- It is time for Shattered Soul Stone, featuring the latest news from Sanctuary and beyond. Each episode, a heroic party of Nephilim Band together to help keep you informed on everything in the Diablo universe. And now your Diablo Community podcast - Coming to you from somewhere in sanctuary. This is episode 4 4 9 of Shattered Soul Stone, your Diablo Community podcast. This episode is called Union Strong. It is March 8th, 2024. And this is Jen. And here we go.
With all the stuff I've collected for this episode, I'm gonna start off with an article from Polygon written by No Noel Carpenter, titled 600 Activision QA Workers Unionize. Microsoft voluntarily recognizes this will be the largest video game union in the country yet. So here's a little bit from that article. Hundreds of Activision quality assurance workers are unionizing with the Communications Workers of America CWA.
The union covers approximately 600 Activision Central QA workers across three locations. Austin, Texas, Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and El Segundo, California. This makes the union called Activision Quality Assurance United cwa, the largest group of unionized video game workers in the us. The final vote is tallied at 390 votes.
Yes and eight votes no. A CWA representative told Polygon quote, something we organized around is that this, in this industry, QA and customer service are the lowest paid jobs and often looked down upon either within the industry or by customers. Activision, QA tester and organizing committee member Cara Fanon told Polygon quote, it's easy for people to say qa, oh, I found a bug even though we logged tens of thousands of bugs. So why is QA unionizing as opposed to other people in the industry?
We have the weakest protections currently and we want to make sure that we're strong so our work can keep going the way it is. We want to be supporting these games and working really hard on them. End of quote, Activision Quality Assurance. United dash CW members work on games published by Activision Publishing, including franchises like Call of Duty Crash, Bandicoot and Tony Hawk Pro Skater. The group joins unionized Microsoft and Activision Blizzard employees at Blizzard Albany.
Raven Software and Zenax, the Blizzard, Albany and Raven Software Unions were brought under Microsoft with the company's $68.7 billion. Activision Blizzard merger. Previously, Zenax Workers United was the largest group of video game industry QA workers at Microsoft and across companies in the US with more than 300 workers.
Like the organizing effects at Zenax, Activision, QA workers reportedly did not face the union busting tactics that were alleged to have occurred during the Blizzard, Albany and Raven Software's Union campaigns. That's because Microsoft signed a labor neutrality agreement with CWA in 2022, which basically acts, which is basically a contract that Microsoft must stay neutral within all union interactions. Agreements like this are not common.
Resa Ovitz Profess Professor of Labor Law and Employment at Laws Cornell School, Cornell's School of Industrial Labor and Relations, and Academic Director for IRL's, the Worker Institute told Polygon in 2023 after XM Max's Union win. There's more to this article and you'll be able to find it [email protected]. In addition, we have an article from The Verge, which is similar, but probably we'll have different things to say.
It's titled Activision QA Workers formed the largest US video game union, yet organized with the help of the CWA Activision Quality Assurance. United has 600 members across Texas, California, and Minnesota. This is written by Anne Parrish. Around 600 workers and Activision's Publishing Quality Assurance Department have formed a union assisted by the communications Workers of America. The employees completed their vote with the results certified on Friday, March 8th.
That's today with that Activision Quality Assurance, United CWA becomes the latest, the latest union to arise out of Microsoft's gaming division and the largest video game union in the United States. In 2022, Microsoft affirmed a labor neutrality agreement with the CWA, which eases the organization process of the, at the company and its subsidiaries, including Activision Blizzard.
In an interview with the Verge, Tom Shelley, a technical requirements specialist, and one of Activision Quality Assurance United's organizers said the Labor Neutrality Agreement and Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard last year made their goals of unionizing easier to accomplish.
