Posted in: Blizzard, Games, Video Games | Tagged: blizzard, Blizzard Entertainment

Blizzard Employees Share Their Salaries In Company Wage Revolt

Published Mon, 03 Aug 2020 20:40:12 -0500

Blizzard Entertainment's staff just started a major discussion over wage disparities in their company after sharing wages over the weekend. The story comes from Bloomberg who is reporting that several employees at the company started anonymously circulating a spreadsheet where they detailed what they were making and what their last pay increase was. Depending on how much you know about wages in the gaming industry, the results probably won't shock you too much when you learn a lot of people are making less than they should and are unhappy about it. There are a ton of details in the report as many of the staff were candid about what they had been making over the years and what their salary increases were. For example, many of the staff never received a pay increase until they left to go work for other companies. Another long-time employee says they received a raise of less than $0.50 an hour, and are making less now because there are fewer overtime hours.

The real kicker to this is that while most employees are working at what is apparently near minimum wage, a select few who are mostly producers and engineers make $100k a year. That's not even including CEO Bobby Kotick, who apparently makes $40m a year, which doesn't even include additional benefits. Furthermore, many employees have received raises are below 10% of what they're making. According to a few different reporters on social media who are trying to follow up with people involved, the spreadsheet has practically made its way around to nearly every department in the company at this point. Most of whom work out of the Irvine, California offices. We'll keep an eye out and see how this develops, but its clear right now the staff are looking for change by any means necessary, even if it means making the salaries of the entire company public.

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