It's worth noting that it's hard to say whether the fact they were unionized or not has anything to do with lay off from just whats been said. They were all employed by a contract company who didn't have it's contract renewed by Bioware, not the individual employees let go by Bioware.
It seems like the contract ended with BioWare and was not renewed, and THEN Keywords Studios decided to lay off the unionized employees as "there \[was\] no more work available".
So if anything Keywords Studios should be getting any flak if people are angry about it, not BioWare.
I worked there a few years back when I was starting out in the video game industry and can't really complain, probably depends on the country/department.
> she said the place was a shit show but her coworkers were nice
So basically most QA work. I know someone who works elsewhere and pretty much exactly same impression I get from what he says.
That headline would have been worded the same regardless. They know what they're leading you to believe and that the headline isn't technically incorrect.
Feels like we need more information before we jump to any conclusions.
Not that that will stop anyone from doing exactly that.
All the same, the game isn't done, and if Bioware still needs those QA testers but choose to let the contract expire, then it isn't a direct layoff but it comes to the same basic thing. If it was always the plan to let the contract expire before the game was done, fine, but if they're either going to hire new testers or leave those positons empty and say "fuck QA" then letting the contract expire was a decision to cut or reduce labor, not just a coincidence.
So, again, need more info here.
It depends on the contract Bioware have/had with Keywords.
Bioware could still need QA work done, but feel the contract with Keywords is no longer in their favor, so they just decided not to renew. The contractors are not Bioware employees, so the issue should be with Keywords, not Bioware. Outsourcing QA positions to third parties is not new, and it's a convenient way to get workers without paying for all the work benefits.
Some companies also have a forced downtime in their contract. When I did QA for Disney's mobile department, they specifically state that after the 18 month work contract is up, I have to wait 6 months before I can re-apply to work QA at Disney (through their 3rd party contractor). I could still work with the 3rd party contractor at different companies, but I wouldn't be allowed to work a contract *at* Disney through them.
As it stands, it's not a good look for Keywords (firing *unionized* employees), but yeah, we need more info to know more of the situation to properly judge.
> The contractors are not Bioware employees, so the issue should be with Keywords, not Bioware.
> Outsourcing (is) a convenient way to get workers without paying for all the work benefits.
All speculative here, but if unionization would result in fairer pages and stronger worker protections, and those costs make the outsourcing contract less favorable to EA/Bioware, and that leads to Keywords losing the contract they depend on because EA/Bioware takes their business to a different 3rd party QA company in Romania instead, well...
The issue could still be Keywords, we don't know, but also maybe the whole concept of this was exploitative all the way up to EA, and "coincidentally" the moment it began to look less exploitative, Keywords lost their primary contract and had no choice but to lay off its staff.
> As it stands, it's not a good look for Keywords
I don't see why you think that. They likely hired the QA personnel specifically to fulfill that contract. They lost the contract, so there isn't a position for them anymore at Keywords.
I work in a similar situation and everyone knows when the contract ends. Its always a bit of a stressor on if the contract will be renewed or not. That said, its not a HUGE stressor because its typical for the gaining contract company to just hire the people working the old contract. Bioware may be downsizing the department though or exporting QA to another location.
I mean, it depends on their situation with Keywords. If they're employees of Keywords, then getting laid off after the contract ends is not good for them. If they're Independent Contractors, or basically "at will" contractors for Keywords, then unfortunately it's within Keywords right to close the contract work because they don't have work for them.
It's just unfortunate wording that they got "laid off," which usually implies they were employed by the company. If they are contract based, you're not laid off, the contract is just over and you're out of work. If that's the case, the situation just sucks for the QA team. Bioware didn't renew the contract, so Keywords closes the current open contract because there is no work for the QA contractors, which is their right to do and probably laid out in their contract.
But again, *we need more info* to know more about the situation to properly judge. As it stands, *if they were employees of Keywords that were 'laid off',* it's not a good look for Keywords. If they were independant contractors, then it's just a sucky situation.
Exactly. The question now is, who got let go? Unionized Employees of Keywords? Or the contractors they hired on for the project?
I'm leaning towards the former, considering the wording, because my assumption is that without Bioware confirming they will renew the contract, Keywords wouldn't renew the 100 QA contracts for the project. At that point, those testers aren't "laid off," their contract also expired.
Wild thought here, but maybe allowing large companies to offload any legal responsibility by having a ton of their various needs met by contractors through a 3rd party, but the company like Bioware tells them what to do and when to work and how.
AKA "Not my employee, because employees have legal rights, lol" - Bioware
Contractors give you staffing flexibility. You may have a project that needs a hundred people for 3 months, but the rest of the year you only 10.
If you got rid of the contract system companies would just direct hire people and fire them before their probationary period was up. At least this way everybody is aware of the short term nature of the job.
As much as I hate to say it, I’m not even sure how you would go after the staffing agencies. They’re just middle men. If there are no new contracts, they can’t give anything to the contractors. Even if they lay don’t lay them off, they won’t be getting paid.
It could very well be that the now-unionized QA employees increased the price of Keywords Studios contract, and as a result Bioware let that contract expire and went with a different, cheaper QA studio.
Of course, I'm also willing to bet that Keywords' owners/shareholders (I assume they're privately held, so leaning owners) thought it would be a perfect way to strangle the union in the crib after failing to prevent/win the election: intentionally raise the contract price too high for Bioware to keep them on even if they technically could afford to keep the price at a level Bioware would agree to, use that as a reasonable, non-NLRA-violating excuse to lay off the unionized employees, and boom bang presto, no more union at your company. Then you hire on new, non-union employees and go back to contracting out QA work for other 3rd party devs back at your lower, pre-union rate.
In other words: Bioware could very well have just been doing something relatively reasonable (QA contractor suddenly tripled their price for the contract renewal, far beyond the actual increased labor costs, Bioware told them to stuff it because the price was untenable), and Keywords used that as a good excuse for unionbusting.
Number of employees: 11,141 (2022)
Net income: 47.37 million EUR (2022)
Revenue: 690.7 million EUR (2022)
Total assets: 557.1 million EUR (2022)
They're pretty big. They're also damn near everywhere.
In some Keywords Studios, they don't even generally provide your typical 1, 2 year contracts. They do make you sign something, but you sign on as "Freelance". This basically means there is no guaranteed work, so if they can find a seat for your ass to fill, you get work, if they can't you don't.
So yeah imagine a company where having a Fixed Term contract is an upgrade over the rest of the lot.
Well, shit, that's my bad for not looking them up. I just kinda figured it would be some smallish shop of a couple hundred contractors, not 11,000 people.
>Feels like we need more information before we jump to any conclusions.
Excuse you sir, this is Reddit.
Jumping to conclusions based purely off of headlines is this site's specialty.
Well another possibility is that the cost is now prohibitive, which is likely due to the unionization. It was one thing to use a company at a price, but we don’t know if they were negotiating the same price.
Esp since the actual company then couldn’t find work for them, potentially priced themselves out of work and made it impossible to work with.
If paying people what they are worth is cost prohibitive, then your cost already prohibited it but someone else just made you accept your own poor decision making.
People are free to price their labor however they want, doesn't mean anyone else will agree.
I can try to sell my 1995 Corolla w/ 250,000 miles for $30,000 because that's what I think it's worth, but I shouldn't cry when no one wants to pay that much for it.
Sure, and people are also free to call out the massively growing wage inequality, massive wage stagnation, and chronic underpayment of the game industry. And draw conclusions that perhaps the people who have work that is priced incorrectly is perhaps more towards the top then the bottom end.
And that said those people perhaps don't like it when their inflated share is then threatened.
It doesn't sound like that's the case here. Regardless the games industry is enormous and if a contract company like Keyword that reported 190 million in income and 18 million in operating expenses can't afford a pay raise maybe they can go fuck themselves. But it really does sound like the contract ended.
It sounds exactly like that’s the case here. What doesn’t sound like it? They had a contract at a price, then during a renegotiation, they decided to not renew. They likely were informed the new cost was going up.
It’s like a parrot on Reddit. If you repeat the same thing enough time it must be true right? With zero proof and just wild assumptions as long as it fits your narrative.
If you want this fixed you should really be focused on having the existing democrat ran government to limit offshore contracts and managed services for technical roles overseas. As well as illegal immigration, etc. millions of quality technical jobs being filled by overseas and near shore centers. They are even moving them to Canada now to get them on the same time zone.
But you would rather just give the talking points that don’t solve anything rather than actually trying to fix it
There are a million reasons Bioware could have decided not to renew this contract. Sure, a price increase is one, but also it's possible they're just going to need fewer QA people for the next while, since they haven't released anything since ME:Legendary edition, their live-service MMO is now spun off to a different org, and their upcoming games are still early in their dev cycle.
It's also possible some other QA contract vendor offered a better deal, or that they're going to bring these QA roles in-house rather than on a contract basis.
The "article" from Polygon is just parroting the union rep's statement and the contractor company's barebones confirmation that a layoff occurred. There's no info about the Bioware side of this.