Quote, this has been an emergent effort that's ar arisen in the last few weeks in response to the opportunities we've had to freely organize following the merger, Shelly said, as QA workers, we often have the weakest protections and the lowest pay of any workers in the industry, even though our work is integral to make to the success of the companies we work for and the titles we make in quality assurance workers test games looking for bugs
and other issues, flagging them for other developers to fix. Since the majority of QA jobs are typically entry level, the industry has a reputation for devaluing tho these roles, emphasizing the need for labor protections, Shelly praised Microsoft for voluntarily recognizing the union in hopes it will inspire more organizing at the company and beyond. And there's a little bit more with that.
We've also got, uh, from the A BK workers and CWA code, CWA together, and they wrote this Activision QA vision statements. They have a picture here that says, Activision Quality Assurance United and some the letters underneath it. And a, uh, very blocky hand holding a con like a controller. Activision Publishing produces some of the most profitable titles in the history of gaming. The Call of Duty franchise alone generates billions of dollars with millions of concurrent players every year.
However, as quality assurance workers for Activision Publishing, we are regularly under compensated and undervalued. Despite our essential role in the development of such highly regarded titles, we, the workers of Activision Publishing QA in Austin, Texas, Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and El Segundo, California have come together to form one large union and fight side by side for our rights as workers.
The dread and uncertainty of the recent layoffs and the opportunity afforded by the neutrality agreement have pushed us to combine organizing efforts and collectively address our issues. We chose to build our union on these foundational principles. Democracy. As a worker led union, it's impossible for us to be heard without fair, equal proportional representation that is directly beholden to our members.
Diversity by embracing everyone's unique skills and backgrounds, we are all capable of doing far more together than we could ever do Individually equity, the long history of systemic inequality within our country has made it impossible for us to ignore the unique needs of our members and must be addressed collectively whenever possible. Solidarity. Our power comes from us standing together in unity and injury to one is an injury to all transparency.
Transparency is the only way our union can uphold our other principles and must be defended. It goes on from there for a little while, and there's a whole list of people that had signed on to this. But yeah, I, I love when places that have, uh, that are working for large companies of whatever kind, I love when they get a union because it means they're gonna have more protection, typically speaking, you know, unless you do something really awful after you've gotten your union.
I mean, I don't know, but I think this is good. I think this is something that the United States in general needs to have because otherwise you end up with people having, you know, a job that is looked down upon and as such cannot make a higher wage than what they were getting. Now they possibly can. And I think that's a beautiful thing. We've also got a short thread here from the, uh, a better a, BK.
You've probably seen them on Twitter or, you know, used to be, uh, it's now X but it used to be Twitter. And this is what they wrote about four hours ago. This union was formed on five key principles that we wish to uphold within our workplaces. Democracy, diversity, equity, solidarity, and transparency. With our collective voices joined together, we aim to bring a brighter future to both our company and the industry at large.
And then I think this thing probably links over to the thing I just read. Let's see if I'm right. Yeah, so we already read that one, but it's nice to see a BK still kind of like, you know, being pro-union out there because people need that switching topics entirely here. So this one is titled Nominations Announced BAFTA Games Award 2024. This was on March 7th, so that was yesterday. And this was the 20th. The BAFTA Games Awards, uh, that took place at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London.
And the highlights of the nomination include a bunch of different games, but one of them that is on there under the category other games was Diablo four, which is kind of interesting because there's a whole lot of games in there. And Diablo four made it into that part. And I think that's kind of cool as well because, you know, we all play Diablo four at least a little bit, right? So I think that's good. But it also has like games I've never heard of, um, , which, you know, it's the way it is.
HIN Impact is in there. Um, Forza Horizon five, Forza Motorsport, final Fantasy XIV online, I cannot not pronounce that to save my life. Cyberpunk 2077. A whole bunch of things are in there. So it's cool that Diablo four is part of that group. Sometimes video games in general are really fun to play unless you have accessibility issues. So you could see over on, it's, it's the Battle net account and it says accessibility at Blizzard Entertainment. It was updated a year ago.
Um, so I'm not sure if they're just sticking to this one or if it'll change in the future, but here's some things that are in there. It says common problems. I have an accessibility issue with a Blizzard product. Where can I voice my concerns about barriers in your games that make it difficult for me to play? Can I provide a suggestion on how to improve the game for those of us with a disability? And then there's a note in here.
