Raven Software: Last News

Activision Blizzard illegally retaliated against unionising workers at Raven Software by withholding raises, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has found.Via The Washington Post, the labour board found that Activision Blizzard withheld raises from quality assurance (QA) testers at Raven Software, which it attributed to their union activities.Following these findings, Activision Blizzard and Raven Software QA testers will continue negotiations around a collective bargaining agreement. If the two parties cannot agree on terms, the NLRB could file a complaint.

Sega Of America have successfully voted to unionise, after their attempts to organise went to an election.On Monday (July 10), Sega Of America workers voted 91-26 in favour of forming the Allied Employees Guild Improving Sega (AEGIS-CWA).With members joining from a number of disciplines throughout Sega Of America’s California headquarters, AEGIS-CWA is now the largest multi-department union within the game industry.It’s a significant milestone for growing unionisation efforts across the game industry, as Sega is one of the world’s largest gaming publishers. Besides creating Sonic The Hedgehog, Sega is best known for owning the studios behind Persona, Total War, Like A Dragon, and Football Manager.“We are overjoyed to celebrate our union election win as members of AEGIS-CWA.

Respawn Entertainment is opening a third studio to support the development of Apex Legends, weeks after parent company EA laid off over 200 of the game’s testers.Respawn’s third studio will be located in Madison, Wisconsin, and will initially support the company’s battle royale shooter Apex Legends.As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, the studio will be led by Ryan Burnett, who previously worked as Epic Games‘ director of engine production and, prior to that, worked at Call Of Duty developer Raven Software for 14 years.“Wisconsin is quickly becoming a central development hub here,” Burnett told GamesIndustry.biz.

Activision Blizzard, with the company’s Albany branch (formerly Vicarious Visions) making the bid.This makes the Albany QA branch the second potential union at the company, after the same department at Raven Software won its union election bid back in May. Called Game Workers Alliance (GWA) Albany, the new union issued a statement last night (July 19) via Twitter:“QA is currently an undervalued discipline in the games and software industries.

Raven Software has announced that players will no longer be able to edit their loadouts in Call Of Duty: Warzone under certain circumstances. The developer made the announcement on Twitter yesterday (June 20), where it told player’s that they will no longer be able to change their loadouts when matchmaking or in a party.“Due to an unforeseen situation, we’ve disabled the ability to edit loadouts when joining to or matchmaking with another player’s party,” wrote Raven Software.❗️ Due to an unforeseen situation, we've disabled the ability to edit Loadouts when joining to or matchmaking with another Player's party.— Raven Software (@RavenSoftware) June 20, 2022The ability to edit loadouts in pre-game lobbies was a highly requested feature for some time, with it being introduced to Warzone at the start of Season 4 last year.This was removed at the time as Raven Software quickly realised that players could use it to get infinite Dead Silence – a field upgrade that completely silences a players movement and running – during matches.Last week the Mercenaries Of Fortune roadmap for Warzone and Vanguard was also revealed, which you can check out in full here.

Raven Software has temporarily disabled all vehicles in Call Of Duty: Warzone, with many attributing the loss to a popular glitch.In a tweet yesterday (April 11), Raven Software said it has “temporarily disabled vehicles on Rebirth Island while we investigate an issue”. At present the developer hasn’t been clear on what the issue is, but many think the removal of vehicles is linked to a glitch that sees players getting into the game’s golden vaults.Before golden vaults were widely accessible in Warzone, one player figured out how to wedge themselves between a golden vault’s door and another player’s vehicle, with the force from the vehicle pushing them into the golden vault itself.The video below shows a player using the glitch to get into one of the golden vaults, and this was achieved before the golden vaults were open – meaning the player couldn’t get out once they found a way in.Got into the vault pic.twitter.com/tKvWm6vmAA— bob.

Call Of Duty: Warzone has taken some strength out of the overperforming Ghost perk, and has also tweaked several other perks in an effort to “provide players with a variety of tools to create even more interesting stories”.In an update to Warzone detailed on March 28 (via The Loadout), Raven Software has shared that it wants “counterplay and interplay between systems to be viable” so that players can “create even more interesting stories”.To that end, the studio added that “perks are going to make for a significant part of the push towards this objective,” and has outlined several fairly major perk changes that arrived in yesterday’s Warzone update.The biggest change targets Ghost, and makes it so that players will only receive the perk’s stealth effect if they are moving. Raven Software explained that “in Caldera it is obvious that [Ghost] has become even stronger”, and felt that more counter play opportunities were needed for the perk.The update also makes changes to the Scavenger, Restock and E.O.D.

