For this year’s N7 Day, a day in which players celebrate the Mass Effect series created by EA-subsidiary BioWare, former testers of the developer’s other main franchise Dragon Age are picketing the studio, despite BioWare’s efforts to have it shut down.
Per a report from Bryant Francis of Game Developer, former quality assurance testers that were employed by Keywords Studios to test Dragon Age: Dreadwolf will picket in front of BioWare’s Edmonton office today. The unionized workers are protesting what they call “unfair termination” by Keywords that they say was due to their efforts to unionize, and are pushing for the workers to be re-instated.
The workers union claims that both Electronic Arts and BioWare attempted to block picketing at the Edmonton offices by appealing to the Alberta Labour Relations Board, arguing that the dispute was between the workers and Keywords, not Bioware. The Board ruled in favor of the union, paving the way for the strike to go on.
The picket, as mentioned above, is taking place on N7 Day, but this year’s “celebration” has already been co-opted by another group of former Bioware employees to shed light on their own layoff situation. Over 50 BioWare employees were laid off back in August, with seven suing the company in order to receive fair severance compensation.
Former Keywords tester James Russwurm gave a statement to Polygon that the picketing Keywords employees are “100 percent there in solidarity with those workers who were let go from BioWare. We all worked alongside one another for years on Dreadwolf and ultimately suffered the same fate. We hope that our picket and actions can show that there is a way to fight back against unjust practices these studios take.”
Per both Game Developer and Polygon, the picket line/strike is set to begin outside the Edmonton offices of Bioware today staring at 11am local time, or 12pm CT.
