13 unionized Dragon Age: Dreadwolf QA testers have been laid off
Those affected have been offered “minimal severance”
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Every unionizedDragon Age: Dreadwolfquality assurance (QA) tester has been laid off.
As Polygonreportedon October 4, 13 developers who were working on the nextDragon Agegame at the QA outsourcing company Keywords Studios on September 27 were let go after Bioware declined to continue its contract with the company in August.
Polygon received confirmation from Liz Corless, Keywords Studios’ global head of marketing, in an email, who said, “We can confirm that regrettably the 13 Edmonton-based staff have now left the business following the end of a fixed-term client contract.”
When they were laid off in late September, it was said that Keywords had “taken the position there is no more work available.”
The QA developers officially joined the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada Union in June last year - making it the first games industry union in Canada - and were contracted to assist with playtesting and quality assurance at Bioware Edmonton.
Keywords Studios has reportedly offered the 13 laid-off developers “minimal severance” and, in response, the union has filed an employment standards complaint against the studio.
As of writing, the dispute has not been settled and severance has not been paid out.
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On August 23, Bioware - best known for some of thebest single-player gamesever made -laid off about 50 staff membersin order to “meet the needs of upcoming projects” and to make the studio “more agile and more focused.”
This followed the announcement from earlier this year that thedevelopment ofStar Wars: The Old Republicwould be moved away from the companyto the third-party studio Broadsword Online, in order to focus on the future ofDragon AgeandMass Effect.
Layoffs in the games industry are particularly prevalent right now. Only this week was it reported that Naughty Dog, the studio behindThe Last of Usand theUnchartedseries, hadlaid off a number of its contract developers - the majority of them being QA testers.
For more, check out our list of thebest single-player games, as well as our round-up of thebest PC games of 2023.
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