Activision Blizzard workers group announces strike fund, union effort

A group of Activision Blizzard workers officially announced a strike fund Thursday morning following two days of walkouts in support of quality assurance employees and a press conference detailing the company’s alleged “alcohol-soaked culture” of harassment.

The group, called ABK Workers’ Alliance, came together in July after California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) filed a lawsuit preceded by a two-year investigation into the company’s alleged “frat boy culture.” Activision Blizzard workers are not officially unionized, which means that the strike, initiated Thursday, will not have union protections. Washington Post reports that the group is being supported by Communication Workers of America. The report states that employees signed union cards in an attempt to be recognized by the group. It’s unclear how many workers are participating in the strike, which has been ongoing since Monday. A petition was signed by more than 1,700 workers and other employees in November calling for Bobby Kotick to resign.

Management told workers they’ll no longer be paid for walking out, according to the Washington Post, which is where the strike fund comes in.

In a statement published on GoFundMe, where they are raising money for a strike fund, ABK Workers’ Alliance leaders said Activision Blizzard leadership has only continued to ignore workers’ demands. “These, and many other events have caused an alliance of Activision-Blizzard employees to initiate a work stoppage until demands are met and worker representation is finally given a place within the company,” the ABK Workers’ Alliance representation wrote.

In just two hours, the strike fund has surpassed $20,000 thanks to more than 300 contributions. It is aiming for $1,000,000

Activision Blizzard’s QA staff and other subsidiaries protested last week’s layoffs by walking out of work every day since Monday. (Activision Blizzard doesn’t characterize these job losses as layoffs, however: The company said that these people were temporary contract workers, not employees, and that it was not renewing their contracts.) Activision Blizzard is in the process of converting 500 temporary jobs to full-time status, the company said — though the group of Raven Software QA workers were not part of that initiative.

“We are all disposable to this company,” one striking worker told Polygon. “We need to band together or we will never get anywhere. […] If I lose my job due to unionizing, fine, but I’d rather make this place worth working here.”

Activision Blizzard workers have walked off the job twice before — first when the lawsuit was officially filed, and later when the Wall Street Journal published a report detailing Kotick’s involvement in suppressing allegations.

Over the last few years, the videogame industry has slowly been moving toward unionization. However, no American company has ever been officially recognized. One group of employees who write mobile apps was established last year. Choose Your Romance with Lovestruck banded together for a 21-day strike — and won. This was the first ever successful strike by game workers in industry history.

The workers of video games companies have been allegedly exploited for a long time. Many are often hired on temporary contracts, and left vulnerable to being mistreated. Video game workers report working long hours — sometimes up to 70- to 100-hour weeks during extreme crunch times — on top of the industry’s history of racist and sexist work culture.

Neither ABK Workers’ Alliance nor Activision Blizzard have responded to Polygon’s requests for comment.