Dragon Age Dragon Age: Dreadwolf - full reveal in Summer 2024, Solas fangirls rejoice

[Infinitron]

https://kotaku.com/bioware-qa-union-mass-effect-dragon-age-star-wars-keywo-1848839482

Keywords Studios developers working in support of Dragon Age 4 maker BioWare are seeking to unionize. That’s according to an April 20 application filed with the Alberta Labor Relations Board. The staff is preparing for a union vote following recent labor organizing efforts at other game studios.

Not sure how this will impact Bioware, if at all.

https://kotaku.com/bioware-keywords-studios-qa-union-mass-effect-dragon-ag-1848847955

Dragon Age 4 QA Devs Say They're Unionizing Over Bad Pay And Covid Safety
A Keywords Studios contractor opens up about organizing at BioWare

The video game industry is currently undergoing a small but unprecedented wave of developer organizing. Last week it even reached the halls of famed RPG maker BioWare, where a group of QA contractors working on Dragon Age 4 revealed their intention to unionize. The two biggest reasons why? Bad pay and concerns over a full-time return to the office while the pandemic still lingers.

The unionizing QA developers are employed through a global contracting services company called Keywords Studios, but work directly with the production teams at BioWare’s Edmonton office. They began supporting development on Mass Effect: Legendary Edition before moving to the latest Star Wars: The Old Republic expansion, Legacy of the Sith.

Now they are working on Dragon Age 4 as part of Keywords’ “embedded services” group which promises “the expertise of an in-house team” to “deliver flexible, in-house outsourced solutions.” According to a representative for the group, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, project direction comes directly from full-time BioWare developers, and Keywords’ role in the relationship is almost exclusively administrative.

The rep said that the catalyst for unionizing was a return-to-office announcement earlier this month. Keywords allegedly told everyone they would have to return to BioWare’s office in-person, five days a week starting May 9, despite an average of nearly 1,000 new covid cases a day still being reported in Alberta, Canada.

According to the rep, Keywords staff don’t receive any paid time off even as Alberta’s health guidelines recommend 14 days quarantine after someone tests positive for covid. Full-time BioWare employees, meanwhile, would still have flexibility to work from home. Keywords has been criticized in the past for its covid sick time policies, and for pushing some of their employees to stay in the office when the pandemic first began in March 2020.

“As this situation is still developing we are gathering facts and will have a statement as soon as possible,” a spokesperson for Keywords told Kotaku in response to a list of questions. BioWare and EA did not respond to a request for comment.

The rep for the QA group said that, depending on the final decision by the Alberta Labor Relations Board which is currently reviewing its application, the final bargaining unit would consist of somewhere between 15 and 20 testers and analysts. After the review is complete on May 3, a vote by mail is likely to be held within two weeks, and two weeks after that the results are likely to be ratified by the Board.

“We are very confident that we would be able to win a union vote,” the rep told Kotaku in a phone interview.

In addition to covid safety and work-from-home flexibility, another big issue is pay. They said some Keywords QA analysts are being paid as little as $16.50 Canadian dollars (just under $13 U.S. dollars) for roles where full-time BioWare staff are paid much more. The rep also said there are concerns about gender-based pay discrimination, a lack of consistent metrics used to evaluate employees, and overall transparency around pay and performance. Unionizing is one way for employees to negotiate better and clearer terms of employment for everyone doing similar types of work.

However, most employers are also extremely hostile to staff efforts to unionize, and the Keywords QA staff at BioWare already feels punished. “We did see what we would consider retaliatory action,” the rep told Kotaku. This allegedly included employees receiving complaints about performance or being stripped of certain responsibilities following the decision to unionize.

But the rep sounded hopeful and emboldened about what the group is moving forward with thanks to other recent examples. In December, indie studio Vodeo Games unionized. At Call of Duty studio Raven Software, QA are also voting to unionize. Embattled publisher Activision Blizzard recently promised to make all QA full-time with a minimum hourly rate of $20, though it excluded the unionizing employees from the pay bump.

A contractor at Nintendo of America asked a question about unions in a meeting in February. They were later fired, though Nintendo claimed it was for an NDA violation and that there is no union activity currently going on at the Mario maker.

The Keywords QA rep told Kotaku that the unprecedented labor campaign at Raven, as well as at places like Starbucks and Amazon in recent months, were a big source of inspiration. “The individuals at Bioware are incredibly kind and we love working with them,” the rep said. They just want to do it for better pay and with more worker protections in place.

 

[Fedora Master]

The less chance this has of materialising the better.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

https://kotaku.com/bioware-qa-union-mass-effect-dragon-age-star-wars-keywo-1848839482

Keywords Studios developers working in support of Dragon Age 4 maker BioWare are seeking to unionize. That’s according to an April 20 application filed with the Alberta Labor Relations Board. The staff is preparing for a union vote following recent labor organizing efforts at other game studios.

Not sure how this will impact Bioware, if at all.

https://kotaku.com/bioware-keywords-studios-qa-union-mass-effect-dragon-ag-1848847955

You seem like the type of guy? that would enjoy working on BioWare InfiniTROON.

Show them your track record of censoring anime girls and you would fit right in, can't get the gender dysphoria go too far. You would be in charge in making sure that every female? character be ugly as sin.

 

[thesecret1]

QA contractors unionizing... Honestly, I cannot imagine a more easily replaceable position in all of the gaming industry.

 

[Fedora Master]

QA contractors unionizing... Honestly, I cannot imagine a more easily replaceable position in all of the gaming industry.

Community manager.

