California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing sued Activision Blizzard in July 2021 with claims of having fostered a toxic "frat boy" work culture in which women were routinely subject to harassment and discrimination.
[4] In July, the group organized a "Walkout for Equality" for specific internal policy changes on topics including arbitration, diversity, and recruitment.
Another walkout in November followed a Wall Street Journal report that CEO Bobby Kotick had known and not acted on harassment and abuse claims.
[12] In the time after the Wall Street Journal report on the CEO, one of the Alliance's main organizers, senior test analyst Jessica Gonzalez, left the company for personal reasons.
[13] In early December 2021, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard based in Wisconsin that supports the Call of Duty series, Raven Software, fired 12 quality assurance workers—about a third of the team.
The employees had just completed a five-week, end-of-year "crunch" overtime period and the team had been promised pay restructuring for higher salaries.
[17] In May 2022, Quality Assurance (QA) testers of Activision Blizzard subsidiary Raven Software went public as "Game Workers Alliance" (GWA) with the support of Campaign to Organize Digital Employees-CWA.
[23][24] In June 2024, an unfair labor practice was filed against Lionbridge by CWA alleging that the company illegally terminated the employment of 160 Activision software testers in Boise, Idaho, in retaliation for exercising their right to participate in concerted union activities.
As part of the layoff, CWA also alleges that workers were required to sign an overly broad confidentiality agreement and an illegal waiver of certain rights protected by the National Labor Relations Act.