As we begin to approach the holiday season and the big AAA studios prepare to release the tentpole games for the year, it’s always important to remember how much hard work goes into their creation. Clearly, you can’t make a multimillion-dollar game each year like Ubisoft does withAssassin’s Creedor like Activision does withÂCall of Dutywithout hard work, but for big studios, hard work doesn’t always equal more pay. According to Bloomberg Businessweek,10% of Activision employees are independent contractors who don’t receive the same pay and treatment of fulltime “real” employees.It’s no secret that in the games industrycontractors are overworked and underpaidand this year doesn’t seem to be any different. Large, studio granted bonuses come to some developers and other full-time employees while skipping QA testers and contractors entirely.
Contractors were finally allowed to attend the Activision holiday party, in 2019, which may be a little too late. The culture surrounding crunch and the mistreatment of workers is nothing new to the industry orto the development ofCall of Dutygames, and while it is damaging to the industry at large, it’s very damaging to independent contractors because they don’t have the promise of a big bonus payout for when the game they’ve worked so hard on is finally released.
A big problem here as well is that studios know and understand that they’re exploiting the work of contractors. Activision uses a company called Volt to hire contractors and,as Bloomberg Businessweek reports, one of their contracts reads like this:
The newest installment in theÂCall of Dutyfranchise,ÂCall of Duty Black Ops: Cold War,is expected to rake in billions of dollars for Activisionand many employees will make well-earned bonuses from it. But those that won’t will be the contractors, whose only bonus is an invitation to a holiday party that probably won’t happen this year.