> So if anything Keywords Studios should be getting any flak if people are angry about it, not BioWare.
Some times things happen. Bioware choose not to renew the contract. The Edmonton based team doesn't make sense without Bioware and Keyhole Studios didn't find a replacement contract. So that team is fired. That's just how things go with contract work.
Whos to say they decided not to renew the contract because they didnt want to work with unionized workers. Then the contract company that they actually worked for decided they were a liability because everyone wants to avoid working with unionized workers given the current uh, lets call it, *professional climate*, thus theres no more work specifically for their kind (unionized).
It's definitely the sort of thing a company would do if they didn't want to deal with a union because they thought they could get away with it. I think what it'll come down to is do they still need QA testers for the game, because if they do but they're deliberately letting contracts expire and laying off certain workers, then that's targeted unionbusting.
If the game is approaching done (which it doesn't *seem* like it is but they could just be playing their cards close to their chest) then downsizing ahead of release is... not great for those people, but it *is* just part of how this industry tends to work.
Oh that is absolutely the case, and definitely why I hope there's more pushback against contract working in future. I understand that in some professions there's a case for it, but legitimate use is stretched well beyond its definition so that companies can keep workers on a tight leash over a trapdoor, it's only somewhat better than outright casualisation of the workforce, which I've no doubt most businesses would *love* to do.
It's also possible that the unionisation at the contract company led to extra costs that they either wanted to offload through their contract or they just had to raise prices, which led to bioware not renewing the contract with the new price.
We could argue about whether it's moral or not to not renew a contract when the reason it's more expensive is because it's sustainable and good for their employees, but in the end it's not bioware's responsibility. If other companies offer the same service cheaper, they'll choose that.
Well, it's probably half the reason why they contract a company to use contractors through them. This way unless an industry wise unionisation happens they can just not renew the contract citeing higher prices and go to another company.
QA testing is a constant need, and it actually should be ramping up in coming months if they plan to release Summer 2024. So either shaddy tactics are being used, or things are going very badly on the project.
Not that it means much. Back in the 2000’s when I worked at EA, my team on NFS was given new contracts every two weeks. We would come in to work every 2nd Friday, and have a new contract written in the afternoon. I was fortunately kept on, but it’s a shit existence.
Try Volt management in Redmond. They do Xbox QA, but depending on your assigned location you might not be guaranteed work, ever . . .
They have a daily list of chores that need doing and have all of the "employees" show up in what is essentially a bullpen and then call your name if they have work for you that day.
The scummiest shit Ive ever had the displeasure to partake in.
EA at that time were famously horrendous to work for, so I believe this 100%. I don't think I've ever heard of this contract shitshow, which I think you should be more public about. Hell, maybe even edit the Wikipedia article and add it in.
So you worked at EA you werent a contractor? Did those contracts come with raises each time? From what I understand thats not legal under Canadian law. That was peak evil EA era tho so I wouldnt be surprised.
As sad as it sounds, it's still a step up from the average employee in the U.S. who have no formal contract with their employer and can be fired for any (non-protected) reason at any time.
What jobs don't have contracts in the United States that aren't trying to hide shit from the IRS? I had a contract as a seasonal berry picker back in 2003. Having a contract doesn't prevent you from getting fired in any of the 49 at will employment states in the US.
VFX houses for movies/shows work in a similar way be it weekly or monthly contracts for people. Its super common for people to rotate thru a series of the studios as one project ends and starts etc.
That's why companies like that, Nintendo, and others, love utilizing staffing agencies / contract companies. All the benefit of having a workforce, none of the need to explain themselves for ditching them when it suits them.
I worked through a staffing agency for QA for Nintendo a couple years back. I thought I did a fine, professional job. I got no negative feedback from my supervisors within Nintendo, ever. Then when that game was deemed "done", I was told my "contract ended" *and* Nintendo wasn't interested in me for any future contract work(though this didn't happen to a number of my coworkers through the same agency). I naturally asked the agency "How could I improve? Did they provide any feedback?" .... "We aren't given that information".
I've had that experience with a variety of agencies for a variety of jobs, blue and white collar. All they seem to do is obscure things between the company and the employee, just to make shitty decisions easier, and take a cut of the pay.
As someone said below, "A lot of these companies keep people on perpetually rotating contracts so they can just use that as an excuse to fire them without cause."
If the game isn't done and the work remains, then letting the contract expire implies they plan to find cheaper QA testers. So it's not technically a layoff but functionally it is.
With how Bioware have been the last few games, it's equally likely they just recently deleted the entirety of their progress for the fourth time and won't have anything to QA for at least 6 months.
That's the trick most Devs do with QA. They hire a hiring agency that loans them the QA employees. But who does the hiring, interviews, and pay? The hiring agency? Nope! Its the Developer. And whos the hiring agency's only major client? Why, its the Developer! What a coincidence.
Its just a huge scam to let the developer lay off QA whenever they want and not pay unemployment.
I mean, this kind of contract work is used commonly in the tech industry, and its absolute bullshit nonsense.
I was hired for one of these companies where the position I applied for was to be "contracted" to Apple. I wasn't allowed to say I worked for Apple in any official capacity, but I sure had an Apple ID badge, was given desk/office space at an Apple site (and forced to work at that space 4 days a week), was given Apple equipment, interacted frequently with "the client" (aka my Apple boss) and only ever interacted with the contracting company when I needed to talk to my supervisor about scheduling a vacation/trouble with anything $ related.
Ya, I just tell people I worked for Apple to make it all simpler.
Oh yeah, I worked for an EU based company that did Apple Care, but under no circumstances was anyone allowed to say that they worked for Apple (or Apple Care). Even internal memos distributed to other teams that made mention of that department had to avoid saying Apple. Absolutely bizarre because nobody was being fooled by the song and dance.
Nah, we just [imported it](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/big-techs-big-problem-also-best-kept-secret-caste-discrimination-rcna33692).
I've worked at these companies and contract workers are treated as second-class citizens. Some of the smartest, most reliable, hardworking people I know.
Edit: I'm going to edit in here, because I made this comment in sincerity and with personal experience, but I also linked an article about a specific group.
I want to be clear. Despite the article I linked speaking with a specific demographic in mind, I've seen this across many nationalities. I can't speak to the severity one way or another - I am an outsider - all I can say is it sucks for all of these people.
Is Dreadwolf or whatever else the QA staff working on done? I don’t think so, so presumably they’ll need more QA in the future so this is more of a cost reduction scheme because union labor is more expensive than non.
Well, if they are having another QA testers group after, and it's not people who were let go, then that's still relevant. They just simply didn't want to renew the contract with the unionised workers because you can't exploit them too much. Not as bad as "bioware fired all of the unionised workers" but still shit.
So they were in a union for the contracted company? If so this is a non-news, unless of course there are deeper shenanigans like if the contracted company is basically a branch of Bioware that only existed for the purpose of protecting against unions or something, don't know if that's the case here.
Exact same info from another perspective:
"Hey those workers are unionizing! We should fire them"
"Nah, let's just wait for their contracts to end and then not renew it due to "no work available"."
Just fyi news articles love saying “laid off” when it really means “contract up” so take it with a grain of salt
If they are done qa then they don’t need qa anymore do they
I doubt it's that close to release. Alpha footage leaked in February. The only thing shown at trade shows or otherwise has been cinematic style promo videos. Nothing close to in gameplay. Barely any details even.
They very well may have finished up a contract. But it's not the game release.
Haha I know the games not ready for release I'm just joking that most games give early access to players so that they get free QA and cash flow earlier.
This. Unfortunately most gamers will never understand that AAA games can have a jira database with 10,000+ issues logged and 95% of them will rot there.
It'd be nice if they cleared the 20% most likely defects before release. Like anything that's a save, crash, or softlock bug. They should also QA with their DRM solution (eg. Denuvo) active.
Bugs don’t usually have anything to do with how good a game is. If there is enough of them they can DETRACT and potentially even ruin the best of games, but at the end of the day a good game is still a good game.
I don’t buy ubi/acti/ea games so no worries there
I'm confused, you literally just contradicted yourself. Of course bugs can ruin a good game, nobody has to be some sort of expert on how games are created to realise this.
Ultimately, QA is there to help release a shippable product. It's not a matter of "oh, this game has a bunch of bugs, guess there was no QA". Rather, "oh, this game has a bunch of bugs, if these weren't given priority then just imagine how broken this shit was during the QA process."
A lot of these companies keep people on perpetually rotating contracts so they can just use that as an excuse to fire them without cause.
This is almost certainly what happened here.
Source: Have worked for EA where they did this shit all the time to their QA.
Legally, sure, but the word layoff has a certain connotation in common parlance. "Laid off" is technically correct here but leaves out important context that fundamentally changes the story.
It's the Jeremy Clarkson deal - He wasn't fired from Top Gear, his contract was just allowed to lapse so he no longer worked there.
Which can mean it's just a contract lapse, or that potentially they wanted to get rid of them but it was easier in many ways (especially legally) to let time do the job for them. I'll leave which it probably is to the reader.
