ZeniMax QA Workers Cite Poor Working Conditions As The Reason For Unionizing

A few days ago, we reported on ZeniMax QA workers’ plans to form a union under the Communication Workers of America. The initial announcement didn’t go into detail about why they decided to unionize apart from wanting fair compensation and being given a voice in company decisions, particularly when it comes to scheduling and workloads.

A report by Vice dives deeper into the reasons why and it’s not a pretty picture. Much like Blizzard’s QA workers, ZeniMax and Bethesda’s QA analysts complained about unfair working conditions, low pay, forced overtime, and being given responsibilities “above their pay grade.”

“It’s like death from a thousand cuts,” said Ashe Myers, a QA analyst at ZeniMax and one of the organizers of the union.

“Fighting for better conditions so far has just proven to be sort of a broken record situation,” added Autumn Mitchell, another ZeniMax QA worker. “People have just been repeating themselves over and over and over again, and having one-on-one conversations that just go nowhere. By unionizing, we’ll have this opportunity to really just collectively start coming into tune.”

This isn’t the first time that ZeniMax employees complained about crunch culture within the company either. In 2019, ZeniMax Creative Director Rich Lambert acknowledged that “some” crunch happened within the studio which an Xbox executive defended as being “part of the culture of the industry.” The company would later team up with mental health awareness organization Take This in a joint initiative to assess its development processes and practices in order to limit crunch which still apparently remains a problem today in ZeniMax and other video game development studios, Blizzard included.