It says this email, which it's certainly not an email, it's on their site as well. So they probably sent out emails somewhere to someone. This email is to report accessibility issues or suggest improvements for improving accessibility for Blizzard products and services. Customer support does not monitor the accessibility inbox for account issues such as a lost password, um, account access, trouble, authenticator issues, et cetera. Please contact customer support. So here's a little bit more.
Every Voice Matters at Blizzard, and we want to make sure our Epic entertainment experiences are truly epic for all our players, as if an accessibility issue has become a barrier to play our games. We would like to hear from you to file a detailed report, including videos and screenshots. One email our Blizzard accessibility team. There's a, a link in there in your email title, please indicate what game or product you are writing about.
Example, Overwatch Battle net Desktop App, world of Warcraft game website, and include as much detailed information as possible due to the volume of reports, you may not receive a response from our team, however, we take all reports very seriously. Thank you for your dedication to helping Blizzard bring the world together through Epic Entertainment. And I think this is really important because I have some, um, disability issues.
I have a disease called fibromyalgia, and when it starts kicking in, it's excruciatingly painful and it's really hard for me to, you know, keep playing with the controller of my ex, my Xbox, right? So sometimes that's kind of a problem for me, and I can, as I level up a character, it, it gets a little bit better if I'm not having, you know, a, a neurological disease attack me.
However, um, sometimes, um, just having a battle scenario that's very, very large with a lot of different monsters or creatures or whatever you're fighting that lasts more than my hands can handle. It also brings that on. And I don't think that Blizzard, whoever's behind this thing at Blizzard really thinks about that sort of stuff. You know, just in general, and that's just talking for me.
I'm not gonna, you know, guesstimate about what other people that have also have, you know, disabilities would think about this, but it seems like they're trying to make a start, you know, and trying to kind of get things in there.
And one of the things that I'm actually gonna read, um, well not actually read, um, that I've been thinking about is there are a number of times you go into Diablo form and there are popups that come up, like you're in like a building and these things are slowly glittering at you and you walk over there and then something pops up and describes what is, you know, what the thing is sitting there or what the meaning of it is, that kind of thing. None of those are audio.
So if you have, um, very, if you have difficulty with your eyes, if you have like, um, I don't know, I guess if you were completely and utterly blind, this would be a problem and you know, directly because you wouldn't be able to see what that information was. But if you have like, you know, any other kind of eye issues, that's gonna be really hard to try to figure out what the little text says. And I'm hoping maybe they can make it bigger. I don't think they really listen to my show.
I really don't think so. You know, why would they, they got a lot going on. But I do think that things like this are important to talk about because there are people out there that are gonna have problems with a video game no matter whatever video game it is because the people who designed it didn't really think too much about, well what if this person can't really see the tiny print, you know, that kind of stuff. So this is something I wanted to talk about because I thought it was important.
In addition, we also have from a month ago, which I don't think I've seen this one before, it's also from Battlenet and it's titled Reporting Forums Post , which kind of makes me laugh because sometimes like there'll be a forum for let's say Diablo four or any other, you know, blizzard game and people will come in and say, Hey, I really like this thing, but I needed to do this instead.
Or, you know, whatever. And then they all get like jumped on by angry people that come in just to be a jerk, you know? So this is from a month ago, common problems, posts on the forums needs to be removed. Player is harassing me on the forums or I don't have the option to report a forum post. So here's what you do. If you wanna like report something absolutely horrible and get it removed, customer service representatives are not able to check or action forum reports.
You can report forum posts that violates the for forum code of conduct through the forums themselves. Go to the post, click on the click on the flag icon at the bottom of the post select the reason you are reporting the post click flag Post forum moderators will review and investigate as reports come in. So if you, you know, I've looked at the forum sometimes and after a while I'm just like, nah, I don't think I wanna be there.
