The path to unionizing has been rough for Raven Software, and it’s about to get rougher
Last week, workers at Raven Software, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, announced they had created the Game Workers Alliance or GWA, a union of Raven’s QA developers. The union formed after news of layoffs at the Call of Duty support studio touched off five weeks of strikes. Now that the union has formed, the GWA has ended its strike, but there are still many steps between organization and formal unionization. The Verge spoke with the CWA and a former QA tester at Raven Software involved in the unionization efforts to understand what’s next for the fledgling union and how Microsoft’s pending acquisition and Raven’s new restructuring program will affect these developments.
Right now, the GWA is composed of Raven Software QA workers. This was the department primarily affected by the layoffs announced at the studio back in December. In response to the 12 QA employees being laid off, workers at Raven staged a walkout and then a sustained five-week strike. Alex Dupont was one of the strikers.
Dupont was employed at Raven Software for a little less than two years, and though he was one of the QA employees who had their contract extended, he was concerned for his colleagues who did not.
“Our organization efforts started almost immediately after we found out that our coworkers were going to be let go back on December 3rd,” Dupont told The Verge. “There had always been discussions about unions in games and what it could look like, but losing a third of our department was a catalyst for us to really begin moving forward in bringing organized labor to our workplace and make sure everyone will have the security that they deserve.”
Though Dupont’s job was secure, he still went on strike in solidarity with his colleagues. The
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