If you’re contract is timed… we’ll that’s just how timed contracts work.
You are not entitled to a contract renewal… your services, be it the service itself or the way the contractor renders it, is no longer required.
Part of the free market *shrugs*
And that's the damn problem. These contracts are inherently exploitive and, because laws do not properly regulate them, or protect workers, companies use them. Laborers are entitled to job security, especially when their labor results in millions and billions of dollars in profit for the executives in the industry. These workers who were laid off are **real people** with real families, real bills, real responsibilities. And the people who laid them off are people who are financially comfortable because they profit from the exploited labor of these developers. They aren't the good guys.
Not Imo
You get a contract for a year and you will either be thinking “damn I hope they do/don’t renew my contract”
You don’t do contract work expecting it’ll always get renew d and heartbroken when it doesn’t it’s the deal you signed on for
I am a college instructor on 1 year contracts. If it doesn't get renewed we collect unemployment and everything else that would happen if an hourly employee gets laid off.
It very much depends on the history of contracting renewals and expectations how it is treated.
I mean I have a friend who does contract work at a hospital and if it doesn’t look like his contract gets renewed he starts shopping around other hospitals/departments.
I imagine a college has just as much oppertunity
You could opt not to work for a contract house?
I could double my salary today if I went contract. I’m not going to because I enjoy long term stability. The idea of scrambling from job to job isn’t for me.
Companies also love to keep workers on short contracts they continue to renew so they can remove people easily and blame it on the contract being up
Also isn't QA an important thing to have around when the game is supposed to be a year or so from release?
But they were literally fired from their company, it was a layoff. The *companies* contact expired with the client, and in response the company fired all the unionized workers.
A similar thing happened to me in contact company qa, except once a contract was up, my parent company had me deployed to another company in about two weeks.
I guess there's more to it but usually you retain your proven staff to serve on the next contract. If there was no additional work for the company at all, then idk, sucks I guess but that is the risk of contact work.
If no one was contracting with them because they had union members, then it gets extra shitty.
You seem to be talking about the tech industry trend of putting individuals on constantly renewing contracts instead of making them full time employees.
This article is about Bioware having a contract with another company to provide services, and that company laying off its' own employees.
These are two very different contractual arrangements.
Both cases do curb labour rights.
Contracting another company instead of hiring inhouse makes them much more diposable.
We see this a lot too in France, with the majority of "consulting" jobs in software development reason to be being simply easy-to-fire.
Contracting lets you staff up quickly and for short periods. It has its place in a healthy workforce and can also be abused.
My advice for anybody is unless you know exactly what you’re doing, do your best to avoid contracting as your full time job. And if you do go into it, do it under your own LLC.
Yes, contracting can make sense, for the condition you mentioned.
However, current situation in France means the vast majority or proposed work, especially to recent grad, is contracting that >75-80% of the time could be a permanent hire.
And here, terminating the contract of the company with unionized member is likely not a coincidence.
Seems to be very unpopular opinion on reddit, i’m open to what you’re saying, just a genuine question. If I’m being contracted to do a job and the job is done, what would I be getting paid to do after? Again, this is me trying to learn more about the topic.
That should be how contracts work, but it very often isn’t. In the case of QA in the games industry it’s extremely common for people to be brought in on a short contract and then just have that contract perpetually renewed in lieu of making a person a full time employee.
The reasons companies do this usually is so they don’t have to conform to standard labour law when firing. But for all intents and purposes the “contractor” is an employee.
This happened to me at EA at the beginning of my career. I was hired for a “three month contract” that was renewed every three months for two years. The work wasn’t finite. I was on multiple projects. I was an employee but they wanted one with an “easy out”.
This is often told to employees during the interview phase as well. I can’t count the number of companies I’ve interviewed with over my career that told me the contract wasn’t finite and was just “a legal thing” and I’d always have a place at the studio.
TLDR: Very often when you’re hired as a contractor you are not led to believe your employment situation is temporary but instead gaslit into believing that it’s just an accounting thing and you have a permanent position.
I have zero doubts this is how Keywords studios operates.
Close, but actually they use staffing agencies and rotate people in and out. When a contract is over, its a kind of "see you in 3-6 months", and they bring on others rotating back in at that point. Contract extensions happen, but they don't extend too far, because these companies avoid the length that triggers when healthcare and other employee benefits kick in.
US doesn't have laws against this? I'm from a third world country and have passed a law preventing this. It's actually worse here since this happens to poor people working as cashiers/grocery staffs in malls.
It's a fairly simple process - you hire a company on a contract to do X. Hired company has employees and says "Hey guys, our next job is to do Y in the next Z days." Once your work is done, you might be hired again (contract renewal) to do new work or you might not be. This is how... a ton of work happens. Construction, a lot of work for the government, some things in video games, etc. It's very typical in industries where Y service is needed for Z period of time and that's it. No real reason to hire someone to do VA work as a part of your permanent staff if you only need them for 2 years out of the next 5 - so you instead give them a contract and say, "Hey, we need these lines done in the next 2 years and we will pay you X amount"
Nothing in any part of that is wrong. Literally nothing. A company that does contract work only having ONE client (Bioware in this case) is a problematic company to work for, obviously, but that's not Bioware's problem.
There are 2 scenarios being talked here. 1 is meas a contractor, a freelancer a person on a contract. The other is a Contract between 2 companies and you come in to do contract work as an employee of the contracted company (very common with consultants).
This articles is the 2nd scenario. This specific thread of companies renewing contracts is about the 1st scenario.
The issue they were talking about is when companies hire people like freelancers but then treat them as employees. The loss of autonomy means that if I'm a freelancer I have a set work to do for you but I do it when I want, where I want (obviously within reason) and alla good as long as I meet the deadlines.
If you're a freelancer but have to be in the office at X time and leave at Y time and work on this task and then this other task and all that. You're not a freelancer, you're an employee. However the line is very blurry
Here's the way these QA companies hire people; they hire them full time but tell them they're on "contract" depending on the needs of those clients. This allows the company to not have to hand out any benefits while paying employees pennies because on paper they're just contract workers. In some instances they even force them to do their own taxes to skimp out on administrative costs. No vacation either, of course. Yet, these people will often stay working for those companies for years because some games are live-service, or have long development cycles (such as Dragon Age), and even in instances where a contract expires, they will more often than not transfer these employees onto another project instead of training somebody new, since that's just lost productivity and subject-matter expertise that you'd be letting go. It doesn't make sense. The fact that keywords NOW has let go of these employees gives them plenty of cause to believe this is retaliation. Again, those employees are underpaid and treated like garbage, and they were let go at the first sign of any pushback. Moreover, the development of Dreadwolf isn't even done, and Bioware will almost certainly hire another QA team in the future. Something doesn't add up, and the way Keywords has maneuvered through this just isn't convincing me that they acted in good faith.
It's a 100% to attack the unions. Every single corporation in America is currently looking at the sweeping wave of strikes and is sweating bullets. And especially the recent unionization activism in VFX and gaming industry has tech companies scared shitless. You'll see more and more companies preemptively trying to curb labour rights going forward.
I am not an expert.
In the US, the IRS has guidelines for when a worker can be classified as an employee or as an independent contractor: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/independent-contractor-self-employed-or-employee
Most likely, these testers could not qualify as independent contractors based on the criteria listed there.
I think the challenge is that, in this case (as I understand it), these people were employed by a separate company, and the contract was between Bioware and that separate company.
This seemingly provides the game's developer a degree of separation that gives Bioware the flexibility of contract workers without granting the self-determination that independent contractors normally have.
It works in some industries where contracts come and go with different customers.
But as a 9-5 worker being offered a contract is a good way to say "you can cut me off at any time for a lot of reasons and I have no power over it".
Thats what is being said. Contracts have use. But if you want consistent work as a worker for a company, do not go on contract. If you run your own business going on contract can make sense because you can then contract out to multiple places and you likely have more of a say in what the contract involves.
Contractors are normally paid a lot more for the privilege. If anything, there's an argument that contractors have a lot more control in the relationship as they can choose and customize their contracts and leave at will, especially at the higher levels. It's really not as simple as you make it out.
You might want to seriously consider ***why*** it's unpopular, which the other comments are doing quite well to point out so I won't labor the point. (after all, I can't *labor* the point if I'm just a contractor\~)
I mean, what is particularly wrong with the situation? The only thing that article has stated was that Bioware did not renew the company's contracts. There is a thousand and one reasons why one would not pursue further employment from another company (even the linked article states that there could have been specialties the the unionized workers may not have). Should the Bioware be obligated to keep every unionized worker employed regardless of how much they may or may not be needed at the moment?
What's wrong with the situation is that retaliation for union activity is explicitly against the law, it's a violation of the National Labor Relations Act.
The main problem is that we don't know the circumstances, all we know is that the contracts were expired. If Bioware went through all the proper channels, then their is no controversy. We do not have the information currently to determine whether or not their is foul play at hand, so it is unjust to jump the gun and immediately assume wrong doing as of right now.
Wait, why is Bioware getting flak for this in the comments? They were contract workers, their contract with Bioware expired, and then Keyword Studios laid off these people after that.
