Hundreds of Bethesda Employees Go on Strike - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 December 2024 / 3,364 Views
Hundreds of employees at Bethesda have gone on strike, according to a report from Inverse.
Bethesda employees in Maryland and Texas have claimed the company has not addressed remote work concerns at the bargaining table and has been outsourcing quality assurance work without an agreement with the union.
"I'm excited. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow. I think it's going to be a fun event," said quality assurance test lead Rhyanna Eichner a day before the strike.
"I know that sounds weird, but we're all really looking forward to coming together and spending time together. Everybody understands that this needs to happen. This is what needs to be done to move on. We're all just kind of ready for it."
The union is looking to limit the percentage of quality assurance testers that Bethesda outsources when compared to the number of full-time employees.
The union is also looking for a more flexible remote work policy. Currently ZeniMax employees are required to go to the office twice a week and the union says many employees have been denied remote work requests.
"They have continually given us their first proposal again and again, and it’s become obvious that our different mobilization tactics have not worked," said Eichner.
Senior quality assurance tester at Rockville, Maryland Juniper Dowell added, "Striking isn’t fun or ideal, but there’s a satisfaction in having a concrete physical action we can do to fight for better work conditions. Hopefully, we can convince them to stop dragging their feet and meet us at the table."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Uh oh another Bethesda glitch fair pay and treatment didn't load.
probably explains why Bethesda games have so many bugs
Are they striking because they want Elder Scrolls VI?
Senior quality assurance tester at Rockville, Maryland Juniper Dowell added, "Striking isn’t fun or ideal".
vs.
"I'm excited. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow. I think it's going to be a fun event," said quality assurance test lead Rhyanna Eichner a day before the strike.
To all of those that got laid off recently in the industry......Now is the time to apply at Bethesda :P
Come on, we want ES6!
This is not the time. Bethesda has not released a big hitter for a while now, and the industry is seeing massive layoffs every week or so. Striking now is only marking people for future firings. Especially with MS still wanting to save money after the Activision-Blizzard purchase.
True but how many people can MS cut before it affects their own business and Bethesda's ability to deliver games?
But they are not delivering already. Redfall was a dud, Starfield underperformed, TES VI and Fallout 5 are MIA... Last time any Zenymax had a big hit was Doom Eternal in 2020 (there's HiFi Rush as well, but considering MS closed Tango near immediately, I don't know if it should count, at least from MS' perspective). I imagine Microsoft is not happy with them as it is, and a strike is not going to help matters.
Did Starfield underperform? I have not had that impression.
Starfield Sold really well for a new IP
Did it?
Estimates on Steam put it between 2-4 million sold. Guaranteed to be less than that on Xbox due to gamepass. Player counts have also crashed hard and shattered space got a measly 62 (PC) and 59 (Xbox) on metacritic. When the dlc came out starfield peaked at just under 22k players. That's less than 10% of when the game first came out.
14million players with an average play time of 40 hours tells the real story. You cannot base success on Metacritic scores. Otherwise no one will be player games like Cyberpunk and Fortnite.
It's also not rocket science to figure out SP games in the modern age don't have long legs like they use to. Too much variety and options for players to just stick to playing one game.
By your Logic WoW is a flop because it use to have 12m subscribers to what, 1m today? It's still a buisness success.
14 milllion players, how many bought the game? Probably a maximum of 5 million.
Some SP games do have long legs. Baldurs gate 3 still gets around 100k concurrent players on Steam 1 year later.
Wow is an MMO and I think subscriber numbers have recovered significantly. Cant comapre this to starfield.
What should Starfield's success be based upon? It underperformed in metacritic, it underperformed in Steam player numbers, it underperformed in user reviews. It was expected to be a game of the year contender and it did not deliver (or even get a nomination). Simple.
The issue with your argument, is you believe the only form of success is sales. You are completely ignoring the 14m who played it with a 40hour average game time. You dont play bad games for 40 hours.
You also gauge on Steam only numbers which is flawed and desperate. Starfield had a peak of 330,000 concurrent players on Steam, God of War Rag had 36,000, does that mean Ragnarök is a failure? What about TLOU? Debated as Sonys best ever made game.. also 36,000 Peak concurrent players on Steam. You choose to use Steam numbers not me.
While you try to downplay Starfield, its Steam Success is more than majority of PS titles, games you would consider successful.
So how do we gauge successful games? We cant, only the devs would know that answer. Based on 14m players, with 40hours playtime and a rumor sequel in the future, that means more than winning awards and scoring high.
Again comparing established multiplatform IPs to a New IP which was not full multiplatform.
You need to compare Apples to Apples
As many as they want...
The games industry has far more available talent than they do positions
Many companies are trying to size down due to the large number of games that aren't meeting targets while thousands of new potential employees exit college and certifications and start looking for jobs.
Yes, and this sort of attitude is exactly why MS has trouble producing quality games on the same level as Sony. They had this same cavalier attitude towards devs for Halo and FH and devs from both teams explained that's why the games had issues. You can't just fire people bring in new people and expect quality work when it comes to gaming. You end up getting rid of talented people who understand the system better than the ones you bring in.
But they already kicked out everyone from Tango Games, so the argument that "they wouldn't get rid of talented people" is not really applicable here, there's precedent. If they fired the people at Tango, who gave MS a big win in a time when they desperately needed one, immediately after the release of Hi-Fi Rush, why wouldn't they clean house in studios that are either underperforming or burning money and having nothing to show for it?
true.
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