dead, WoW is dead while Final Fantasy Online takes the throne of the MMORPG genre
It does suck they lost their jobs, but what did they actually do because all the games coming out nowadays doesn't seem like QA teams are doing anything with all these games being broken on release ALL THE TIME.
Just saw a news about someone steal the breast milk a woman prepared for her baby, WTF... Did Homelander work for Activision-blizzard?
With all the pressure from multiple sources, something is going to snap on Activision eventually. It can only bend so far.
Kotick must either be incredibly drunk on power or self-aware that at this point no other company would touch him with a ten-foot pole if he left. At this point even most Presidents or CEO's would happily abandon ship with their golden parachute.
He needs one more bonus & layoff to take the golden parachute, he's getting ready to pull the Ripcord.
Don't worry about Bobby, he has enough money and stocks that he'll be fine. Hell, his great-grandchildren will be fine.
It has to be ego keeping Bobby stubbornly clinging on to the company. He's already more than set for life, even without the golden parachute he'd no doubt be happily handed if he'd just resign. He just can't stand to fail or be seen as a failure, so he's hoping to stick it out until it blows over.
@@pbjent Schould be illigal to sit on so much money
@@pbjent The median lifetime earnings for people living in the US is 1.7 million dollars. The median life time earnings for those with a doctorate is 3.2 million dollars. Kotick is estimated to have 7-8 billion dollars of wealth. Even without gaining another dime, that's thousands of lifetimes worth of money so it's probably safe to extend how many generations could live off it even further.
Bobby: "What did you do?"
Tester: "All the work for the week."
Bobby: "You're fired. What about you?"
Nervous employee: "I...uh...stole all the mommy milk."
Bobby: "Now that man is a real go getter!"
accurate
Bobby: "Now, let me grab your ass."
Bobby:(hands nervous employee a hotel key) “meet me in the Cosby sweet, your about to be going places kid”
Activision: "Why pay for QA testing when we can get paid for QA testing?"
I mean, it's basically become an industry standard for players to pay for the privilege of being their QA testers.
Been doing it for years on Dayz
@@johnnyguillotine1673 that game is done by a relatively small developer isn't it?
@@btbarr16 yeah, their biggest games are Arma, Com&Coq, DayZ
@@johnnyguillotine1673 At least Bohemia was up front about it when early access came out. They let you know what you were buying.
@@Droogie128 yes and no. Dean Hall stated how long it would take, then a month after that he left... Now 7 years later while improvements have been made... The Arma 3 DayZ mod is more stable and less buggy, a mod is better than the stand alone title... The road map was presented as 2 years and again it's been 7.
Please keep up with the updates brother, you're doing the lord's work, you and Jim and I fully respect the consistency.
Activision Blizzard is really pushing to take that "Worst Company in America" title away from EA, huh? Sounds like they're on track...
Yong, thank you for documenting this. I think this is very important to the history of gaming moving forward.
I should hope so! But the mainstream and corporate has effected gaming industry.
@@BJ-zd2or indeed
@Shia Lebeouf: Life Coach exactly brother
Games come out broken, buggy and untested.
Game Devs: We should test our games more.
Activision: *Cuts game testers*
Yeah because that worked soo well with Sega.
Yeah. Im underwhelmed at the constant stream of failed content from AAA games
Also Activision: We got bored of testing games so we test women instead.
The days of game testers being important are simply gone. Think how long it's been since a game came out without blatantly obvious game breaking bugs. Back in the ancient times when games got printed on CDs and a critical programming flaw would cost the company tens of thousands to reprint games, it was important to test these games to avoid immense losses. Now? Game comes out fucked up and they just roll out patches everyday for a week and all is good(sometimes). The players are the testers now, something they do for free. The sheer fact that activision still even has testers is mind blowing and I'm 100% certain it's something they plan to get rid of moving forward. I should note quality assurance is actually highly valued in other industries, because crucial software for business, banking and medical doesn't get a pass for being glitchy and broken.
