Activision QA workers form the largest US video game union yet


Around 600 workers in Activision Publishing’s quality assurance department have formed a union. Assisted by the Communications Workers of America, the employees completed their vote with the results certified on Friday, March 8th. With that, Activision Quality Assurance United – CWA becomes the latest union to arise out of Microsoft’s gaming division and the largest video game union in the United States.
In an interview with The Verge, Tom Shelley, a technical requirements specialist and one of Activision Quality Assurance United’s organizers, said the labor neutrality agreement and Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard last year made their goals of unionizing easier to accomplish.
“This has been an emergent effort that’s arisen in the last few weeks in response to the opportunities we’ve had to freely organize following the merger,” Shelley said. “As QA workers, we often have the weakest protections and lowest pay of any workers in the industry — even though our work is integral to the success of the companies we work for and the titles we make.”
In quality assurance, workers test games looking for bugs and other issues, flagging them for other developers to fix. Since the majority of QA jobs are typically entry level, the industry has a reputation for devaluing these roles, emphasizing the need for labor protections.
Shelley praised Microsoft for voluntarily recognizing the union and hopes it will inspire more organizing at the company and beyond.
Around 600 workers in Activision Publishing’s quality assurance department have formed a union. Assisted by the Communications Workers of America, the employees completed their vote with the results certified on Friday, March 8th. With that, Activision Quality Assurance United – CWA becomes the latest union to arise out of Microsoft’s…
Recent Posts
- A GPU or a CPU with 4TB HBM-class memory? Nope, you’re not dreaming, Sandisk is working on such a monstrous product
- The Space Force shares a photo of Earth taken by the X-37B space plane
- Elon Musk claims federal employees have 48 hours to explain recent work or resign
- xAI could sign a $5 billion deal with Dell for thousands of servers with Nvidia’s GB200 Blackwell AI GPU accelerators
- Race to 100TB HDD heats up as Seagate pulls rug under Western Digital, Toshiba feet by acquiring HAMR-specialist
Archives
- February 2025
- January 2025
- December 2024
- November 2024
- October 2024
- September 2024
- August 2024
- July 2024
- June 2024
- May 2024
- April 2024
- March 2024
- February 2024
- January 2024
- December 2023
- November 2023
- October 2023
- September 2023
- August 2023
- July 2023
- June 2023
- May 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- February 2023
- January 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- October 2022
- September 2022
- August 2022
- July 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- September 2018
- October 2017
- December 2011
- August 2010