Blizzard Workers Share Salaries in Revolt Over Wage Disparities

Jason Schreier writes on Twitter:

NEWS: Blizzard staff put together an anonymous spreadsheet Friday to compare salaries and pay raises as part of an open revolt against low compensation. While CEO Bobby Kotick makes $40m/year, some Blizzard employees say they can't even make ends meet.

Some producers and engineers at Blizzard can make well over $100,000 a year, but others, such as video game testers and customer-service representatives, are often paid minimum wage or close to it.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-03/blizzard-workers-share-salaries-in-revolt-over-wage-disparities?srnd=technology-vp

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1290438607594041346

Should a paperboy be paid as much as the shop owner?

Has is this relevant to System Wars?

Good. Hopefully this gets some traction because the wage disparity is just too great. There’s no way that some people like Bobby Kotick should be making such obscene amounts of money while others can barely make ends meet.

This is straight up communism.

Must still be getting paid more than Bethesda testers

I'm pretty sure you're in the wrong forum for these threads.

Wage sharing is an interesting tactic, but unfortunately it backfires more often than not.

I almost got my company to do it, but then I realized I made more than most of the people there. People tend to look at those making more and ask "Why do you make more than me?"

They never ask "Why don't I make as much as you?". Their beef is with the company and the system that allows people to make a lot of money, not with the people actually making money.

Indeed.

This argument is nothing new. It's not the ideal, obviously, but unbridled socialism might be the only thing worse than unregulated capitalism.

Would like to see that spreadsheet. Chances are their wages are higher than the national average.

Blizzard is in California, yes? If they can't make ends meet, they should probably move or get new jobs. California is god damn ridiculous. Half the reason I don't buy a home or have a family is because I live in California.

There's a lot of money out there for programmers, artists, and so forth; the games industry is for "creatives" and people tend to take advantage of that, saying "Your work is your reward" or "You get to have fun while you work" or "You make games, what do you complain about".

I'm also in a field with creatives and we don't get paid a lot either despite long hours and hard labor. But that's how it goes.

To me, the whole argument about creatives and "your work is your reward" doesn't fly anymore. Creative work is still work and people need to be paid accordingly for the amount of time they put in. Why should it be different to any other field?

If people like Bobby can comfortably earn millions then why not? I'm surprised you're okay with people like him exploiting workers and shrugging it off as normal practice.

Its part of a much wider issue in our industry where these extremely wealthy companies are demanding more and more labour, longer hours, more crunch, and overtime while refusing to increase people's wages.

That's not me promoting socialism, that's just straight up slave labour, exploitation, and wealth inequality. They're exploiting people and their well-being because they know they can work them to death without scrutiny or compensation. Have you read the stories about Rockstar and Naughty Dog?

To tweak the analogy of our ol' friend Cup, it'd be like asking a paper boy to double the workload of his paper route while paying him the exact same wage or only a tiny incremental wage rise while your product reaches more people.

This issue is becoming increasingly pressing as AAA games continue to grow in unprecedented scale, detail, and complexity. The industry hasn't adapted properly for no reason other than to maintain the status quo and pure greed. Game companies have started to resemble sweatshops in the last decade.

Sure, some jobs will earn more than others but look at this line:

'Last year, the company eliminated hundreds of jobs and asked some of the remaining staff to take on the responsibilities of those who were let go. That extra work did not come with more pay'.

That is exploitation. If it goes unchecked and unregulated then there is no end to how poorly they will treat people to make a quick buck.

As for that line about just getting a new job, the US economy is tanking and we're in the middle of a pandemic. People are holding onto their jobs for grim life right now, which only makes workers more vulnerable to this type of malpractice. They know its difficulty to leave, and therefore more vulnerable to higher demands from their employers.

At one time, the janitor could one day be CEO by working is way up the company. Now, workers are workers, and the execs are hired right into their positions.

That's what killed American Capitalism: those damn business degrees.

Amazed that people in this thread and on Twitter are actually defending Bobby of all people.