You know, there's also some related articles off to the side and one of them is my forum post was deleted . And I'm just like, okay, you know, what did you say? You know, what did you say that got it deleted? I don't know. But if you're ever running through the forums and just something absolutely vile is there, you can report it. And again, everything will be in the show notes.
So if you, if you find one, you can just go to the show notes connected to this particular episode and there it'll be, there's also a Blizzard refund policy. Now I've never heard of this one before. And um, it's connected to battle nets and various games at the top here and there is a Deckard Canes staring over at you. Like, what do you want? I'm trying to work. That's what it kind of looks like.
So here's a little bit, we've posted this policy to make our refund philosophy clear around purchases made from Blizzard on battle.net. This document is part of our official terms of sale, our philosophy, we believe in our mission to create epic entertainment experiences and we want you to feel confident you're getting the product and support you expect from Blizzard. If you change your mind about a recent purchase or you haven't used it, we'll try to work with you on a refund.
We may withdraw refund eligibility for abuse of this policy. Of course, that's every company in the world that sells anything does have like, well you've, you know, if you're abusing this policy then we don't need you anymore. You know, uh, the same goes for violations of the end game code of conduct or the end user license agreement. Now the code of conduct has to do in general from memory here. You know, are you being a jerk in a video game? That's kind of what that is.
, how to request a refund. You can request a refund using our support site and selecting the relevant game or order. We can only provide refunds for purchases made on our own platform. This includes purchases made through the Blizzard shop, the battle.net app or within one of our games. We will typically refund purchases to the method of payment used for the original transaction. In some cases such as those where the original payment method cannot be refunded.
We may provide the refund in the form of battle net.net balance. If the automated service doesn't address your needs, your support team is available to help. There's a link to that. There's some refund guidelines, games and expansions. We refund paid games or expansions within 14 days of purchase, as long as you haven't played for more than two hours.
Those games include World of Warcraft, Diablo four, Diablo three, and its Expansions Warcraft three, Reforge, StarCraft Remastered and Diablo two resurrected. And then there's endgame items that you have to, you know, that people pay for sometimes and stuff like that. And there's examples in here and it goes on and on from there. There is a blizzard balance and purchased virtual currency thing.
We'll refund purchases of Blizzard balance and purchased virtual currency within 14 days of purchase as long as you haven't spent the currency yet. And they're talking about Hearthstone, Rone Stones, Overwatch League tokens, Overwatch two coins and tokens, Diablo four Platinum Diablo, immortal Eternal Orbs and Heroes of the Storm Gems.
I'm surprised Heroes of the Storm is still in there because I haven't really seen many people playing it and sticking it on social media, you know, that kind of thing. Then there's this, this just made my night actually. So Overwatch posted a video and it says Overwatch two with the you a little two on the side and there's a little x and then there's something in Kanji and underneath it it says Cowboy Bebop. It is a collaboration trailer.
So what you have here, and I'm not gonna play it right now because you'll only get audio from it and not just the visual. So, um, I'll put it in the show notes so you can track this down pretty easily. The video is a minute and 34 seconds long and it's got various Overwatch characters dressed up like the Cowboy bebop characters and I think it's fantastic 'cause I fucking love Cowboy Bebop I have for years. This makes me really happy. Is it gonna make me wanna play Overwatch too? I don't know.
Probably not. I'm kind of more into Diablo, but I'm glad this exists anyway. And then we have the Diablo four patch notes. So here we go. These were posted today, March 8th. The Diablo four team has been monitoring your feedback As we introduce patches to keep your experience in sanctuary smooth, we will update the below list and denote whether the fixes are intended for pc, Xbox, PlayStation, or all platforms. This one starts with all platforms from March 12th, 2024.
I guess that's when it's going to happen 'cause we're not at March 12 yet. Bug fixes accessibility fixed and issue where the screen reader did not read out the view button when opening the trials menu. See that goes back to the accessibility thing I was talking about. If you can't see it, you don't know what's gonna happen.
