Right now in the world, unions are either rising up or striking to get better deals, wages, and lives for their members, and that’s a good thing despite the industries they’re “hurting.” Unions have long been around to protect the “working man” and to ensure they are safe and well-fed, and if that means striking, then so be it. One of the few industries that doesn’t have an overall union is the video game industry. That’s partially understandable due to game developers and companies’ “spread out” nature. But the company behind Dragon Age Dreadwolf made a pretty clear message to those within a union by firing a bunch of them!
Yes, we’re talking about Bioware. Or, more specifically, one of the companies under their umbrella, Keywords Studios, out in Edmonton. If you don’t know, Keywords Studios is based in Ireland, but they have satellite offices everywhere that provide services for companies like Bioware for games like Dragon Age Dreadwolf. They can do QA or make art and audio. They’re the kind of company you call if you need support on a game so your “main staff” can work on something else.
Focusing on the QA branch, thirteen QA workers came together and voted to join a union that was based in Canada. That was important as they were the first gamer group in all of Canada to join a union. But now, Keywords Studios has fired them all, and the company itself has confirmed that happened:
“We can confirm that regrettably the 13 Edmonton-based staff have now left the business following the end of a fixed term client contract,” the company said in an email obtained by Polygon.
Oh, but the story doesn’t end there. Not only were all the union-based QA workers fired, but they weren’t given proper severance, so they will sue them for that. Ironically, when Bioware laid off 50 of their workers earlier this year, they also didn’t pay out proper severance to some of their people, and as a result, they’re getting sued, too!
To be fair, we don’t know all the details here with this situation. But it does send the “wrong message” to the video game industry. After all, they fired only the union-based workers, and, on their website, they have QA jobs available despite having just fired these people for “not having any work.”
Whether this problem continues across the wider gaming industry remains to be seen. But it could be viewed as a spark to get more unions across certain job tiers.
