Having recently announced plans to a North American AAA game developer, workers at Raven Software are ending their weeks-long strike against publisher Activision Blizzard. “Pending recognition from our union, the Raven QA strike is over,” Activision Blizzard worker advocacy group ABetterABK seen by . “Unused strike funds are being stored for future organizations [and] strike efforts.
The strike when 60 employees and contractors from Raven Software’s QA department walked off the job to protest the studio’s decision to fire 12 of their co-workers. Raven is one of the developers behind 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, it had no planned end date, a first for strikes at Activision Blizzard. According to reports, the publisher meet with striking workers, despite mounting pressure from war zones 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 the workers. “Activision Blizzard is carefully reviewing the request for voluntary recognition from the CWA, which seeks to organize around 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 Broad National Relations. Since the collective has a large majority vote, with 78 percent of the 34-person unit supporting the action, they can form a union without voluntary recognition from Activision Blizzard.
News of the union drive 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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