In 2022, quality assurance testers at Call of Duty studio Raven Software became the first union to organize at a major American games company as the Game Workers Alliance-CWA. Today, after three years of negotiation, GWA-CWA members voted to ratify their first contract between the union and Microsoft.
According to a press release from the Communications Workers of America, which aided in the Raven unionization effort in 2022, the contract secures a guaranteed 10% wage increase over a period of two years, the elimination of crunch time and prolonged mandatory overtime, clear job descriptions and promotion processes, and additional worker protections.
"From day one, we made it a priority to include every voice in the room, and the contract we came out with reflects what we need—better pay, real career paths, and protection from burnout. It’s a contract that actually values the work QA does," said Raven QA tester and GWA-CWA bargaining committee member Erin Hall. "I’m proud of what we accomplished, and I hope it shows other game workers that organizing works—and it’s worth it."
The Raven QA unionization effort followed a two-month strike that began in December 2021 when its owners at Activision laid off a dozen quality assurance testers despite their contributions to the massive success of Call of Duty: Warzone earlier that year. A long history of devalued QA labor in the games industry has motivated similar worker organization efforts for testers at other studios like ZeniMax.
While Activision resisted the nascent unionization efforts at its studios, Microsoft said during its still-underway Activision-Blizzard acquisition in 2022 that it wouldn't oppose the Raven QA union and other Activision worker organizations. In the years since, however, union negotiations stalled, eventually provoking a strike from the GWA-CWA's peers at ZeniMax. The ZeniMax union reached its own tentative contract agreement with Microsoft in June.
Today, Raven's QA staff celebrate their contract as a victory for workers throughout the industry.
"Going from organizing to sitting across the table from one of the largest tech corporations in the world was a huge learning curve, but we never lost sight of why we were there," said GWA-CWA bargaining committee member Autumn Prazuch. "We fought hard for raises and job structures that will finally make QA a sustainable career path, and we were able to negotiate limitations on mandatory crunch. Ratifying this contract is a win for game workers everywhere who are ready to take the first step toward a better future."