Activision Blizzard has said that it is facing an increased attrition rate after ongoing legal action.The annual report (via Axios) states that recent legal proceedings regarding alleged workplace harassment and strikes over QA layoffs may be responsible for an increased attrition rate at the company, and is also causing difficulty in attracting new staff members.The report said: “We are experiencing adverse effects related to concerns raised about our workplace. If we experience significantly reduced productivity, significant worker protests or strikes in regards to these matters, significant continued loss of sponsors, advertisers or players, or other negative consequences relating to these matters, our business could be materially adversely impacted.”The report continues, saying that Activision Blizzard may not be able to conduct business if it is unable to attract, retain, and motivate skilled personnel.“We have observed labour shortages, increasing competition for talent, and increasing attrition.

Warzone developer Raven Software has announced that as part of the battle royale’s anti-cheat system, PC players who encounter hackers will be given a “Damage Shield” that prevents hackers from hitting them with critical damage.As detailed in a progress report for Ricochet anti-cheat, Raven Software has shared that it is looking to apply more “in-game mitigations” to prevent cheaters from ruining games while they’re in them.One of these mitigations involves a “Damage Shield”, which has finished testing and is now live on Warzone servers.As to what the Damage Shield entails, the developer explains that “when the server detects a cheater is tampering with the game in real-time, it disables the cheater’s ability to inflict damage on other players,” which essentially sounds like a God Mode.“This mitigation leaves the cheater vulnerable to real players and allows [Ricochet] to collect information about a cheater’s system,” adds the blog.The article also outlines that there is “no possibility” the game will accidentally apply a Damage Shield outside of a scenario involving a cheater, and says “we will never interfere in gunfights betweeen law-abiding community members.”Looking ahead, the Ricochet team has shared that there are further mitigations “live and in development,” and confirmed that Warzone has seen “a decline in cheat reporting” since launching some of them in the last few weeks.On some of the mitigations that have not yet been detailed, the blog teases that “you might start seeing clips of our new tricks soon, but we won’t ruin the surprise.”In other Warzone news, Season Two of Warzone launched last week and has brought NPC enemies and a Chemical Factory.

Activision Blizzard have formed a union.Composed of Raven Software quality assurance (QA) staff who staged a walkout in December of last year after more than a third of the QA team were laid off, the Game Workers Alliance (GWA) is a new union that has been launched with the help of the ABK Workers Alliance, which helped organise the ongoing strike and set up a GoFundMe for the staff.The Game Workers Alliance has been formed in conjunction with the Communications Workers of America, which organises unions in industries from communications to technology. The GWA is requesting formal recognition from Activision Blizzard, for which a spokesperson told Bloomberg:“While we believe that a direct relationship between the company and its team members delivers the strongest workforce opportunities, we deeply respect the rights of all employees under the law to make their own decisions about whether or not to join a union.”A mission statement on the GWA website adds that the union focuses “on improving the conditions of workers in the video game industry by making it a more sustainable, equitable place where transparency is paramount.

Raven Software has updated Call Of Duty: Warzone to reduce the weapon bloom on Vanguard’s firearms.It’s been a busy week for Warzone; the last major update added a new map and over 40 weapons from Call Of Duty: Vanguard. However, many of those weapons came across with weapon bloom.

Warzone – which has been nerfed several times for being too hard to see – is once again causing trouble, with players alleging that previous nerfs have been reverted.As reported by Charlie Intel, the Warzone community is reporting that the Roze skin has returned to being incredibly difficult to spot in dark areas, with players suggesting that the skin’s prior nerfs have been reverted.One thread in the Warzone Reddit – which has gathered almost 500 upvotes – alleges that “the Roze “fix” is no longer in place” and states it’s a problem “not only in Verdansk but even more so in the current gulag”.Several people pointed out that while Roze is meant to glow slightly in order to stand out in darker environments, that no longer seems to be the

Call Of Duty: Warzone and Black Ops Cold War Season 6 shows the return of Alex Mason and an explosive change to Verdansk.Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is reaching the end of its life cycle as players gear up for Call Of Duty: Vanguard’s release. Season 6 of both BOCW and Warzone begins on October 7 and a new trailer gives a look at what players can expect.The numbers machine from Black Ops 1 returns but instead Mason is the one using it, with Adler in the hot seat.

