Having recently announced plans for a North American AAA game developer, Raven Software employees are ending their weeks-long strike action against publisher Activision Blizzard. “Waiting for recognition from our union, Raven’s quality control strike has ended,” Activision Blizzard workers’ advocacy group ABetteABK discovered by . “Unused strike funds are being stored for future organization [and] strike efforts”.
Awaiting recognition from our union, the Raven QA strike ended. Unused strike funds are being stored for future organizing/strike efforts.
We will post or retweet any updates from the GWU here. We appreciate all the support from the community during the strike!
— ABetterABK 💙 ABK Workers Alliance (@ABetterABK) January 23, 2022
The strike when 60 employees and contractors from Raven Software’s quality assurance department left work to protest the studio’s decision to lay off 12 of their co-workers. Raven is one of the developers supporting Activision’s Call of Duty franchise, and their QA team is specifically responsible for bugs and other technical issues in War zone. When the action began, there was no planned end date, the first of the stoppages at Activision Blizzard. The publisher would have to meet with striking workers, despite mounting pressure Warzone community about the current state of the game.
On Friday, the 34 workers who said they plan to unionize with the Communication Workers of America (CWA) asked Activision Blizzard to voluntarily recognize their group, the Game Workers Alliance. The company has until January 25 to respond to workers. “Activision Blizzard is carefully reviewing CWA’s voluntary recognition application, which seeks to organize about three dozen of the company’s nearly 10,000 employees,” the company said Friday.
If the company does not respond to the group, it will request a union election through the National Relations Broad. As the collective has the most votes, with 78% of the 34-person unit supporting the action, they can form a union without voluntary recognition from Activision Blizzard.
News of the union movement at Raven comes the same week that Microsoft announced its intention to . Pending regulatory approval, the company expects the deal, which could have far-reaching ramifications for the gaming industry, to close in June 2023.
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