After several rounds of strikes held by the employees of Activision Blizzard against the upper management of the company, today staff has announced the opening of a strike fund for colleagues that have been striking since Monday. As reported by The Washington Post, a GoFundMe page is listed with a goal of $1 million dollars which would be used for employees currently on strike, as well as those that might strike in the future.
The GoFundMe page was started by Blizzard senior test analyst Jessica Gonzalez, who announced that she planned to leave the Publisher come Friday. She stated that “Workers deserve better, and CEO Bobby Kotick is continuing to ignore us.” Earlier, an additional strike was held against Bobby Kotick, who many employees claimed was made aware of complaints against the company which he repeatedly ignored. Currently, the position of the board has been to back Kotick, who answered calls for his resignation by stating he would not leave unless he could fix these issues.
It was stated that this fund was intended to launch on the same day as The Video Game Awards, in hopes that this would offer the fund wider visibility upon its launch. The VGA also came under criticism earlier after Geoff Keighley stated he wanted to support the employees of the company, while also highlighting Activision Blizzard games. He later clarified that the publisher would only be involved with nominated games, with no presence otherwise.
Some staff at Activision Blizzard are also in communication with the media labor union Communications Workers of America in an attempt to create a union within the company. They are requesting that employees sign a union authorization card to force a companywide vote on the issue.
Currently, Employees at Raven Software, the studio behind Call of Duty: Warzone, have organized both walkouts and a strike in protest to a series of firings to members of their QA department. This is only one of a large list of strikes that have been held against the company this year.
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