Fixed an issue where the screen reader did not announce all the information in the trials menu unless the player was in world tier four, which takes a while to get to for some fixed an issue where the screen reader did not announce the party entry trials and weekly result menus fixed an issue where the screen reader did not read options in dropdown menus in various instances fixed an issue where the screen reader did not announce available points in
the skill tree season of the construct fixed an issue where the chaw was considered a minion, which made the sacrificial glyph unusable. Okay, that's a problem. Fixed an issue where the next ranked description for the chaw ability burning support was inaccurate, fixed. An issue where the barrier granted by the haw ability protect did not trigger the damage bonus from the conceited aspect.
Fixed an issue where malice meteor could still deal D could still deal damaged players could still deal damaged players, is probably meant two players after his defeat, uh, fixed an issue where the laborist proficient objective could not be completed. The objective can now also gain progress from acquiring murmuring caches. In addition to uncertain stone caches and fixed an issue.
Al Stone caches couldn't be crafted when only the duration support stone was left to get to max level gameplay fixed an issue where equipping multiple instances of the aspect of the moonrise would only use the first instance equipped.
Instead of using the strongest version equipped fixed an issue where the gauntlet play again button did not take the player to a new instance of the same dungeon fixed an issue where a nightmare dungeon could be reset by using a nightmare sigil while inside the dungeon nightmare. Sigils can no longer be used while inside an active nightmare dungeon fix an issue where tortured gifts in hell tide could not drop at least one equipment.
And then we have some dungeons fixed an issue where the tomb Lord boss in the ion fields would not reappear if the player left the boss arena immediately after placing the last statue. That's a problem. I'm glad they fixed that. That would be weird. You'd be like, Hey, it's supposed to be here now what's going on?
And you didn't know. Well now you know, fix an issue where these spider collar monsters could sometimes not spawn in the sco rocco rocco ca caverns, which would block progression fix an issue where an insufficient amount of animus carriers could fail to spawn in the dark ravine blocking progression. Fix an issue where the gauntlet could be reentered after leaving via a scroll of escape. And then there's some other interface stuff fixed.
An issue where season journey objectives would not display as completed when applicable. Fixed an issue where swapping between menus and the world map while in a vault could cause the map to erroneously default to the gate hall. Map fixed an issue where the Hall of Ancients records did not denote if a character is playing on hardcore difficulty, fixed an issue where there was no dungeon exit icon on the map or mini map had gauntlet dungeons like, well this is your life now.
Right? Fixed an issue where the butcher's barrier would not show as being depleted. Fix an issue where filtering the leaderboard to all platforms did not include PC entries fixed an issue where the map icon for pillars of glory would only be visible in close proximity to it. And then there's some various, uh, stuff fixed. An issue where the visual effect of meteor did not match the damage radius of the ability. Fixed an issue where the arrows fired from rogue's volley could appear invisible.
Various performance, visual and stability improvements. That's what we've got there. There's another video that is about nine minutes and 37 seconds long. It is titled Rise to the Challenge, the Gauntlet featuring Macro Bio Boy and he's going to talk to you through it. Again, I'm not gonna pull in the audio into this podcast, but again, everything will be in the show notes for you to check out. Um, so that's something you could look at.
And if you're, I'm not ready for the gauntlet yet, um, maybe I will be at some point. But I like that Blizzard is, you know, finding people who are really good at this game. Much better than me, I would assume. 'cause I don't play a lot. Um, I play when I can and you know, it's like really good to see somebody within the community explaining how to do the gauntlet thing. I think that's awesome and I think Blizzard should keep doing that. We've also got some stuff here from Wow Head.
This one's from three days ago, Diablo four leaderboards, day one Roundup opening night of the gauntlet. This is written by J Tross, which I hope I'm pronouncing correctly. So it says this, the gauntlet is finally out and with it. So are the leaderboards a widely requested Diablo four feature.
These leaderboards have been in flux all night with the top 10 for each class, constantly shifting as higher and higher scores are achieved while day one's launch means that the Hall of Ancients is currently unpopulated. We're taking a look at a snapshot of tonight's progress and what it shows for each class. Now keep in mind this was from three days ago.
There's an editor's note saying, due to the rapid nature of change in the opening night's leaderboards, this data was taken from a snapshot of builds and leaderboards at approximately 6:30 PM EST. The data has changed since then. However, we're focused on this one instance for now to represent the spread of builds we've seen so far.
Additionally, due to the fact that many players have elected to make their profiles private on the leaderboards, we're currently exploring the best way to present this data as accurately and faithfully as possible. We may incorporate feedback and suggestions, so let us know in your thoughts, your thoughts in the comments below. And then they have the types of things from top to bottom and how much damage they do.
So the ball lightning sorcerers right at the top, the Hoda charge Barbarian is right behind it. Our Clash soer is next. Uh, death Blow barbarian is after that, but just very close to the one above it. And then, you know, penetrating shot rogue, all that stuff, it's all in there if you wanna see everything at the bottom is the necromancer for some reason, I'm not really sure why. Oh, it's the severe necro answer.
There is a bone spear one that apparently got higher up in the, uh, thing that they were looking at and there's just a bunch of stuff in here. Interesting to note, but to not many players surprised is that the hardcore player base is both smaller and scoring differently than standard seasonal players. Sorcerers who dominate standard comparisons fall behind barbarians in terms of score while the other classes follow the same score.
Progression on average rogues are by far the lowest scoring class, which leads to an interesting thought. Will Blizzard use these scores in order to address class tuning going forward? DPS rankings in World of Warcraft have been similarly used for tuning purposes. So only time will tell, but leaderboards may have a distinct impact on future metas in seasons to come. Another one from Wow Head is from today. Uh, community created Diablo four gauntlet map by Rob. 2 6 2 8.
Uh, this was posted by Theod and there's pictures of the, the ranks you can get. So the first one is bloodied. It's a silver shield. The steadfast one's a little bit more gold. The iron wheeled has purple in it and then the worthy one has red in it and it all has like a barbarian looking helmet kind of thing. And, uh, embedded within this article is a post from Rob, 2 6 2 8.
And uh, it's from uh, x slash Twitter and says community created this map for my current gauntlet run in Diablo four, currently R one with 9 39 K score on Barb. We'll try to beat 1 million soon, but I'm gonna go source first now. He says, hope this overview helps you to improve your personal score. And there's like pictures of it here, like where to go and you know, there's um, color coded things of where to start and what to do, that kind of thing. So I think that's kind of cool.
I don't think I'm gonna be doing that tonight, but maybe eventually. And then we have one last thing here. Diablo four patch 1.3 0.3 a. Now live PlayStation tutorial and a leaderboard filtering fixed. This is posted one day ago by Siic on Wow head Blizzard has released Patch 1.3 0.3 A for Diablo four, which contains various bugs, including a fix for the PlayStation first time player experience appearing on every startup and multiple leaderboard filtering fixes .
Um, so March 7th, 2024 gameplay fix, fix an issue on PlayStation where first time player experiences triggered whenever a player visited the Diablo four title screen gauntlet fixed an issue where the filtering the solo leaderboard by friends could accidentally provide no results. Fixed. An issue where filtering the leaderboard by friends or clans could lead to only one entry. Fixed an issue where players could not scroll through all pages of the leaderboard.
Stability fixed various crashes that occurred when players inspected another player's profile on the gauntlet leaderboard. And this seems to be specifically for, it says all platforms, but I think PlayStation is probably having an issue with that specifically. And that's really all I've got for today. So I'm gonna close out the show now and hopefully some of this was interesting to you.
And I'll be back in another week with a brand new show you have been listening to Episode 4, 4 9 of the Shattered Soul Stone. Your Diablo community podcast missed an episode. You can find the show blog and listen to the show archives at www.shatteredsoulstone.com. Cub, join us in game. Our in-game, community and clan, both named Shattered Soul Stone are open to anyone who would like to join. You could also join us on Discord.
For the ultimate team and community-based experience, find the Discord invitation link on our Twitter at shattered stone as well as the Shattered Soul Stone website. Thank you for listening.