Why should someone like that earn millions of dollars from behind his desk demand that people work longer hours for the same amount of money?

Its straight up exploitation. "Because the creative industry is its own reward!" doesn't cut the mustard in 2020.

Not a single source showing how much people there actually get paid. The closest it come is Jason linking to another one of his own articles showing that Bliz has been cutting costs, which could mean a variety of things.

@biggest_loser: “Work is its own reward” is just the horseshit that those who make all the money feed to those who don’t.

Top comment.

Pay transparency is generally a good thing. To add, you needn't have FULL pay transparency either. Companies can show 'banded' pay ranges to certain job titles that list floors and ceilings. This gives a good general view of what people make while not outright listing exact salaries. This avoids plenty of the 'resentment' kickback of every employee knowing what each other makes. It boggles my mind that people are against this in any form, almost as if they've been trained by their employers to heel.

The problem with your analogy is that the CEO is not the shop owner. Independent of the poor analogy, one person making ~1000 times more than the average worker while not working ~1000 times more or contributing ~1000 times more is simply ridiculous. Keep in mind, they are both working for the company.

Nope, universal rule of business. Hierarchy. The loin gets antelope, the vultures get the spoils.

You applying your subjective opinion to who deserves what really means nothing.

Not sure everyone would agree with you on who the scavenging parasite is in this case, but ok.

Anyway, good. Eastern and central Europe could do with a bout of US IT offshoring, so please, push as hard as you can.

@biggest_loser: don't mistake my apathy for a lack of empathy. You can display both at the same time lol :P

I said what I said because I literally went through all of this wage nonsense for the past couple years, and will continue I imagine until the economy is better.

As I said, I almost got my coworkers to follow through with wage transparency but the problem is if you've been underpaid for so long, you don't look kindly towards your immediate coworkers who make more than you. People are naturally envious and while they can't (despite the fact they should) criticize their bosses for their pay, they can criticize their immediate coworkers for making more than them for doing the same or similar job.

It's a really hard issue to remain objective about when people define themselves by their job, and their worth by their wage. We are more than our job titles, and worth more than the money we are paid.

It also feels like a distinctly American problem. I'd like to go meet people one day and when I ask them "what do you do?" I'd like to hear them say "Oh well I Like to hike and cook", not "I'm a welder".

Given the business practices most of these companies practice, to the point governments have became involved, conditioning children into gambling addictions (or whales as referring them in human terms implies both responsibility and accountability), by working with such companies they are contributing and therefor parasitic themselves.

So, fuckem?

Bobby knows how to squeeze the bottom 90% of his workers, such that he can fire small towns worth of employees and still get the job done. Bobby knows how to work his customer base to extract maximum cash. Bobby knows how to keep his shareholders happy, and his head down. Bobby gets $40M/year and he earns it.

No, I mean the lion is probably not the guy sitting there, shouting "do another one!". And the vultures are not the ones doing all the work. It's a bad analogy.

Ah. So, the heads are doing very little while it's them dedicating all the effort to get children into gambling.

So Fuckem? Who cares?

"One employee wrote that they had to skip meals to pay rent and that they used the company’s free coffee as an appetite suppressant. Another said they would only eat oatmeal and bail on team lunches because they couldn’t afford to buy food at the company cafeteria. A third said they and their partner stopped talking about having kids because they knew they wouldn’t be able to afford it."

I laughed, if only out of skepticism and disbelief. If it was really THAT bad, you have the freedom to change jobs assuming you have the necessary skills. If you're a game tester or someone lower on the heiarchy, well, you're likely very early in your career and gotta do your time in the trenches like everyone else.

And if you're a 30-something game tester? You should probably just watch Grandma's Boy and reflect on your life decisions. Then rewatch Grandma's Boy, cuz it's great.

What in God's name are you blabbering on about...

The value in EA lies in the quality and scope of their back catalogue, not their shoddy current practices.

I'll add to that - sure, "fuckem", if they're working on coordinating and directing monetisation rather than making the actual game. Nobody needs or wants that rubbish.