 

[Nano]

QA contractors unionizing... Honestly, I cannot imagine a more easily replaceable position in all of the gaming industry.

That's probably why they're unionizing.

 

[vortex]

The less chance this has of materialising the better.

Disagree. If they will work better, they will make better Dragon Age. Simple as.

 

[J1M]

QA contractors unionizing... Honestly, I cannot imagine a more easily replaceable position in all of the gaming industry.

Community manager.

Recruiter.

 

[J1M]

This new generation of game devs make games very slowly. Have they even shown anything noteworthy yet?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

This new generation of game devs make games very slowly.

Pronouns are more important than productivity, bigot.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

QA contractors unionizing... Honestly, I cannot imagine a more easily replaceable position in all of the gaming industry.

That's the reason why they are unionizing.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

QA contractors unionizing... Honestly, I cannot imagine a more easily replaceable position in all of the gaming industry.

That's the reason why they are unionizing.

So there's even more incentive to replace them?

 

[Ismaul]

This new generation of game devs make games very slowly.

Pronouns are more important than productivity, bigot.

Pronounductivity has been quite high tho.

 

[Falksi]

This new generation of game devs make games very slowly.

And yet still release utter shit.

It's baffling.

 

[Cael]

This new generation of game devs make games very slowly.

And yet still release utter shit.

It's baffling.

When you spend months in therapy and more months hacking your cock off, of course everything else is going to be slowed down a bit. How dare you judge xir, you intolerant bigot!

 

[rusty_shackleford]

wasn't there an article detailing how bioware employees are all a bunch of sad sacks who go to therapy because work is hard or something pathetic

 

[BruceVC]

https://gizmodo.com/vr-researches-simulate-kisses-with-ultrasonic-transduce-1848849489

Guys great news, clever scientists have found a way to replicate VR kisses through sound. Thats means our Bioware Romance arcs and Elder Scroll adult mods can become even more compelling and realistic in the future

 

[mediocrepoet]

https://gizmodo.com/vr-researches-simulate-kisses-with-ultrasonic-transduce-1848849489

Guys great news, clever scientists have found a way to replicate VR kisses through sound. Thats means our Bioware Romance arcs and Elder Scroll adult mods can become even more compelling and realistic in the future

I guess the forever alone crowd has something to look forward to. Everyone else can feel weird about playing games and answering questions from their significant other about why they're spending so much time gaming with the door closed and naked.

At least the new ESRB ratings should be interesting once you can start getting intimate with your game.

 

[Fedora Master]

wasn't there an article detailing how bioware employees are all a bunch of sad sacks who go to therapy because work is hard or something pathetic

You need an article for that? That's the majority of the industry now.

 

[Late Bloomer]

wasn't there an article detailing how bioware employees are all a bunch of sad sacks who go to therapy because work is hard or something pathetic

I remember that. I believe a jewish gentleman wrote a scathing article for Kotaku about the situation. I prefer not to visit Kotaku so here are some highlights with a link covering the article.

“People were so angry and sad all the time,” one of the sources told the publication. Another said, “Depression and anxiety are an epidemic within Bioware.”

“I actually cannot count the amount of ‘stress casualties’ we had on Mass Effect: Andromeda or Anthem,” a former BioWare developer told Kotaku in an email. “A ‘stress casualty’ at BioWare means someone had such a mental breakdown from the stress they’re just gone for one to three months. Some come back, some don’t.”

https://www.thegamer.com/bioware-st...ety-during-anthem-development-insider-report/

 

[mediocrepoet]

wasn't there an article detailing how bioware employees are all a bunch of sad sacks who go to therapy because work is hard or something pathetic

I remember that. I believe a jewish gentleman wrote a scathing article for Kotaku about the situation. I prefer not to visit Kotaku so here are some highlights with a link covering the article.

“People were so angry and sad all the time,” one of the sources told the publication. Another said, “Depression and anxiety are an epidemic within Bioware.”

“I actually cannot count the amount of ‘stress casualties’ we had on Mass Effect: Andromeda or Anthem,” a former BioWare developer told Kotaku in an email. “A ‘stress casualty’ at BioWare means someone had such a mental breakdown from the stress they’re just gone for one to three months. Some come back, some don’t.”

https://www.thegamer.com/bioware-st...ety-during-anthem-development-insider-report/

So a stress casualty is when they seethe and dilate but can't cope?

 

[Fedora Master]

Normal people couldn't just up and leave their jobs like that without repercussions and problems finding new employment but these people seem to do it regularly.

 

[Ryzer]

The less chance this has of materialising the better.

I hope this game will materialise sooner or later. It will provide some good entertainment ahead but not in the way you think.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

It's going to be terrible because it's going to be more elfshit, the worst part of the entire series that they focus on because of their tumblr fanbase loving it.
The one part of DAI that was decent was the descent DLC because it's basically a trip away from everything terrible they've built up back to the core of DAO.

The effort put into dwarf lore vs elf is hilarious. Pick any part of dwarves and they put more effort into designing it than everything involving elves combined. Mostly because DA2/DAI were so terrible that DAO towers over them in terms of lore contribution, and elves were a very minor part of DAO.
Hate hamburger helper all you want but she was leagues ahead of whatever tumblrtards they're hiring now.

 

[Commissar Draco]

This Awakening expansion around rebuilding the Gay Warden Keep for DAO was cool, it has new Dorf companion and some interesting lore about them, Dorfs and this Human not-Bizantium were the only intresting parts of setting its shame that we instead were forced to play in not-England and not-France instead. Elves were the worse the literal gypsies for wild ones and some allegory of niggers for city ones.