When Employees PROTEST Vaccine FREEDOM of Choice?!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - You WANT to not have autonomy?

With the Chinese Communist Party Virus (CCP Virus) becoming less of a problem as time goes on (barring new mutated variants that will turn out to be more deadly), employers are feeling much more comfortable demanding that their workforce come back and work out of their physical office real estate. They say it's because they wish to foster collaboration and company culture and they want to see everyone's smiling faces again. If I were you, I'd doubt all of that and think it's a mixture of the real estate lobby and managers wanting to exert control over employees.

Gaming industry villain Activision Blizzard (which has a bad company culture and it's fine to protest THAT) is one such company that is calling for employees to return back to the office. However, unlike many other employers that say that if you don't get hit by the Poison Jab you will get fired, Activision Blizzard is saying that, due to the trajectory the CCP Virus has taken, you will not have to submit proof of vaccination to return to the office, which is what they want to see out of their employees in June. (Although Activision still would like employees to report if they are vaccinated or not just to have the data to make future decisions.)

As a response, the Activision Blizzard King ABK Workers Alliance, a faux union, organised a walkout (of a virtual variety, which... I guess just means an extended lunch break away from the computer?) demanding that Activision Blizzard MUST require all employees to be vaccinated. They also demand that employees should be able to choose, indefinitely, whether to work remotely or in the office. While I'm totally in favour of that latter demand, the insistence that your fellow employees must be vaccinated is stupid. You should celebrate that corporations are ceasing in their slimy takeover of your personal bodily autonomy, not demand that they bring that back! Anyway, Activision Blizzard clarified that they are putting the power into individual studios at the company to decide office and vaccine requirements and policies instead of implementing it entirely top-down. Blizzard, for example, is allegedly saying all of them still gotta have the vaccine mandate.

It's unclear if Activision Blizzard's June time-table is still a voluntary suggestion or what, but their statement suggests that employees can work with their manager for individual working arrangements. Whether or not that's actually true is also unclear, but at least it sounds softer than when other companies say that the only way you get to keep working from home is if you have a religious or medical exemption. (And they have you fill out a complicated privacy-violating form to demonstrate that.) It's also unclear if employers that went and previously fired people for not being vaccinated will go and rehire those people when they've ended their vaccine mandates...though those people probably no longer want to work for such a stupid company. Vaccine hesitancy is a valid position to have, especially with these very old vaccines that are so far separated and out-of-date from the current virus strain. You gotta wonder if these employers are doing it to give Big Pharma a favour.

I do see some people say that the protestors should suck it up and come back to the office and focus on making good videogames. That's a stupid bit of commentary from people who I don't think actually work and haven't learned any lessons for the past couple of years. You don't need to be in-person in an office with other people to do things, especially a lot of the tasks that come with videogame development. Online/virtual collaboration and communication is a thing. Documentation, programming, design, etc. is just as workable in your home as in the office, if not better because you don't have hours sucked away every day commuting or going out for lunch because there isn't a viable in-office cafeteria and you don't want to starve during the day. At home, you can just use the fridge. Really, as long as your equipment at home is strong enough (and your company should provide you the equipment) and you have a carved out space for it and a quality home Internet connection, I'd say working from home is more productive and far better. You likely also have much better toilet paper at home, among other office hygiene concerns. It's a good idea to empower middle managers to allow their employees to make the case that they are more productive to work from home and actually grant them that ability, rather than not being able to do that because of some top-level idiotic corporate declaration.


It sounds like Ludwig might have some personal experience or know people with personal experience, given the passion in his writing on this topic. Ludwig thinks demanding people get vaccinated is idiotic and anti-employee, but also forcing people to come to the office is idiotic and anti-employee. Maximise choice and comfort, treat your employees like the adults they are, and you'll get good results. KoopaTV itself is a remote-only work environment, too, if you're interested in looking into working for the site that brings you this article and many more!