I'm a software quality engineer. In my industry we are full-time salaried employees. In the gaming industry, 'QA' are usually contractors hired just to test a specific game. And testing usually entails testing one tiny piece of a level over and over ad nauseum. Once the game is finished, whatever QA is left is usually sent packing.
343 interactive hired peeps like you on contract and that’s why it took Halo Infinite 5 years to come out incomplete.
Because actual devs can implement their own unit testing, and QA grunts are just trained monkeys.
@@dingle2987 and still won players choice so clearly a good game
QA is often not allowed to even do their job in most companies as well. They are told not to talk to devs at all, so you never get the bugs they find reported and fixed, and thus you have current day video games.
It's only bad when Activision does it huh not when naughty did it
Thanks for continuing to talk about this! :)
These companies being shit on so hard, warms the fuck out of my heart.
Surprised ubisoft isn't under the bus. But Activision-blizzard and take two Definitely Deserve to be run over and reverse on.
Everyone: "WHY CAN'T YOU JUST BE NORMAL?!?!"
Activision: *Loud incoherent breast milk stealing noises*
.
.
.
,
;
*We as the community, we can help too!*
*STOP playing Activision games! Drop them and show them that we are not sheep!*
Unfortunately I enjoy overwatch too much to drop it but hey at least I never buy lootboxes
@@אורז-צ5ט but you still get loot boxes by playing the game soooooo
@@Master_Viccc but they dont get my money for thoes lootboxes so....
@@Master_Viccc getting them for free obv doesnt make them revenue, but i agree with general sentiment - either dont play, or pay for any mechanics their games give. As long as they dont get any money - anything will work i guess
@@אורז-צ5ט just play tf2 instead. Same damn game 😀
Don't ever let a company tell you a union is a bad thing, without unions there would be no minimum wage, no breaks of any kind and no one to stand up for the workers if any of them got into trouble.
It’s once the union secures everything that it becomes problematic, unions are great, but I wish they could be dispersed once goals are met.
That’s a bad idea, because once the union is gone and can’t muscle a corporation into accepting limits on how they treat their workforce and the rights of laborers, those limits and those rights will immediately disappear. Unions are not immune to corruption if they’re left totally unchecked and insular, but they are a vital and necessary part of a healthy and ethical economy.
Is getting rid/mistreatment of the QA testers the reason why recent AAA games are full of bugs and unplayable?
I like how thorough your videos are in explaining everything.
As someone who doesn't even work at Act/Blizz, this whole thing is just so frustrating to watch. Like it feels like there should be some law that should have him removed from the company at a legal standpoint, due to the facts and evidence in this case, it's criminal activity. Not just him, everyone involved, regardless of their position of the company. And all his minions on the board. They all should be put in prison.
The history of Raven Software is absolutely incredible. From Heretic, Hexen and Soldier of Fortune and now this. Raven deserves better.
Raven’s Wolfenstein from 2009 is also very underrated
Hell, yes. Heretic and its immediate sequel, Hexen, were the first major literal DOOM clones. Medieval theming, inventory, expanded physics, ambient sound, character classes, horizontal terrain movement, scripting, open multimap levels-all awesome additions to the classic DOOM engine.
THAT'S THE WAY!!! - Organize, Unionize, Socialize.
The Developers and support staff - who are responsible for creation of the very products the corporation STAND'S ON - can take control of their work, efforts and reap the lions share of the benefits!
Seize the means of production
@@aramhalamech4204 This but unironically.
@@calebmapp7096 I meant it unironically
This all sounds like boss retaliation against the workers to me, which is a violation of labor law. They all need to file a unfair labor practice grievance with their states board of labor dept.
I’d say any time is a great time to unionize in the gaming industry since even good companies seem to be bought out by the worst parent companies and then they get run into the ground.
Unionize so that your future and the future of your coworkers is protected!
There needs to be something in the law where if a company becomes this corrupt and scummy, the government just tells the execs "You're done"
Good for Blizzard/Activision employees. It only took 10+ of harassment going on before your eyes to make the right decision.
