Yeah, based on my industry experience I am convinced it is not a coincidence that we're seeing games QA teams unionizing in particular. The QA department always is mistreated by management (and often other developers) and they're typically overworked contractors or temps who are at constant risk of being fired so they can't push back on mistreatment.
Games don't get shipped in a quality state on time without the hard work of skilled QA testers but the industry really treats them like they're disposable. Game design and game programming are both MUCH easier if you can rely on a good QA tester to spot issues and help you figure out reproduction steps, etc.
We had one netcode bug in Guild Wars that haunted us for at least 6 months (probably longer?) that players would frequently report but we never managed to find a reliable repro for, despite having extensive server-side logging. One of our best QA testers spent an hour or two every day trying to find a repro case and eventually was able to hand it to a lead to be fixed - something like that simply isn't possible unless you put skilled people in an environment where they can do focused, specialist work like that. (Sadly, that studio - ArenaNet - also had a tendency to mistreat QA staff and it got worse and worse over time.)
That tester ended up going on to be a design lead on multiple big AAA titles at other studios, so it was nice to see him get the recognition he deserved for his work ethic and skill.
I find it staggering that there exist companies where they don't value their QA people. As far as I'm concerned, QA is one of the most important roles on a development team. I've had meetings with higher ups where I told them we need to get our QA on the call to voice their opinion or the conversation in question can't proceed. The ability to systematically and reproduceably break things in ways that nobody else thought of is a powerful skill, and should not be overlooked.
> That tester ended up going on to be a design lead on multiple big AAA titles at other studios, so it was nice to see him get the recognition he deserved for his work ethic and skill.
If the best people in a given job always choose the leave if given the chance, then it will always suck to do the job. Custom service, qa, warehouse workers. These are all jobs that need to get done. But if anyone with the skill and drive to do something else leaves, then you are left with people who are abused because they are stuck and powerless. How many people dream of doing Video Game QA? I doubt very many. They only do it because they cannot program/draw/write/etc.
Games don't get shipped in a quality state on time without the hard work of skilled QA testers but the industry really treats them like they're disposable. Game design and game programming are both MUCH easier if you can rely on a good QA tester to spot issues and help you figure out reproduction steps, etc.
We had one netcode bug in Guild Wars that haunted us for at least 6 months (probably longer?) that players would frequently report but we never managed to find a reliable repro for, despite having extensive server-side logging. One of our best QA testers spent an hour or two every day trying to find a repro case and eventually was able to hand it to a lead to be fixed - something like that simply isn't possible unless you put skilled people in an environment where they can do focused, specialist work like that. (Sadly, that studio - ArenaNet - also had a tendency to mistreat QA staff and it got worse and worse over time.)
That tester ended up going on to be a design lead on multiple big AAA titles at other studios, so it was nice to see him get the recognition he deserved for his work ethic and skill.