While the worst of the pandemic is clearly over, a few years of getting people to work from home has shown that a lot of folks are happier, and even work better, if they get to do it where they live. So decisions to force employees back into the office are understandably going to be met with resistance across the workforce, and video games are no exception.
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Activision Blizzard has confirmed with Game Developer that their own plan, first made public in this Twitter thread by @LeastMyHairIsOk, will see Activision publishing employees asked to come back to the office on April 10, while Blizzard workers would be doing so on July 10 (King employees, meanwhile, went back in July 2022).
UPDATE: King employees were not forced back to the office in July 2022; that was the date their offices reopened, and while some workers have returned, others are still doing their jobs remotely.
It should be noted that neither Activision nor Blizzard workers are being forced back into the office full-time, as “employees for both divisions will be required to come to the office three days a week”.
That’s still a huge concern for both current and prospective employees, though, as not only are people still catching Covid and dying from it, but three years of remote work has shown a lot of specialised workers in the games industry that they can do their jobs just fine without the health risks, commute and other frictions involved in having to travel to a certain place to do all your work, all while dodging a global pandemic and battling a cost of living crisis.
LeastMyHairIsOk—a Blizzard employee in customer support—spells this all out in their Twitter thread, pointing out other issues that have arisen because of, or at least alongside, the pandemic. I’ve collected their Tweets here:
