you need to learn to separate your overemotional reactions to critiques of video games from reality. There’s nothing biased in this piece at all. It’s a generally positive review calling the game a success at what it wanted to be. He offered a critique as it stands up against modern games of the same genre and how a…

The more things change....nineteen years ago in Bellevue, WA I briefly worked as a QA tester for Nintendo, and only lasted a few weeks before I decided I’d had enough. The dehumanization in that job stand out to me even today as one of the least pleasant work experiences I’d ever suffered.

I appreciate that, but please do know that none of this would be possible without all of my talented, hard-working colleagues here at Kotaku. We are a team in so many ways, and none of these stories are single-person efforts, ever.

Another fantastic read. I have the utmost respect for you, Jason, you’re going to be remembered for being at the tip of the spear of the unionization of this garbage ass industry.

13 years ago, my career started in the QA department of EA Vancouver. The segregation and the “second class employee” thing was very real. QA was segregated in this big warehouse they called “IHOQ” - y’know, international house of QA. having aspirations of building a career as a game dev, i jumped ship to a smaller…

I wish I could say this story surprises me. It’s why I left the industry. And many other good testers I know. The only people who stick around long-term care just enough about games not to get fired, but don’t feel like they can do anything else. Even then they jump from company to company, from project to project,…

I made a burner account just to comment on this article. I work for a games studio owned by one of the biggest publishers out there. Treatment of QA there is almost as bad as in this article - this is not an isolated case. We are segregated from the development team and used to be told not to contact them. We are paid…

As a QA lifer, I sincerely thank you for this piece of work. Please continue to peel back the cover on the treatment of a critical component of game development that is constantly overlooked and underrepresented.

Wow. Thanks for sharing this.

I have friends that are testers at Red Storm, Epic, and Insomniac games, and many of their stories mirror Treyarch’s QA staff. The “dangling carrot” of full-time employment is a constant issue, because life on the full-time side is WAY better: better bonuses, better pay, incredible benefits, and an elevated level of…

Wow, that’s a huge change from back when I was working as QA at Treyarch, how did they manage to make things worse? I started working there back when WaW was being made. I remember there being 3 teams in that building on Oceanpark blvd.  Bond, Spiderman and COD.  Back then QA wasn’t treated that poorly.  I think the…

I work in development, not in games, but in development. Testing is the hardest thing to do and it is the last line of defense before something goes out to a customer. I don’t get why software companies don’t understand this. Even the one I work for has no one specifically designated as ‘qa’ we get our CSR’s to do…

I worked QA on Black Ops III at the El Segundo Activision location, placed by Volt. We were paid a base wage of $10/hour, and initially the hours were 8am-6pm Monday thru Saturday. Crunch time we worked 7am-7pm every single day of the week.

“some say they’ve been working around 70 hours a week. So it was a gut punch to at least a few of them when, in January of this year, news broke that the video game publisher Activision had given a cash and stock bonus worth up to $15 million to its new chief financial officer, Dennis Durkin. They didn’t even qualify…

Great series of articles on these conditions. The snowball is probably gathering momentum as more and more employees realize you’re the guy to talk to.

This is why you unionize. Except we won’t fucking do it because as Americans we’re apparently broken at such a fundamental level we think we deserve this treatment to get ahead. And who told you that...?

It’s my understanding he only appears via the “knock on the door” cameo trick from the first game: the weird mushroom itself is sadly gone.

This is gonna be a fun weekend. Now the real question remains: is this abomination back?

I loved this game back in the day. I played Castlevania a ton but couldn’t finish it as a kid. The idea that you could level up and get stronger attracted me, and the exploration and variety took the series to a whole new level. It blew me away. Compared to other games at the time it was doing a lot, and offered fun…

Great piece. Aside from it being nearly impossible without a FAQ, it doesn’t deserve the hate it usually gets, for all the points you made. I’ve always found it so interesting that for both Castlevania 2 and Zelda 2, (I guess Mario 2 falls into this too, despite it originally being a different game) that the…