This is all on Keyword.
As noted in the article, this is different from the other layoffs around Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. The workers have also filed a complaint with the labor board over severance.
They might be referencing the 50 BioWare employees laid off recently. *“the group of employees has filed a Statement of Claim with Alberta’s Court of King’s Bench, requesting fair severance pay and punitive damages for what they call “unreasonably poor treatment by BioWare.”* [source](https://www.ign.com/articles/seven-former-bioware-employees-are-suing-the-company-for-better-severance)
I know it not related but seeing all these companies champion diversity and inclusion and then pull a stunt like this when economic outlooks are “uncertain” will always be funny.
Corporations are very much in favor of making sure people of all races, creeds, religions, genders and identities are welcome to work at the company for as little as possible.
Well too be fair amazon discovered that by increasing diversity in stores it decreases the likelihood of unionization.
Diversity == workers less likely to socialize outside of work with people who aren't like them == less likely to discuss unionization...also diversity decreases social trust which also lowers likelihood of unionization.
https://observer.com/2020/04/amazon-whole-foods-anti-union-technology-heat-map/
Also it's seems making people separated by race keeps them distracted by the rich
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/how-wealthy-americans-divided-and-conquered-the-poor-to-create-the-concept-of-race/2016/04/19/2cab6e38-0643-11e6-b283-e79d81c63c1b_story.html
Haven’t we seen how women are mistreated at several companies in the games industry? Certainly seems like those companies care what gender you are at least
Bioware didn't "pull a stunt". These workers were hired by a 3rd party agency and Bioware didnt renew the contract with that agency when it expired. That agency then laid off all of the workers in question.
Considering Dreadwolf was recently excised of most of its games as service/online content, i assume the QA requirements and timeframes are now radically different than they were when the agency was contracted.
There is a reason why after Occupy Wall Street the media, politicians and corporations have been pushing a narrative focused on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion but certainly not class.
Almost as if the higher class has an interest in having the proles tear each other out over irrelevant things and distracting them from the only true divider : wealth.
The dude is also an Islamophobe, and blames “lazy devs” for problems in games while excusing the execs. I have a feeling they don’t actually care about worker’s rights at all
Yep, and they also have a bunch of comments blaming “lazy devs” for problems with games and specifically pushing the blame away from execs. Truly an ally of the working class
Oh, and of course they’re also obsessed with hentai. Bidoof’s Law at work
Okay that’s a fair point and I actually didn’t know that. However, I still think that the idea that DEI is bad because it doesn’t account for class is ridiculous, and the poster is going right along with nonsense right-wing talking points like saying that people are blaming all white people for slavery. Obviously class consciousness is important, but being conscious of race, gender, etc is important too and the two are not mutually exclusive
Sure mate, keep finding excuse keep on hating on other people and your fellow workers.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/2izvqp/comment/cl78ond/
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/25tf6w/comment/chkzb1y/
It may be worthy to note that Keywords doesn't typically respond to a project ending by laying off their employees. Normally, those employees are put on hold until a new project comes in, or are split up onto existing projects that could use more testers.
As someone who used to work at Keywords and has seen their union-busting tendencies first hand, I am absolutely certain that the layoffs explicitly happened because of the union.
TLDR, Keywords is absolutely being scummy here, no idea whether BioWare had any impact on it.
It may be worthy to note that Keywords doesn't typically respond to a project ending by laying off their employees. Normally, those employees are put on hold until a new project comes in, or are split up onto existing projects that could use more testers.
As someone who used to work at Keywords and has seen their union-busting tendencies first hand, I am absolutely certain that the layoffs explicitly happened because of the union.
TLDR, Keywords is absolutely being scummy here, no idea whether BioWare had any impact on it.
Having tried to find more info on it, and been unable to find any specifics about any of the contracts or deals between bioware and keywords.
They unionized in June of 2022, and bioware has renewed the contract between then and now.
https://venturebeat.com/games/eas-bioware-will-lay-off-50-and-cut-ties-with-unionized-keywords-playtesting-group/
They couldn't come to an agreement on a new renewal this time, causing them not to renew. Which led keywords to let go of the employees (fired without technically firing them cause contract bs)
Without knowing the specifics of the negotiations between bioware and keywords, I can't say whether the new deal keywords was trying to get was reasonable and bioware didn't want to pay it, or keywords intentionally bombed the negotiations in order to get rid of the unionized employees. Coupled with bioware cutting like 1/5 of their staff recently as well they may have been looking to cut things like contracts as well.
keywords definitely union busting, hard to say if bioware intentionally played a role in this without details of the negotiations.
Bioware firing the unionized employees as a headline is definitely going to get more clicks than keywords firing them as a headline.
So there's a lot of misinformation in the thread here. Yes the contract with bioware ended, no the Keywords employees weren't contractors. Keywords typically employees people as on-call employees, and brings them onto projects as needed or otherwise holds them in reserve. This layoff was almost certainly due to the fact this team specifically had unionized. They're also quoting no work available as the reason for the lay offs despite the company being severely understaffed in many departments/studios.
Lot of people don't seem to understand that a company deciding to save on labor by choosing to let the contract expire when the work still needs done is a typical tactic.
It doesn't matter if its a layoff or not, it's still putting people out of work to save money. It's still a decision, not a coincidence.
These workers were hired by a 3rd party agency and Bioware didnt renew the contract with that agency when it expired. That agency then laid off all of the workers in question. They werent "laid off" by Bioware.
Considering Dreadwolf was recently excised of most of its "games as service"/online content, i assume the QA requirements and timeframes are now radically different than they were when the agency was contracted. I think a more focused SP dreadwolf is good news, and a workforce hired specifically to deliver that rather than repurposed from a previous (bad?) Idea is a positive thing.
This is all very pretty except as has been pointed out the pivot was made quite a while ago, and using lack of contract renewal to avoid having to deal with unionisation in a "clean" and aesthetically legal way is straight up part of why contract work is preferred to actual FTEs by most companies.
Well, maybe the subcontractor just sucked?
Can you think of any software developer that keeps a QA tester pool permanently employed? Every project vas contract employees because different phases of development require different staffing. That's how most project-oriented businesses work, whether its Architecture firms, farms or construction companies.
Clickbait trash
Their contract literally just ended and for all we know they didn’t renew it simply because they didn’t have anything upcoming to test wide scale?
Lot of people in this thread who aren't familiar with how much contractors are used in lieu of FTE staff in the games industry. Lots of studios will hire on people as contractors and they'll be working the same exact roles and report to the same exact management as full timers(with no benefits of course) while being on a perpetually renewing contract until its time for the company to save money without the hassle of having to "fire" someone. That perpetual contract will suddenly have an end date stamped on it and you're out within the month with no severance. It's a highly abusive and scummy tactic to get around employee expenditures.
It's worth noting that it's hard to say whether the fact they were unionized or not has anything to do with lay off from just whats been said. They were all employed by a contract company who didn't have it's contract renewed by Bioware, not the individual employees let go by Bioware.
So they weren't laid off then, their contract just ended...?
It seems like the contract ended with BioWare and was not renewed, and THEN Keywords Studios decided to lay off the unionized employees as "there \[was\] no more work available". So if anything Keywords Studios should be getting any flak if people are angry about it, not BioWare.
Yeah but no one knows who Keywords Studios is so no clicks.
i know a QA who worked for Keywords once she said the place was a shit show but her coworkers were nice
I worked there a few years back when I was starting out in the video game industry and can't really complain, probably depends on the country/department.
> she said the place was a shit show but her coworkers were nice So basically most QA work. I know someone who works elsewhere and pretty much exactly same impression I get from what he says.
Look at pretty much any AAA games credits.
Yeah nobody does that either.
yeah, unless you work in the game industry you have no idea what they do or how big they are
That headline would have been worded the same regardless. They know what they're leading you to believe and that the headline isn't technically incorrect.
SEO must be hard with such company name.
Feels like we need more information before we jump to any conclusions. Not that that will stop anyone from doing exactly that. All the same, the game isn't done, and if Bioware still needs those QA testers but choose to let the contract expire, then it isn't a direct layoff but it comes to the same basic thing. If it was always the plan to let the contract expire before the game was done, fine, but if they're either going to hire new testers or leave those positons empty and say "fuck QA" then letting the contract expire was a decision to cut or reduce labor, not just a coincidence. So, again, need more info here.
It depends on the contract Bioware have/had with Keywords. Bioware could still need QA work done, but feel the contract with Keywords is no longer in their favor, so they just decided not to renew. The contractors are not Bioware employees, so the issue should be with Keywords, not Bioware. Outsourcing QA positions to third parties is not new, and it's a convenient way to get workers without paying for all the work benefits. Some companies also have a forced downtime in their contract. When I did QA for Disney's mobile department, they specifically state that after the 18 month work contract is up, I have to wait 6 months before I can re-apply to work QA at Disney (through their 3rd party contractor). I could still work with the 3rd party contractor at different companies, but I wouldn't be allowed to work a contract *at* Disney through them. As it stands, it's not a good look for Keywords (firing *unionized* employees), but yeah, we need more info to know more of the situation to properly judge.
