New CA & WA pay transparency laws show Blizzard pays QA way less than Riot & Bungie

Authored by buzleaks.com and submitted by Watcher2020

In the ongoing fight for workers’ rights, California and Washington recently enacted new pay transparency laws that require businesses in specific industries to share the pay range for roles listed at their companies. This includes high-profile names in the gaming business, such as Blizzard, Riot Games, and Bungie. Of those three, Blizzard has the lowest rates listed for its Quality Assurance workers.

Taking a look at current listings for similar QA jobs at Riot Games (QA Engineer), Bungie (Destiny Test Lead), and Blizzard (Diablo 4 Test Lead), Blizzard is listing the lowest pay of the three. The salary range for the Blizzard role is between $49,600.00 – $91,760.00. While this is a pretty wide range, it’s below the ranges listed for Riot ($98,009 – $132,700) and Bungie ($86,000 – $108,000).

This news comes just after a year in which QA workers under the Activision Blizzard umbrella unionized in pursuit of better treatment and compensation, a massive moment in the fight for workers’ rights in the gaming industry. This is just the latest piece of information that indicates a poorer overall experience for Blizzard employees compared to other titans of the video game industry. It’s also worth mentioning that the role at Blizzard requires applicants to have three years of experience leading test teams, and 1 – 3 years of management experience.

With the company now forced to share (vague) salary ranges on its job listings, it will be interesting to see if Blizzard raises rates for its QA workers as a result of the newfound scrutiny. While the revelation has stirred up quite the discussion amongst talking heads in the gaming industry, the publisher hasn’t released a statement on the matter. For the latest news on the business moves at Activision Blizzard, stick with Shacknews.

Yourself013 on January 10th, 2023 at 10:15 UTC »

That's the thing with these rising game prices...I honestly wouldn't mind paying more for games if I knew it's actually going to the devs. Everything is more expensive nowadays and I know devs could use higher wages.

But then you see companies like Acti/Blizz pushing all new game prices to $70 and still paying their employees pennies while CEOs get millions in bonuses and it's all excused with "Inflation." No thanks, pay your devs and then I'll be fine with paying a bit more for my games.

fallwind on January 10th, 2023 at 09:11 UTC »

It’s common knowledge in the industry that Blizzard’s pay is horrifically low, and when you include the astronomical cost of living in the area… yikes.

It’s one of the reason why they have trouble keeping good senior to lead level talent. The higher ups can get stock options, the juniors get an awesome game on their resume to help launch their career, but the people who actually lead the teams get the shaft.

GenderJuicy on January 10th, 2023 at 08:51 UTC »

Not just QA, literally everything including devs. I wish the article covered this since this affects so many people beyond QA.