Raven Software Strike Ends Following Successful Consolidation Vote, QA Organization Change Action

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It’s been a busy week for Activision Blizzard studios, but even more so for the staff at Raven Software. The studio’s quality assurance members, who went on strike for weeks after contract workers’ employment ended, decided to end the strike after a vote to form a union on Friday.

The strike decision was announced on ABetterABK’s Twitter account on Saturday: “The Raven QA strike has ended while awaiting approval from our union. Unused strike funds will be saved for future organizing/strike efforts.” Therefore, it is Activision Blizzard’s responsibility to recognize the union or face another potential strike in the future while these QA members return to work.

The Game Workers Alliance Union hasn’t been endorsed by a prolific publisher yet, but today we’ve got more news about a QA revamp within Raven Software. Game Informer provided a letter from Studio Director Brian Raffel to Raven staff explaining the quality assurance changes and their relationship with other departments within the studio. “We are thrilled to announce that our QA colleagues will be embedding directly into various teams across the studio, including animation, art, design, audio, production and engineering,” Raffel said in a letter. Brian later said in the announcement that including QA with other teams is standard for other Activision studios and will make Raven fit the broader company’s rest of the way it operates. “Fostering tighter integration and coordination across the studio is more important than ever,” says Raffel. “We make this possible through embeddings.”

A statement from an Activision Publishing spokesperson shares Brian Raffel’s opinion that this change will “enhance collaboration” across different teams to support the product they’re working on. The spokesperson continued, “This is the next step in a process that has been carefully considered and has been working for some time, and this structure aligns Raven with the best practices of other prominent Activision studios. This is also a milestone. This is a milestone for us. Our team is best-in-class in operating real-time live services,” the spokesperson continued. It’s a broader plan to incorporate more QA into the development process as we strive to provide coordination.”

While there appears to be some progress being made in changing the way QA teams are handled within Raven Software, this statement does not mention or acknowledge Friday’s union vote, nor does it appear to have been officially endorsed by management. In the next few days or weeks, we’ll be reporting on what’s going to happen with one of these changes.