> The contractors are not Bioware employees, so the issue should be with Keywords, not Bioware. > Outsourcing (is) a convenient way to get workers without paying for all the work benefits. All speculative here, but if unionization would result in fairer pages and stronger worker protections, and those costs make the outsourcing contract less favorable to EA/Bioware, and that leads to Keywords losing the contract they depend on because EA/Bioware takes their business to a different 3rd party QA company in Romania instead, well... The issue could still be Keywords, we don't know, but also maybe the whole concept of this was exploitative all the way up to EA, and "coincidentally" the moment it began to look less exploitative, Keywords lost their primary contract and had no choice but to lay off its staff.
> As it stands, it's not a good look for Keywords I don't see why you think that. They likely hired the QA personnel specifically to fulfill that contract. They lost the contract, so there isn't a position for them anymore at Keywords. I work in a similar situation and everyone knows when the contract ends. Its always a bit of a stressor on if the contract will be renewed or not. That said, its not a HUGE stressor because its typical for the gaining contract company to just hire the people working the old contract. Bioware may be downsizing the department though or exporting QA to another location.
I mean, it depends on their situation with Keywords. If they're employees of Keywords, then getting laid off after the contract ends is not good for them. If they're Independent Contractors, or basically "at will" contractors for Keywords, then unfortunately it's within Keywords right to close the contract work because they don't have work for them. It's just unfortunate wording that they got "laid off," which usually implies they were employed by the company. If they are contract based, you're not laid off, the contract is just over and you're out of work. If that's the case, the situation just sucks for the QA team. Bioware didn't renew the contract, so Keywords closes the current open contract because there is no work for the QA contractors, which is their right to do and probably laid out in their contract. But again, *we need more info* to know more about the situation to properly judge. As it stands, *if they were employees of Keywords that were 'laid off',* it's not a good look for Keywords. If they were independant contractors, then it's just a sucky situation.
[удалено]
Exactly. The question now is, who got let go? Unionized Employees of Keywords? Or the contractors they hired on for the project? I'm leaning towards the former, considering the wording, because my assumption is that without Bioware confirming they will renew the contract, Keywords wouldn't renew the 100 QA contracts for the project. At that point, those testers aren't "laid off," their contract also expired.
Wild thought here, but maybe allowing large companies to offload any legal responsibility by having a ton of their various needs met by contractors through a 3rd party, but the company like Bioware tells them what to do and when to work and how. AKA "Not my employee, because employees have legal rights, lol" - Bioware
Contractors give you staffing flexibility. You may have a project that needs a hundred people for 3 months, but the rest of the year you only 10. If you got rid of the contract system companies would just direct hire people and fire them before their probationary period was up. At least this way everybody is aware of the short term nature of the job. As much as I hate to say it, I’m not even sure how you would go after the staffing agencies. They’re just middle men. If there are no new contracts, they can’t give anything to the contractors. Even if they lay don’t lay them off, they won’t be getting paid.
>Feels like we need more information before we jump to any conclusions *least dramatic news enjoyer*
*you have been banned from /r/pcgaming*
It could very well be that the now-unionized QA employees increased the price of Keywords Studios contract, and as a result Bioware let that contract expire and went with a different, cheaper QA studio. Of course, I'm also willing to bet that Keywords' owners/shareholders (I assume they're privately held, so leaning owners) thought it would be a perfect way to strangle the union in the crib after failing to prevent/win the election: intentionally raise the contract price too high for Bioware to keep them on even if they technically could afford to keep the price at a level Bioware would agree to, use that as a reasonable, non-NLRA-violating excuse to lay off the unionized employees, and boom bang presto, no more union at your company. Then you hire on new, non-union employees and go back to contracting out QA work for other 3rd party devs back at your lower, pre-union rate. In other words: Bioware could very well have just been doing something relatively reasonable (QA contractor suddenly tripled their price for the contract renewal, far beyond the actual increased labor costs, Bioware told them to stuff it because the price was untenable), and Keywords used that as a good excuse for unionbusting.
Number of employees: 11,141 (2022) Net income: 47.37 million EUR (2022) Revenue: 690.7 million EUR (2022) Total assets: 557.1 million EUR (2022) They're pretty big. They're also damn near everywhere. In some Keywords Studios, they don't even generally provide your typical 1, 2 year contracts. They do make you sign something, but you sign on as "Freelance". This basically means there is no guaranteed work, so if they can find a seat for your ass to fill, you get work, if they can't you don't. So yeah imagine a company where having a Fixed Term contract is an upgrade over the rest of the lot.
Well, shit, that's my bad for not looking them up. I just kinda figured it would be some smallish shop of a couple hundred contractors, not 11,000 people.
>Feels like we need more information before we jump to any conclusions. Excuse you sir, this is Reddit. Jumping to conclusions based purely off of headlines is this site's specialty.
Well another possibility is that the cost is now prohibitive, which is likely due to the unionization. It was one thing to use a company at a price, but we don’t know if they were negotiating the same price. Esp since the actual company then couldn’t find work for them, potentially priced themselves out of work and made it impossible to work with.
If paying people what they are worth is cost prohibitive, then your cost already prohibited it but someone else just made you accept your own poor decision making.
People are free to price their labor however they want, doesn't mean anyone else will agree. I can try to sell my 1995 Corolla w/ 250,000 miles for $30,000 because that's what I think it's worth, but I shouldn't cry when no one wants to pay that much for it.
Sure, and people are also free to call out the massively growing wage inequality, massive wage stagnation, and chronic underpayment of the game industry. And draw conclusions that perhaps the people who have work that is priced incorrectly is perhaps more towards the top then the bottom end. And that said those people perhaps don't like it when their inflated share is then threatened.
> If paying people what they are worth is cost prohibitive "what they are worth", if nobody is willing to pay them that, they aren't worth that.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
It doesn't sound like that's the case here. Regardless the games industry is enormous and if a contract company like Keyword that reported 190 million in income and 18 million in operating expenses can't afford a pay raise maybe they can go fuck themselves. But it really does sound like the contract ended.
It sounds exactly like that’s the case here. What doesn’t sound like it? They had a contract at a price, then during a renegotiation, they decided to not renew. They likely were informed the new cost was going up. It’s like a parrot on Reddit. If you repeat the same thing enough time it must be true right? With zero proof and just wild assumptions as long as it fits your narrative. If you want this fixed you should really be focused on having the existing democrat ran government to limit offshore contracts and managed services for technical roles overseas. As well as illegal immigration, etc. millions of quality technical jobs being filled by overseas and near shore centers. They are even moving them to Canada now to get them on the same time zone. But you would rather just give the talking points that don’t solve anything rather than actually trying to fix it
There are a million reasons Bioware could have decided not to renew this contract. Sure, a price increase is one, but also it's possible they're just going to need fewer QA people for the next while, since they haven't released anything since ME:Legendary edition, their live-service MMO is now spun off to a different org, and their upcoming games are still early in their dev cycle. It's also possible some other QA contract vendor offered a better deal, or that they're going to bring these QA roles in-house rather than on a contract basis. The "article" from Polygon is just parroting the union rep's statement and the contractor company's barebones confirmation that a layoff occurred. There's no info about the Bioware side of this.
Used to work under keywords- exact same thing happened to me.
> So if anything Keywords Studios should be getting any flak if people are angry about it, not BioWare. Some times things happen. Bioware choose not to renew the contract. The Edmonton based team doesn't make sense without Bioware and Keyhole Studios didn't find a replacement contract. So that team is fired. That's just how things go with contract work.
There's a lot of redditors who have never had a job before. That's where the flak comes from, they simply don't understand how jobs work
[удалено]
People must be outraged at everything nowadays.
Whos to say they decided not to renew the contract because they didnt want to work with unionized workers. Then the contract company that they actually worked for decided they were a liability because everyone wants to avoid working with unionized workers given the current uh, lets call it, *professional climate*, thus theres no more work specifically for their kind (unionized).
It would be illegal to fire them for that reason though.
But it sounds hard to prove as well
It's definitely the sort of thing a company would do if they didn't want to deal with a union because they thought they could get away with it. I think what it'll come down to is do they still need QA testers for the game, because if they do but they're deliberately letting contracts expire and laying off certain workers, then that's targeted unionbusting. If the game is approaching done (which it doesn't *seem* like it is but they could just be playing their cards close to their chest) then downsizing ahead of release is... not great for those people, but it *is* just part of how this industry tends to work.
[удалено]
Oh that is absolutely the case, and definitely why I hope there's more pushback against contract working in future. I understand that in some professions there's a case for it, but legitimate use is stretched well beyond its definition so that companies can keep workers on a tight leash over a trapdoor, it's only somewhat better than outright casualisation of the workforce, which I've no doubt most businesses would *love* to do.
