Image via Activision

Activision remains firmly in the news bicycle lately with yet another revelation regarding its business practices. An manufacture insider revealed on social media today that the company was in the process of announcing layoffs in the QA team of one of its subsidiaries, Raven Software, now one of the chief studios spearheading evolution on the Phone call of Duty serial.

Austin O'Brien, an associate community manager for Raven Software and Call of Duty: Warzone, shared the news today on Twitter. He revealed that the Raven QA squad had been promised raises for months past Activision, but had been caught off baby-sit when several valuable team members had been told they were being laid off, effective January 28.

The story was picked up by Kotaku, which corroborated with a source of its own who elaborated on Activision'due south apparent intentions. The programme, information technology would seem, would be to hang on to some of the contractors, rent a few to permanent positions, and dismiss the remainder. Those remaining contractors would indeed see the raise promised them — from $17/hour to $18.50/hr — merely no doubt that will be of little comfort to their laid-off coworkers.

Dangling promises in forepart of workers before letting them get is a common tactic of large companies, especially when dealing with freelancers and contractors, and Activision's latest movement could spell trouble for the difficult-won concessions of the ABK Workers Brotherhood last month. It may seem an overconfident move from the publisher, which is already facing considerable backfire due to accusations of discrimination and harassment and an underwhelming response to those issues, just to many in the industry information technology's just yet some other scandal to avoid addressing.