Before BO6, Black Ops 4 Gave a Gut Punch to its Own Underpaid Employees When Call of Duty Boss Got a Whopping Cash Bonus

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 has just been released. After completing the Modern Warfare trilogy, Activision is now looking to revive its Black Ops series. The last game in the series, Black Ops Cold War, didn’t get a proper reception from the fans, which is why all the honors lay on the shoulders of the recently launched title.

However, things are not going very well for BO6, as the game is heavily criticized for the new movement mechanics and launch maps. Still, the game features one of the best campaign missions in franchise history. As a result, the game has become hugely successful at the box office. The same thing happened with Black Ops 4 as well, but the consequences the underpaid employees at Activision had to face were pretty bad.

Treyarch Showed Inhumane Behaviors to Call of Duty: Black Ops 4‘s QA Testing Team

Despite heavy criticisms towards the maps, Omni-movement and other aspects, Black Ops 6 has performed brilliantly as far as the sales record is concerned. Black Ops 4 performed pretty well too, but what happened after that was utter injustice to some of the employees of the company.

Treyarch’s developers hosted a happy hour event to welcome the summer interns following the success of Black Ops 4. Everyone at the studio was celebrating with pizza, beer, and joy, with the exception of the quality assurance testers, who had to depart as soon as they arrived. A QA tester told to Kotaku:

In its first three days of sale, Black Ops 4 generated over $500 million, which helped make Activision’s 2018 financial results “the best in our history,” according to CEO Bobby Kotick. The production was also tumultuous, with a drastic reboot, a battle royale mode added at the last minute, and what one developer called “perpetual crunch,” which may have had the biggest impact on the QA team.

Since many of Treyarch’s workers are contractors rather than full-time employees, they are not eligible for the bonuses that full-time employees might receive from all those Black Ops 4 sales, among other things.

The Team Was Terribly Underpaid

Treyarch’s QA testers receive a base salary of about $13 per hour, based on Glassdoor aggregates and employee reviews provided to Kotaku. Some claim to have been working about 70 hours a week for the past year or so.

When it was revealed in January of this year that Activision, the video game publisher, had given its new chief financial officer, Dennis Durkin, a cash and stock bonus worth up to $15 million, it was a shock to at least a few of them. They were not even eligible to receive a $15 bonus.

Eleven current and former employees, all of whom spoke anonymously to preserve their careers, were interviewed for this account of Treyarch’s studio culture and the creation of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. They gave an account of a company where contractors, especially testers, feel inferior and unappreciated.

Testers claimed to have worked in unfair conditions during Black Ops 4‘s difficult development; this is a common theme in the video game industry, but it is still important to examine. According to those who spoke with us for this story, they did so in the hopes that the studio would change as a result of public pressure.

This was seriously a very shameful gesture from a company like Activision. We still don’t know if any employee at the company is still going through a similar kind of situation. Even if there is one employee, the immense success of Black Ops 6 shouldn’t overshadow this toxic work culture at the company.