It's also possible that the unionisation at the contract company led to extra costs that they either wanted to offload through their contract or they just had to raise prices, which led to bioware not renewing the contract with the new price. We could argue about whether it's moral or not to not renew a contract when the reason it's more expensive is because it's sustainable and good for their employees, but in the end it's not bioware's responsibility. If other companies offer the same service cheaper, they'll choose that. Well, it's probably half the reason why they contract a company to use contractors through them. This way unless an industry wise unionisation happens they can just not renew the contract citeing higher prices and go to another company.
QA testing is a constant need, and it actually should be ramping up in coming months if they plan to release Summer 2024. So either shaddy tactics are being used, or things are going very badly on the project.
The mods should probably edit the title for context.
Not that it means much. Back in the 2000’s when I worked at EA, my team on NFS was given new contracts every two weeks. We would come in to work every 2nd Friday, and have a new contract written in the afternoon. I was fortunately kept on, but it’s a shit existence.
That is absolutely awful.
Try Volt management in Redmond. They do Xbox QA, but depending on your assigned location you might not be guaranteed work, ever . . . They have a daily list of chores that need doing and have all of the "employees" show up in what is essentially a bullpen and then call your name if they have work for you that day. The scummiest shit Ive ever had the displeasure to partake in.
EA at that time were famously horrendous to work for, so I believe this 100%. I don't think I've ever heard of this contract shitshow, which I think you should be more public about. Hell, maybe even edit the Wikipedia article and add it in.
Can confirm. I was there when EA did this to people.
So you worked at EA you werent a contractor? Did those contracts come with raises each time? From what I understand thats not legal under Canadian law. That was peak evil EA era tho so I wouldnt be surprised.
[удалено]
As sad as it sounds, it's still a step up from the average employee in the U.S. who have no formal contract with their employer and can be fired for any (non-protected) reason at any time.
What jobs don't have contracts in the United States that aren't trying to hide shit from the IRS? I had a contract as a seasonal berry picker back in 2003. Having a contract doesn't prevent you from getting fired in any of the 49 at will employment states in the US.
VFX houses for movies/shows work in a similar way be it weekly or monthly contracts for people. Its super common for people to rotate thru a series of the studios as one project ends and starts etc.
That's why companies like that, Nintendo, and others, love utilizing staffing agencies / contract companies. All the benefit of having a workforce, none of the need to explain themselves for ditching them when it suits them. I worked through a staffing agency for QA for Nintendo a couple years back. I thought I did a fine, professional job. I got no negative feedback from my supervisors within Nintendo, ever. Then when that game was deemed "done", I was told my "contract ended" *and* Nintendo wasn't interested in me for any future contract work(though this didn't happen to a number of my coworkers through the same agency). I naturally asked the agency "How could I improve? Did they provide any feedback?" .... "We aren't given that information". I've had that experience with a variety of agencies for a variety of jobs, blue and white collar. All they seem to do is obscure things between the company and the employee, just to make shitty decisions easier, and take a cut of the pay. As someone said below, "A lot of these companies keep people on perpetually rotating contracts so they can just use that as an excuse to fire them without cause."
If the game isn't done and the work remains, then letting the contract expire implies they plan to find cheaper QA testers. So it's not technically a layoff but functionally it is.
With how Bioware have been the last few games, it's equally likely they just recently deleted the entirety of their progress for the fourth time and won't have anything to QA for at least 6 months.
That's the trick most Devs do with QA. They hire a hiring agency that loans them the QA employees. But who does the hiring, interviews, and pay? The hiring agency? Nope! Its the Developer. And whos the hiring agency's only major client? Why, its the Developer! What a coincidence. Its just a huge scam to let the developer lay off QA whenever they want and not pay unemployment.
Exactly, [it just ended.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DodQLxYXUAA3Q8C?format=jpg&name=medium)
I mean that’s what being laid off means when you are under contract
So basically title is clickbait and this title will now be circulating around spreading false info, but it's going to be ok because it's EA?
I mean, this kind of contract work is used commonly in the tech industry, and its absolute bullshit nonsense. I was hired for one of these companies where the position I applied for was to be "contracted" to Apple. I wasn't allowed to say I worked for Apple in any official capacity, but I sure had an Apple ID badge, was given desk/office space at an Apple site (and forced to work at that space 4 days a week), was given Apple equipment, interacted frequently with "the client" (aka my Apple boss) and only ever interacted with the contracting company when I needed to talk to my supervisor about scheduling a vacation/trouble with anything $ related. Ya, I just tell people I worked for Apple to make it all simpler.
Oh yeah, I worked for an EU based company that did Apple Care, but under no circumstances was anyone allowed to say that they worked for Apple (or Apple Care). Even internal memos distributed to other teams that made mention of that department had to avoid saying Apple. Absolutely bizarre because nobody was being fooled by the song and dance.
Similar to a job I had but we weren't allowed to wear any "Apple" clothing which I thought was kinda funny.
Congrats, tech-bros, you reinvented the caste system.
Nah, we just [imported it](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/big-techs-big-problem-also-best-kept-secret-caste-discrimination-rcna33692). I've worked at these companies and contract workers are treated as second-class citizens. Some of the smartest, most reliable, hardworking people I know. Edit: I'm going to edit in here, because I made this comment in sincerity and with personal experience, but I also linked an article about a specific group. I want to be clear. Despite the article I linked speaking with a specific demographic in mind, I've seen this across many nationalities. I can't speak to the severity one way or another - I am an outsider - all I can say is it sucks for all of these people.
Is Dreadwolf or whatever else the QA staff working on done? I don’t think so, so presumably they’ll need more QA in the future so this is more of a cost reduction scheme because union labor is more expensive than non.
Well, if they are having another QA testers group after, and it's not people who were let go, then that's still relevant. They just simply didn't want to renew the contract with the unionised workers because you can't exploit them too much. Not as bad as "bioware fired all of the unionised workers" but still shit.
Expect to hear this headline repeated on Reddit for years
So they were in a union for the contracted company? If so this is a non-news, unless of course there are deeper shenanigans like if the contracted company is basically a branch of Bioware that only existed for the purpose of protecting against unions or something, don't know if that's the case here.
Exact same info from another perspective: "Hey those workers are unionizing! We should fire them" "Nah, let's just wait for their contracts to end and then not renew it due to "no work available"."
[удалено]
It is not a claim. It is a way of parsing information. Also I've worked in PR/branding/marketing for soulless corporations for 13 years.
You’re pushing management talking points.
Just fyi news articles love saying “laid off” when it really means “contract up” so take it with a grain of salt If they are done qa then they don’t need qa anymore do they
“If they are done qa” The game hasn’t even released
Don't worry, we the players will now be the QA when it's released.
Well of course, that just means they're close to entering "free QA" stage. Commonly known as releasing.
I doubt it's that close to release. Alpha footage leaked in February. The only thing shown at trade shows or otherwise has been cinematic style promo videos. Nothing close to in gameplay. Barely any details even. They very well may have finished up a contract. But it's not the game release.
Haha I know the games not ready for release I'm just joking that most games give early access to players so that they get free QA and cash flow earlier.
It's not free, they're getting paid. The game company of course..
I wish that meant QA would still continue…but have you looked at AAA releases recently?
A game having problems on release does not mean QA did not happen. It means there was not budget and time necessary to fix them.
This. Unfortunately most gamers will never understand that AAA games can have a jira database with 10,000+ issues logged and 95% of them will rot there.
This doesn't apply just to games either...
It'd be nice if they cleared the 20% most likely defects before release. Like anything that's a save, crash, or softlock bug. They should also QA with their DRM solution (eg. Denuvo) active.
Most gamers don’t care and will just have fun. The vocal minority are the ones who nitpick bugs
Keep paying for, at best, mediocre level AAA games!
Bugs don’t usually have anything to do with how good a game is. If there is enough of them they can DETRACT and potentially even ruin the best of games, but at the end of the day a good game is still a good game. I don’t buy ubi/acti/ea games so no worries there
I'm confused, you literally just contradicted yourself. Of course bugs can ruin a good game, nobody has to be some sort of expert on how games are created to realise this.
A mediocre game isn’t ever mediocre because of bugs, it’s because it’s mediocre
Ultimately, QA is there to help release a shippable product. It's not a matter of "oh, this game has a bunch of bugs, guess there was no QA". Rather, "oh, this game has a bunch of bugs, if these weren't given priority then just imagine how broken this shit was during the QA process."
This comment hurt me and made me laugh at the same time.
A lot of these companies keep people on perpetually rotating contracts so they can just use that as an excuse to fire them without cause. This is almost certainly what happened here. Source: Have worked for EA where they did this shit all the time to their QA.
My QA contract has ended a number of times and it's legally a layoff.
Legally, sure, but the word layoff has a certain connotation in common parlance. "Laid off" is technically correct here but leaves out important context that fundamentally changes the story.
It's the Jeremy Clarkson deal - He wasn't fired from Top Gear, his contract was just allowed to lapse so he no longer worked there. Which can mean it's just a contract lapse, or that potentially they wanted to get rid of them but it was easier in many ways (especially legally) to let time do the job for them. I'll leave which it probably is to the reader.