*edit* Your monetisation's only in there because employees aren't allowed to take the risks they actually want to - you know, the ones involved in making a good game, since that would make investors nervous. So resources keep getting pumped into these ridiculous laundering schemes, which benefit no one but a few investors and the CEO. Is that the antelope to you? If not, it's a bad analogy.

@Miyomatic: Greybush!

Yeah, seriously, if work conditions are really that bad then they should look for other employment.

But I also wonder about people who work a steady job but still complain about not being able to make ends meet. Often times it's not a matter of being underpaid but simply poor stewardship. Too many people live above their means, get themselves deep into debt, struggle from paycheck to paycheck because of a lack of financial discipline, and then blame their employer for not paying them enough.

Isn't this literally capitalism.

^ This

Sounds like a tough esports moment.

I guess it is stuff like this that helps explain Blizzard's massive loss of talent lately.

Things like this is not sustainable in the long run.

Well Americans like unhecked, unregulated capitalism so why complain now. C'mon guys, live the American dream. Remember if you work hard you can one day become Kotick.

False.

It's mind boggling to see something like pay transparency or worker collaboration immediately flagged as 'communism.' People are brainwashed with this reactionary rhetoric.

A company I worked for was in the process of doing that before I left. I was a manager there, and they wanted to kinda give people an idea of the range of salaries/hourly pay within different positions, such as tellers, branch managers, HO staff etc. They started tellers off at brutal pay, and didn't scale dependant upon where you were living. Branches in the GTA were offering the same as my branch where the cost of living is much lower.

Some people in this thread are EXTREMELY privileged or are still living at home in their parent's basement, they have no idea how harsh the world can be.

If you work somewhere for 40 hours a week, you should be paid a living wage with Benefits. End of discussion. It doesn't matter what the position is. A full time secretary or game tester should be paid a living wage and be given benefits if they are there for 40 plus hours a WEEK!

And no.....in some cases you can't just change jobs especially since in the US since your healthcare is tied to your employment! If you don't have a job....then no healthcare, people scream "You have choices!" but in reality you don't! It's an illusion of choice.

I love how personal success is sneered at these days. "You're just privileged!" Well, I suppose I am, but like any privilege, I earned it through hard work and discipline.

And what good is having health insurance if, as the one guy claimed, he has to use the free coffee to keep the hunger pangs away because he can't afford to feed himself? If that's the case, he probably doesn't have enough to pay his yearly deductible anyway.

Seriously, if that's the situation you're in then either learn how to manage your money (go read some Dave Ramsey books), find a better job, or both.

You bolded my comment but didn't state anything to address it and in the midst of it all, missed the point entirely and continued to share your skewed subjective opinion that "really means nothing".

@Star67: You sound more like the person living in their parents basement,

That's not really a subjective opinion, it's literally baked into how nature works. Like, everywhere, be it an ant colony, or a world super-power.

Your idealistic opinion, while a lovely sentiment, is firmly in the realm of the The Never Ending Story.

I think we should bring back slavery because nature.

.

@phbz: Should probably eat other people’s children as well because you know, nature. 😅

It's funny you bring that hyperbole up, like it's ridiculous

We literally did and in extreme circumstance, do that. Even here on my doorstep, when Edward Bruce invaded Ireland, they were that desperate for food they dug up the dead to consume.

That's survival. And funnily enough ho-ho, is baked into nature right up until present day

Using earlier stages of development, or the most extreme example possible doesn't really change the simple argument that hierarchy is the norm. Everywhere.

@Archangel3371: Not eating children sounds like communism to me. You don't want to deviate from natural order.

@uninspiredcup: Also doesn't change the fact that humans have the natural capacity to debate and change dynamics within hierarchical structures, like they've done since forever.

@uninspiredcup: Idealistic opinion? You missed the point and continue to run on a false premise for your argument. Also, if you are trying to claim that in nature, one entity consumes or hordes 1000 times the resources to that of the next kin you are living in an alternate reality.