Unionised staff at Raven Software have secured their first contract with Microsoft. 

That's according to journalist Shannon Liao, who wrote that 19 quality assurance staff at the Call of Duty developer have their first union agreement with the Xbox giant after almost three years of negotiations. 

“It feels like we’ve been sprinting a marathon, and so to finally be at the end of it is kind of unbelievable,” QA tester and a bargaining member for the Raven union, Erin Hall, said.

This contract promises staff a ten per cent increase in compensation over the next two years and allows employees to work from home permanently. It also gets rid of a lot of instances of mandatory overtime and requires that Raven give unionised QA staff seven days notice for any such work. 

“How do you progress within QA? How do you get promoted? How do you get a raise?” said Autumn Prazuch, another QA tester and member of the bargaining group. 

“For so long we haven’t had those [answers], to be able to curate them with the company and come to an agreement… that I think is our crowning achievement, the thing that I’m most proud of.”

Raven staff voted to unionise in 2022; this bargaining unit was recognised by Activision Blizzard the following month. In August 2024, the union accused Microsoft and Activision Blizzard of negotiating in "bad faith".