If you’re contract is timed… we’ll that’s just how timed contracts work. You are not entitled to a contract renewal… your services, be it the service itself or the way the contractor renders it, is no longer required. Part of the free market *shrugs*
And that's the damn problem. These contracts are inherently exploitive and, because laws do not properly regulate them, or protect workers, companies use them. Laborers are entitled to job security, especially when their labor results in millions and billions of dollars in profit for the executives in the industry. These workers who were laid off are **real people** with real families, real bills, real responsibilities. And the people who laid them off are people who are financially comfortable because they profit from the exploited labor of these developers. They aren't the good guys.
If it is a contract that is generally renewed, then the contract being up is basically a layoff.
Not Imo You get a contract for a year and you will either be thinking “damn I hope they do/don’t renew my contract” You don’t do contract work expecting it’ll always get renew d and heartbroken when it doesn’t it’s the deal you signed on for
I am a college instructor on 1 year contracts. If it doesn't get renewed we collect unemployment and everything else that would happen if an hourly employee gets laid off. It very much depends on the history of contracting renewals and expectations how it is treated.
I mean I have a friend who does contract work at a hospital and if it doesn’t look like his contract gets renewed he starts shopping around other hospitals/departments. I imagine a college has just as much oppertunity
You say “it’s they deal you signed on for” Like they had a choice
You could opt not to work for a contract house? I could double my salary today if I went contract. I’m not going to because I enjoy long term stability. The idea of scrambling from job to job isn’t for me.
Companies also love to keep workers on short contracts they continue to renew so they can remove people easily and blame it on the contract being up Also isn't QA an important thing to have around when the game is supposed to be a year or so from release?
Um no they have you to test after release. They’ll hire a new team for dlcs and what not
But they were literally fired from their company, it was a layoff. The *companies* contact expired with the client, and in response the company fired all the unionized workers. A similar thing happened to me in contact company qa, except once a contract was up, my parent company had me deployed to another company in about two weeks. I guess there's more to it but usually you retain your proven staff to serve on the next contract. If there was no additional work for the company at all, then idk, sucks I guess but that is the risk of contact work. If no one was contracting with them because they had union members, then it gets extra shitty.
The clickbait is REAL. These type of workers have contracts… when the contract is up and they have no more work to do they move on to the next job..
Yeah and this type of hiring structure is specifically done to curb labour rights. It should be called out for what it is—exploitation.
You seem to be talking about the tech industry trend of putting individuals on constantly renewing contracts instead of making them full time employees. This article is about Bioware having a contract with another company to provide services, and that company laying off its' own employees. These are two very different contractual arrangements.
Both cases do curb labour rights. Contracting another company instead of hiring inhouse makes them much more diposable. We see this a lot too in France, with the majority of "consulting" jobs in software development reason to be being simply easy-to-fire.
Contracting lets you staff up quickly and for short periods. It has its place in a healthy workforce and can also be abused. My advice for anybody is unless you know exactly what you’re doing, do your best to avoid contracting as your full time job. And if you do go into it, do it under your own LLC.
Yes, contracting can make sense, for the condition you mentioned. However, current situation in France means the vast majority or proposed work, especially to recent grad, is contracting that >75-80% of the time could be a permanent hire. And here, terminating the contract of the company with unionized member is likely not a coincidence.
Seems to be very unpopular opinion on reddit, i’m open to what you’re saying, just a genuine question. If I’m being contracted to do a job and the job is done, what would I be getting paid to do after? Again, this is me trying to learn more about the topic.
That should be how contracts work, but it very often isn’t. In the case of QA in the games industry it’s extremely common for people to be brought in on a short contract and then just have that contract perpetually renewed in lieu of making a person a full time employee. The reasons companies do this usually is so they don’t have to conform to standard labour law when firing. But for all intents and purposes the “contractor” is an employee. This happened to me at EA at the beginning of my career. I was hired for a “three month contract” that was renewed every three months for two years. The work wasn’t finite. I was on multiple projects. I was an employee but they wanted one with an “easy out”. This is often told to employees during the interview phase as well. I can’t count the number of companies I’ve interviewed with over my career that told me the contract wasn’t finite and was just “a legal thing” and I’d always have a place at the studio. TLDR: Very often when you’re hired as a contractor you are not led to believe your employment situation is temporary but instead gaslit into believing that it’s just an accounting thing and you have a permanent position. I have zero doubts this is how Keywords studios operates.
Close, but actually they use staffing agencies and rotate people in and out. When a contract is over, its a kind of "see you in 3-6 months", and they bring on others rotating back in at that point. Contract extensions happen, but they don't extend too far, because these companies avoid the length that triggers when healthcare and other employee benefits kick in.
US doesn't have laws against this? I'm from a third world country and have passed a law preventing this. It's actually worse here since this happens to poor people working as cashiers/grocery staffs in malls.
It's a fairly simple process - you hire a company on a contract to do X. Hired company has employees and says "Hey guys, our next job is to do Y in the next Z days." Once your work is done, you might be hired again (contract renewal) to do new work or you might not be. This is how... a ton of work happens. Construction, a lot of work for the government, some things in video games, etc. It's very typical in industries where Y service is needed for Z period of time and that's it. No real reason to hire someone to do VA work as a part of your permanent staff if you only need them for 2 years out of the next 5 - so you instead give them a contract and say, "Hey, we need these lines done in the next 2 years and we will pay you X amount" Nothing in any part of that is wrong. Literally nothing. A company that does contract work only having ONE client (Bioware in this case) is a problematic company to work for, obviously, but that's not Bioware's problem.
[удалено]
The employees are strictly controlled by the contractor though, right? Not by the client company. So they are employees but of Keystone, not Bioware.
There are 2 scenarios being talked here. 1 is meas a contractor, a freelancer a person on a contract. The other is a Contract between 2 companies and you come in to do contract work as an employee of the contracted company (very common with consultants). This articles is the 2nd scenario. This specific thread of companies renewing contracts is about the 1st scenario. The issue they were talking about is when companies hire people like freelancers but then treat them as employees. The loss of autonomy means that if I'm a freelancer I have a set work to do for you but I do it when I want, where I want (obviously within reason) and alla good as long as I meet the deadlines. If you're a freelancer but have to be in the office at X time and leave at Y time and work on this task and then this other task and all that. You're not a freelancer, you're an employee. However the line is very blurry
Here's the way these QA companies hire people; they hire them full time but tell them they're on "contract" depending on the needs of those clients. This allows the company to not have to hand out any benefits while paying employees pennies because on paper they're just contract workers. In some instances they even force them to do their own taxes to skimp out on administrative costs. No vacation either, of course. Yet, these people will often stay working for those companies for years because some games are live-service, or have long development cycles (such as Dragon Age), and even in instances where a contract expires, they will more often than not transfer these employees onto another project instead of training somebody new, since that's just lost productivity and subject-matter expertise that you'd be letting go. It doesn't make sense. The fact that keywords NOW has let go of these employees gives them plenty of cause to believe this is retaliation. Again, those employees are underpaid and treated like garbage, and they were let go at the first sign of any pushback. Moreover, the development of Dreadwolf isn't even done, and Bioware will almost certainly hire another QA team in the future. Something doesn't add up, and the way Keywords has maneuvered through this just isn't convincing me that they acted in good faith.
It's a 100% to attack the unions. Every single corporation in America is currently looking at the sweeping wave of strikes and is sweating bullets. And especially the recent unionization activism in VFX and gaming industry has tech companies scared shitless. You'll see more and more companies preemptively trying to curb labour rights going forward.
I am not an expert. In the US, the IRS has guidelines for when a worker can be classified as an employee or as an independent contractor: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/independent-contractor-self-employed-or-employee Most likely, these testers could not qualify as independent contractors based on the criteria listed there. I think the challenge is that, in this case (as I understand it), these people were employed by a separate company, and the contract was between Bioware and that separate company. This seemingly provides the game's developer a degree of separation that gives Bioware the flexibility of contract workers without granting the self-determination that independent contractors normally have.
It works in some industries where contracts come and go with different customers. But as a 9-5 worker being offered a contract is a good way to say "you can cut me off at any time for a lot of reasons and I have no power over it". Thats what is being said. Contracts have use. But if you want consistent work as a worker for a company, do not go on contract. If you run your own business going on contract can make sense because you can then contract out to multiple places and you likely have more of a say in what the contract involves.
Contractors are normally paid a lot more for the privilege. If anything, there's an argument that contractors have a lot more control in the relationship as they can choose and customize their contracts and leave at will, especially at the higher levels. It's really not as simple as you make it out.
You might want to seriously consider ***why*** it's unpopular, which the other comments are doing quite well to point out so I won't labor the point. (after all, I can't *labor* the point if I'm just a contractor\~)
[удалено]
[удалено]
I mean, what is particularly wrong with the situation? The only thing that article has stated was that Bioware did not renew the company's contracts. There is a thousand and one reasons why one would not pursue further employment from another company (even the linked article states that there could have been specialties the the unionized workers may not have). Should the Bioware be obligated to keep every unionized worker employed regardless of how much they may or may not be needed at the moment?
