Are you ready for your games to get buggier? Over 300 quality assurance testers working on Bethesda franchises like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls have voted to authorize a strike following what they say are stalling negotiations with parent company Microsoft. “We’ve had to continuously fight for what should be bare minimum,” said Aubrey Litchfield, a tester on Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
The QA department at ZeniMax, which operates Bethesda and was purchased by Microsoft for $7.5 billion back in 2021, voted 94 percent in favor of authorizing a strike, according to a press release by the Communications Workers of America on Tuesday. While that doesn’t mean a strike is currently in effect, it does mean the 300 members who are part of ZeniMax Workers United-CWA could initiate a strike if progress isn’t made at the bargaining table on their first contract.
“Underpayment and costly RTO initiatives have caused many of us to put our lives on pause because our income does not match even the rising cost of living in the cities where ZeniMax insists we live and work to maintain employment,” said senior QA tester Zachary Armstrong in a press release. “None of us wishes it had come to this, but if Microsoft and ZeniMax continue to demonstrate at the bargaining table that they’re unwilling to pay us fair wages for the value our labor provides to our games, we’ll be showing them just how valuable our labor is.”
ZeniMax Workers United-CWA formed back in 2023 after the CWA cut a deal with Microsoft to support its bid to acquire Activision Blizzard in exchange for the tech giant remaining “neutral” on unionization within the company. Instead of fighting the process, Microsoft would voluntarily recognize any union with majority support among its members. Things sound less congenial at the bargaining table. The Bethesda union held a one-day work stoppage last fall and filed an unfair labor practice charge against Microsoft for outsourcing work. The Xbox maker disputes that it’s being unreasonable.
“Our quality assurance team is an integral part of our business and is key to our ability to deliver games our players will love,” a spokesperson for the company told Kotaku in an email. “We respect the team’s right to express their viewpoints and are deeply committed to reaching a fair and equitable resolution that acknowledges the teams’ contributions. There has been substantial progress over the course of the negotiations, reaching tentative agreements on a majority of the topics at the table. We have presented a package proposal that we believe is fair—if accepted it would result in immediate compensation increases, even more robust benefits and is in alignment to the company’s hybrid model of 3 days in office. We look forward to continuing this progress during negotiations.”
Quality assurance testers have long been one of the most exploited groups of developers in the game industry, forced to work long hours for low pay as studios crunch to ship massive games with as few delays as possible. But the work is also one of the most valued by players. There’s nothing worse than running into a game-breaking bug or watching your character randomly die while falling through the floor after an hour-long boss fight. Bethesda championed 2022’s Starfield as one of its most bug-free releases in years, and it was.
Microsoft is currently bringing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle to PlayStation 5 this month, followed by the release of Doom: The Dark Ages in May. Bethesda’s next big release is expected to be The Elder Scrolls VI, though the open-world RPG is likely still years away from coming out. A strike could potentially slow things down even further if a deal isn’t hashed out at the bargaining table.
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