A couple of unionized Dragon Age: Dreadwolf QA testers were reportedly laid off. They were 13 in number to be precise. And according to reports, those who have been affected have been offered minimal severance to mitigate damage and inconvenience.
Dragon Age: Dreadwolf QA Testers
Every unionized Dragon Age: Dreadwolf quality assurance (QA) tester has been reportedly laid off. Just as Polygon reported on October 4, 13 developers in question who were working on the next Dragon Age game at the QA outsourcing company Keywords Studios on September 27 were reportedly let go after Bioware stopped to continue its contract with the company in August.
Polygon got confirmation from Liz Corless, the global head of marketing at Keywords Studios, in an email, who stated, “We can confirm that regrettably, the 13 Edmonton-based staff have now left the business following the end of a fixed-term client contract.”
And when they were laid off in late September, it was stated that Keywords had “taken the position there is no more work available.”
The QA Developers Officially Joined The United Food And Commercial Workers Canada Union Back In June Last Year
The QA developers as you should know officially joined the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada Union back in June of the previous year thus making it the first games industry union in Canada – and were then contracted to assist with playtesting as well as quality assurance at Bioware Edmonton.
Keywords Studios according to several reports has offered the 13 laid-off developers “minimal severance” and, in response, the union in question has now filed an employment standards complaint against the studio.
And as of this writing, the dispute has not been settled and severance on the other hand has not been paid out.
The Gaming Industry and Layoffs
Bioware On August 23, which is best known for some of the best single-player games ever made reportedly laid off about 50 staff members in a bid to “meet the needs of upcoming projects” and to also make the studio “more agile and more focused.”
This however then followed the announcement from earlier this year that the development of Star Wars: The Old Republic would reportedly be moved away from the company to the third-party studio Broadsword Online, in a bid to focus on the future of Dragon Age and Mass Effect.
Layoffs in the games industry are particularly prevalent right at this moment. Just this week alone was it reported that Naughty Dog, which in case you don’t know is the studio behind The Last of Us and the Uncharted series, had reportedly laid off a number of its contract developers and the majority of which being QA testers.
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