After seven weeks on strike, employees from Raven Software may be returning to work. On Jan. 21, 34 employees united officially to form the Game Worker’s Alliance, a first of its kind union among the gaming industry. The unionized employees then petitioned Activision and Raven Software leadership to officially recognize the worker’s alliance.
Raven Software is known for games like Singularity, some of the early Xbox 360-gen Wolfenstein games, and more recently, their work on Call of Duty and Call of Duty: Warzone. A few weeks ago, Raven Software’s QA team was hit with layoffs, after reported promises about improved pay were not met. Since then, against a backdrop of on-going scandal at Activision, Raven employees and many others across Activision Blizzard have been calling on their colleagues to unionize.
ABetterABK, an established worker’s alliance of Activision, Blizzard and King employees that has been supporting Raven Software’s employees amid throughout the strike, tweeted on Saturday, Jan. 22 that the GWA would be ending their strike “in good faith” pending a response from leadership regarding whether or not they would recognize the union. In a statement to Bloomberg, Activision’s spokesperson claimed the company is “carefully reviewing the request for voluntary recognition”.
In the event that Activision chooses not to recognize the newly formed union, the employees next step toward having their union recognized in an official capacity requires them to file a petition for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board. As it stands, the employees at Raven Software currently have a supermajority of employee sigantures seeking to formally unionize.
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