Blizzard QA Employees in NY and Texas Ratify First Union Contract With Microsoft

by
William D’Angelo
, posted 19 hours ago / 906 Views

Blizzard Entertainment quality assurance employees in Albany, New York and Austin, Texas have ratified their first union contract with Microsoft, according to Aftermath. About 70 employees at the two studios have been negotiating with Microsoft Since May 2023. 

“You’ve got to stick together,” Blizzard Austin senior quality analyst Matthew Gant told Aftermath in an interview. “You have to be willing to learn. You can’t lose hope. You’ve got to hope for, What can we get tomorrow? How can we better things today?”

The contract is for three years and locks in wage increases that brings the minimum pay up to $25.50 per hour for all current and unionized employees, as well as AI regulations, a standardized crediting process, disability accommodations, protections for immigrant workers, better severance packages, and restrictions on excessive overtime.

The contract backdates to the employees’ service time recognition, according to quality assurance specialist Heather Cameron, who has worked at Blizzard for six years. Blizzard honors full-time employees with rewards that include a sword after five. The quality assurance employees were mainly contractors before 2022, which is when Blizzard transitions over 1,000 of them to full-time.

“This contract now includes service time from Vicarious Visions,” said Cameron of the studio now known as Blizzard Albany. “There will be people achieving their five-year service award because of that.”

Cameron added, “As soon as Texas unionized, it was—all of a sudden—hey, there’s people who have the same goals as us. We started to meet each other and talk to get a sense of who we were and begin to work together.”

Blizzard Albany test analyst Brock Davis stated, “Our industry, our art form, is filled with stories about people overcoming the odds against greater numbers, right They do it by making friends along the way, sticking together, and never really giving up. We’re already kind of built for this. Look at the stories we’re telling. How did they win? By sticking together and using that collective action and never losing hope.

“There’s this common saying about planting a tree whose shade you might never sit in. We planted a little sapling, and we’re getting some of the leaves right now. But with time and effort, and more people participating in this—it should be something people know that could get involved in—we can grow that into something even bigger that grows a whole canopy of shade, so to speak, for so many more people.”

A life-long and avid gamer, William D’Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.

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