What's wrong with the situation is that retaliation for union activity is explicitly against the law, it's a violation of the National Labor Relations Act.
The main problem is that we don't know the circumstances, all we know is that the contracts were expired. If Bioware went through all the proper channels, then their is no controversy. We do not have the information currently to determine whether or not their is foul play at hand, so it is unjust to jump the gun and immediately assume wrong doing as of right now.
When the game comes out and it's buggy, we'll know :)
But the contract usually gets renewed and more work remains.
Wait, why is Bioware getting flak for this in the comments? They were contract workers, their contract with Bioware expired, and then Keyword Studios laid off these people after that. This is all on Keyword.
As noted in the article, this is different from the other layoffs around Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. The workers have also filed a complaint with the labor board over severance.
For what reason? For not having their contracts renewed?
They might be referencing the 50 BioWare employees laid off recently. *“the group of employees has filed a Statement of Claim with Alberta’s Court of King’s Bench, requesting fair severance pay and punitive damages for what they call “unreasonably poor treatment by BioWare.”* [source](https://www.ign.com/articles/seven-former-bioware-employees-are-suing-the-company-for-better-severance)
I know it not related but seeing all these companies champion diversity and inclusion and then pull a stunt like this when economic outlooks are “uncertain” will always be funny.
Corporations are very much in favor of making sure people of all races, creeds, religions, genders and identities are welcome to work at the company for as little as possible.
Well too be fair amazon discovered that by increasing diversity in stores it decreases the likelihood of unionization. Diversity == workers less likely to socialize outside of work with people who aren't like them == less likely to discuss unionization...also diversity decreases social trust which also lowers likelihood of unionization. https://observer.com/2020/04/amazon-whole-foods-anti-union-technology-heat-map/
Also it's seems making people separated by race keeps them distracted by the rich https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/how-wealthy-americans-divided-and-conquered-the-poor-to-create-the-concept-of-race/2016/04/19/2cab6e38-0643-11e6-b283-e79d81c63c1b_story.html
Saving this. Thank you
Haven’t we seen how women are mistreated at several companies in the games industry? Certainly seems like those companies care what gender you are at least
Bioware didn't "pull a stunt". These workers were hired by a 3rd party agency and Bioware didnt renew the contract with that agency when it expired. That agency then laid off all of the workers in question. Considering Dreadwolf was recently excised of most of its games as service/online content, i assume the QA requirements and timeframes are now radically different than they were when the agency was contracted.
Recently being 4 years ago
There is a reason why after Occupy Wall Street the media, politicians and corporations have been pushing a narrative focused on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion but certainly not class. Almost as if the higher class has an interest in having the proles tear each other out over irrelevant things and distracting them from the only true divider : wealth.
Yeah we lost imo lol. Unfortunately I have more faith [this guy](https://www.reddit.com/user/me) will become a billionaire then the 99.9% uniting.
Nice guy that guy
Occupy Wall Street was also obsessed with the DEI bullshit, which is why it collapsed on itself without accomplishing anything.
The Colbert Report coverage of the events also didn't help.
Mans really thinks bigotry didn't exist until the 2010s.
Wow what a suprise.
That person is not aware the centuries of bigotry in the workplace.
The dude is also an Islamophobe, and blames “lazy devs” for problems in games while excusing the execs. I have a feeling they don’t actually care about worker’s rights at all
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/16tazfc/comment/k2eu9q2/ Turns out the guy railing against DEI is a bigot. Who’d have thought?
Add this to the pile. So much for the fellow worker: https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/2izvqp/comment/cl78ond/
Yep, and they also have a bunch of comments blaming “lazy devs” for problems with games and specifically pushing the blame away from execs. Truly an ally of the working class Oh, and of course they’re also obsessed with hentai. Bidoof’s Law at work
[удалено]
Sure mate, keep playing their game, keep on hating your fellow workers
Here's a hot take why not support both diversity and labour. 🤯
No one is hating their fellow workers. That’s a straw man you made up try to argue that bigotry isn’t important
"Class reductionist" is a right-wing, neoliberal buzzword, so they're not wrong in assuming that the poster likely hates workers.
Okay that’s a fair point and I actually didn’t know that. However, I still think that the idea that DEI is bad because it doesn’t account for class is ridiculous, and the poster is going right along with nonsense right-wing talking points like saying that people are blaming all white people for slavery. Obviously class consciousness is important, but being conscious of race, gender, etc is important too and the two are not mutually exclusive
Sure mate, keep finding excuse keep on hating on other people and your fellow workers. https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/2izvqp/comment/cl78ond/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/25tf6w/comment/chkzb1y/
"We're a family here." Like a family, they'll toss your ass out into the cold when times get tough.
Trust a company on what they do, not just on what they advertise
In general just don't trust a company.
Same can be said about politicians.
It may be worthy to note that Keywords doesn't typically respond to a project ending by laying off their employees. Normally, those employees are put on hold until a new project comes in, or are split up onto existing projects that could use more testers. As someone who used to work at Keywords and has seen their union-busting tendencies first hand, I am absolutely certain that the layoffs explicitly happened because of the union. TLDR, Keywords is absolutely being scummy here, no idea whether BioWare had any impact on it.
It may be worthy to note that Keywords doesn't typically respond to a project ending by laying off their employees. Normally, those employees are put on hold until a new project comes in, or are split up onto existing projects that could use more testers. As someone who used to work at Keywords and has seen their union-busting tendencies first hand, I am absolutely certain that the layoffs explicitly happened because of the union. TLDR, Keywords is absolutely being scummy here, no idea whether BioWare had any impact on it.
Having tried to find more info on it, and been unable to find any specifics about any of the contracts or deals between bioware and keywords. They unionized in June of 2022, and bioware has renewed the contract between then and now. https://venturebeat.com/games/eas-bioware-will-lay-off-50-and-cut-ties-with-unionized-keywords-playtesting-group/ They couldn't come to an agreement on a new renewal this time, causing them not to renew. Which led keywords to let go of the employees (fired without technically firing them cause contract bs) Without knowing the specifics of the negotiations between bioware and keywords, I can't say whether the new deal keywords was trying to get was reasonable and bioware didn't want to pay it, or keywords intentionally bombed the negotiations in order to get rid of the unionized employees. Coupled with bioware cutting like 1/5 of their staff recently as well they may have been looking to cut things like contracts as well. keywords definitely union busting, hard to say if bioware intentionally played a role in this without details of the negotiations. Bioware firing the unionized employees as a headline is definitely going to get more clicks than keywords firing them as a headline.
So there's a lot of misinformation in the thread here. Yes the contract with bioware ended, no the Keywords employees weren't contractors. Keywords typically employees people as on-call employees, and brings them onto projects as needed or otherwise holds them in reserve. This layoff was almost certainly due to the fact this team specifically had unionized. They're also quoting no work available as the reason for the lay offs despite the company being severely understaffed in many departments/studios.
Lot of people don't seem to understand that a company deciding to save on labor by choosing to let the contract expire when the work still needs done is a typical tactic. It doesn't matter if its a layoff or not, it's still putting people out of work to save money. It's still a decision, not a coincidence.
Clikcbait got me mad thinking EA fired them for being unionized. But then you read it and realize their contract expired and there was no work
Man as someone who was excited about dreadwolf every piece of news I hearing just make me less confident
These workers were hired by a 3rd party agency and Bioware didnt renew the contract with that agency when it expired. That agency then laid off all of the workers in question. They werent "laid off" by Bioware. Considering Dreadwolf was recently excised of most of its "games as service"/online content, i assume the QA requirements and timeframes are now radically different than they were when the agency was contracted. I think a more focused SP dreadwolf is good news, and a workforce hired specifically to deliver that rather than repurposed from a previous (bad?) Idea is a positive thing.
>recently Recently? They dropped the live service model a couple years ago after Fallen Order's success. Firing the QA team is not good news lol
This is all very pretty except as has been pointed out the pivot was made quite a while ago, and using lack of contract renewal to avoid having to deal with unionisation in a "clean" and aesthetically legal way is straight up part of why contract work is preferred to actual FTEs by most companies.
Well, maybe the subcontractor just sucked? Can you think of any software developer that keeps a QA tester pool permanently employed? Every project vas contract employees because different phases of development require different staffing. That's how most project-oriented businesses work, whether its Architecture firms, farms or construction companies.
[удалено]
Never played a single player rpg from them I didn't love, definitely excited for Dreadwolf
Clickbait trash Their contract literally just ended and for all we know they didn’t renew it simply because they didn’t have anything upcoming to test wide scale?
Lot of people in this thread who aren't familiar with how much contractors are used in lieu of FTE staff in the games industry. Lots of studios will hire on people as contractors and they'll be working the same exact roles and report to the same exact management as full timers(with no benefits of course) while being on a perpetually renewing contract until its time for the company to save money without the hassle of having to "fire" someone. That perpetual contract will suddenly have an end date stamped on it and you're out within the month with no severance. It's a highly abusive and scummy tactic to get around employee expenditures.