Consciousness it not intelligence. It brings intelligence through pain.
It’s not about what was happening, it’s about feeling like they had agency. It’s a common symptom of abused people to think they can literally do no better and are stuck where they are, feeling like they’re powerless. The more the resentment has built over time and the more walk outs and sit ins that have happened over the past few years maybe emboldened them and helped them realize that they and their coworkers deserve more.
That's victim-blaming
Bro you blaming the people who feel they couldn’t even speak out without fear of being fired, people need to feed there families.
10+ what? 10+ OF WHAT BRUH
Oh it's a "termination" is it?
Well if those people are terminated than I guess the terminated employees have no reason to not permanently terminate the "cash cow" they helped make.
Seriously if this were me or my colleagues, I'd shred the codes for the projects I was working on.
@@Entropic_Meat_Machine
Considering that things were done and made under the promise of better treatment/jobs/pay then have the rug pulled from underneath them, the company didn't uphold their end of the bargain.
At that point all's fair in love and war.
It's about high time to unionize. There needs to be a body whose priority is workers being treated right to balance out the relentless profit motive of the corporation.
In company I work for fridge is open and people only touch things they bring in to the point that someone forgot cheese and it was expired for like 3 months. So it had to be there for more than half a year and nobody touched it.
All that "record year money" goes to upper management i.e. Board members, Cheif Officers, ect. They want their bonuses at all costs and don't give a sh** about anyone else. It's absolutely disgusting.
Its always amazed me that QA is treated in such disregard, and just honestly treated like crap. When QA is VITAL to a games development ahead of release and the initial success of the game
Unfortunately the dismissiveness towards QA is perfectly in line with the current AAA attitude of "release broken, maybe fix later if we feel like it"
It's only vital if your intent is to release a finished product.
That is NOT their goal. Their goal is to get paid for shit
you can really tell, too. i can't even remember the last AAA game to release with minimal bugs
They don’t feel like they need qa anymore.
Just release broken unfinished game and then we pay 60$-70$ for said game. Then make us the QA 😂
Getting paid for the quality assurance of their product It’s perfect. Maximization of cutting costs
Finally some retribution. Hopefully this will lead to better industry.
Could’ve said so better myself. We shall see. To be honest that is so justice.
Hope to see that guy get kicked out of the business (who would remain nameless).
That starts with a “b” and ends with “k”.
Keep wishing.
Not with Ubisoft around…
Revolution is a American ideal. Never let the establishment tell you otherwise.
No it won't .
I'm glad they are fighting for their rights keep up the pressure
their
@@cIoudbank lol fixed it
I've work in QC/QA for decades and production managers always looks at QC/QA as a department that doesn't generate money and can only lose money for finding defects.
If everyone double checked their own work we wouldn't need inspectors and testers.
The only reason this hasn't happened is indusrtial standards require it.
Less testers wil lead to less bugs being found yet QA will be blamed for any "escapes."
You know, it's not unheard of for state and even federal government to take notice and speak up at this point.
This action from Activision Blizzard feels like they're trying to punish their workers for daring to have them to acquiesce on a fraction of the dev's demands for better treatment.
Grotesque.
These are the kinds of things you'd hear about in 80's cartoons. Like yes, the villain stole the breast milk of these mothers and now their children will go hungry unless Optimus Prime, Captain Planet, and the kids from the Magic School Bus stop them.
Like what the actual fuck man
As sad and disheartening as this is, I do like to see shit hit the fan for Activision Blizzard.
I’m ready for the whole company to burn down
Don't worry. The free market will handle all the problems.
What I don't get is why the shareholders have not fired Bobby Kotick. The fact that they are waiting to see what happens, is another level of wrong entirely.
The words “pay restructure” should of been taken as a red flag, not a hope for better pay across the board.
