A group of laid off unionized QA testers who were working on the upcoming Dragon Age: Dreadwolf are picketing outside of developer BioWare’s Edmonton office for November 7, a day usually reserved for celebrating BioWare’s Mass Effect franchise.
The workers were employed by Keywords Studios, a company that until recently had a contract with BioWare and whose testers worked on both Mass Effect: Legendary Edition and the long-in-development next entry in the Dragon Age series. Last month, the testers were all laid off following BioWare’s decision not to renew its contract with Keywords–this was after the testers unionized last year.
That has led the laid off testers, who worked remotely, to protest BioWare’s Edmonton office. They are demanding to be reinstated by Keywords and be allowed to continue bargaining on their first union contract. The group unionized in order to improve their pay and for the ability to continue working remotely, something that BioWare and Keywords was looking to end, and believe the end of their contract was used as a union-busting tactic.