Warzone content creator Jgod has called aim assist for controller users on Warzone “broken” after seeing a clip demonstrating its abilities.Sharing a clip that appears to show a Warzone player using controller-enabled aim assist to quickly track and kill a target, Jgod calls the aim assist feature “broken” and accuses controller players of living “in denial” over its strength (thanks, Dexerto).Elaborating, JGod adds that aim assist is “what makes it so hard to full commit to KB&M [keyboard and mouse]” as it allows for results that otherwise couldn’t be achieved without “years o[f] practice”.Sadly even with clips like this, a lot of controller players live in denial.

Raven Software’s latest tease for the upcoming Call Of Duty: Vanguard is now live in Call of Duty: Warzone.Call of Duty: Warzone’s latest tease for the Upcoming Battle of Verdansk event has been added to the Call of Duty: Warzone map. The train that has been traversing the map since the start of Season 5 has been destroyed.

Call Of Duty: Warzone professional player Liam ‘Jukeyz’ James has revealed that by winning the 2021 World Series Of Warzone (EU), he’s made more money in one night than he did in an entire year at his last job.After winning the World Series Of Warzone EU Trios earlier in the week, James has shared with Twitter that his share of the prize pool (which was $300,000/£216,225 overall) has made him more money than the yearly salary of his last job at a warehouse:“Can’t get my head around the fact I made a yearly wage I would have made when I was working in a warehouse…in one night”Can’t sleep won’t sleep can’t get my head around the fact I made a yearly wage I would have made when I was working in a warehouse 3 years ago in 1 night

Call of Duty: Warzone, developer Raven Software has had to hire a lot more staff.READ MORE: I’ll take Steam Deck over upgrading my gaming PC any dayAccording to a report by Video Games Chronicle, Raven Software has hired over 100 new members of staff in the past 12 months.Using publicly available Linkedin data, it seems the company has hired at least 12 producers, over 30 artists and animators, almost 40 programmers and testers and 10 designers.It looks like 350 people now work at Raven Software, compared to the 250 people mentioned in the credits for 2020’s Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.Far Cry 6’s game director Ted Timmins has joined as Warzone‘s new creative director while William Fine (senior producer on Epic Games‘ Fortnite) and

Call of Duty: Warzone are now spawning booby-trapped loot chests that could wipe out you and your squad.A new addition to the popular battle royale, the red doors teleport anyone who passes through them to a number of mysterious ‘stations’, but now a new addition to these stations could prove deadly.As well as the usual orange loot chests, there are two new chests that seem to spawn inside the stations.The first is a unique-looking red chest, covered in matrix-style numbers similar to what you see when the red doors teleport you to their stations. Opening one of these gives you your usual batch of loot – but with a number of red cubes spilling out of the box as well.The second is a much more nefarious addition.

Call Of Duty Warzone has received a new high-resolution texture pack, however hardware limitations mean that the update is only applicable to certain consoles.The update, which VCG reports is “just under” 7GB, allows both Warzone and Black Ops Cold War to run in 1440p.

Call Of Duty: Warzone are upset with a new weapon that has an absurdly low time to kill.The nail gun, which can be unlocked in Call Of Duty: Black Ops and Warzone in a variety of ways, has an extremely low time to kill.Professional Call Of Duty player Curtis “FaZe Dirty” Henke demonstrates the power of the weapon in a new clip where he downs three players in under 18 seconds, before exclaiming “they had to have been weak, there’s no way ‘cos, that was gross”.THE NAIL GUN, WHAT.

Call Of Duty: Warzone‘s newest weapon, the MG 82, is already getting a nerf according to Raven Software.The announcement came in a Tweet from Raven Software who said: “The MG 82 (BOCW) made one too many trips to the Pack-a-Punch machine before deploying to Verdansk.”The MG 82 (BOCW) made one too many trips to the Pack-a-Punch machine before deploying to Verdansk.Element 115 is off limits in #Warzone so we will be making an adjustment to this Weapon soon.