Yep I'm honestly shocked people took that as a good thing. Anytime I ever heard pay restructure I immediately started busting my ass or looking for a new job, because "restructure" means to shift around money. Not to ADD, to MOVE. That means the money is coming from somewhere and you can just about guarantee it's not coming from upper management. Most of the time it's jobs being rendered redundant or multiple similar jobs being condensed into less. They do have words for no danger raises mind you, stuff like "Base pay increase", "Blanket raise", etc. Not once has restructure ever been a positive one though XD
"Consider that you won't be able to represent yourself but the union will do it." Well, still probably better than talking to HR. I'm surprised they haven't hired Plank from Ed, Edd and Eddie to work at AB HR. It seems like that'd be just as good as the current HR.
After all of this, Activision/Blizzard has solidify themselves as being the worse and most scummy company in the gaming industry...in general really
Even more then EA?
They managed to beat EA in this regard, truly a feat of pride and accomplishment.
@@H3LLGHA5T indeed
@@TemhotaTech Even EA managed to release a couple of bangers over the past few years. By the way, I also heard that they're actually nice towards their employees
@@riatorex8722 Really? I thought they treated their workers badly. And I'm pretty sure they lay them off when they shut down a studio when a game fails. But when it comes to employees I presume they're nowhere near as horrid as Acti-Bliz.
So sad, glad you are reporting this news, 🙏
QA tester here, love you bro, thanks for the kind words 💜
We need more unionization everywhere in all industries in the US. It's been long, long overdue.
Remember people. The employees and us customers hold all the power, because we have to. They will be no more if enough of us decide it. Their bullying and BS are exactly as stated, Fear tactics and its weak as hell. These overpayed scum bags wouldnt have money if it werent for us, and we can certainly take it away.
Imo, that's how it should be.... Until you realize the ton of "normies" who are oblivious to what's going on in gaming right now
Everyone needs to unionize. There are labour shortages, your bargaining power today has never been stronger.
Unions are often just as corrupt. And they usually result in shitty performance at work because they know their corrupt union will protect them. If people think games are bad now just wait till the dev knows it basically impossible to fire them.
@@zozzledwolf4653 my aim isn’t to improve in work performance- I have been doing that for 15 years with no reward. My aim is to extract as much money as I can while I can, same way as the shareholders I work for. And currently there isn’t anything they can do to stop us.
@@craigthebrute1446 yeah they'll be great. Why should any industry care about their performance? Surely nothing bad will result from every industry across the board just getting lazy as fuck.
@@zozzledwolf4653 exactly. Why should we? We are living hand to mouth anyway. I don't own a house & never will. Hopefully you can join us in suffering when your stock portfolio plummets. I understand you aren't too keen, but it isn't so bad, really ;)
Hey there. Game Designer here that started as a QA tester.
My first QA job was in an outsource company that provided QA for plenty of major AAA titles. I can tell you that such treatment is not exclusive to Blizzard Activsion, QA testers are treated like cheap workforce everywhere. Hiring 50 people just to fire them all 3 months later is a common practice all across the industry.
After I quit the outsource company after over 2 years I joined a smaller AA dev studio which consisted of around 40 people back then. This is where it all went uphill. Not only my salary went up ( which is really ironic because the budget of the studio is less than 1% of what COD makes ) but also the respect I got from my coworkers. Developers respected me and my feedback about the game.
My point is: You deserve to be respected as a QA tester as everyone outside these corporations know that being a QA is HARD WORK. You DON'T have to work for these corporate assholes, there is a place out there for each of you that will grant you decent working conditions and well deserved respect.
I hope you cover more stories like this to highlight workers rights and workplace conditions. I know many people don't see the impact it has on people and they just care about what video game they get at the end of the day. But highlighting this is important in building working class solidarity.
Thank you so much for covering this the way that you do. You're a huge asset to the community.
I always believed it is not a question of if unions were going to form in the video game industry it really is a question of when.
Thanks a lot for your dedication on covering this in such great detail, this topic needs to stay alive to add power to the employees that it is not them vs they, but everyone vs they
As a dev, I hope they unionize. Our profession is so imbalanced toward the corporation having all the power, leading to greed at the highest level screwing their workers out of a living or just making them miserable.