There is a Shit Take going around right now and the Shit Person is trying to associate calling yourself a game devleoper as some sort of social status assessment or a mark of hubris. I’m going to dissect these things very fucking intensely right now.

I have been QA at a place that separated us and in fact has us operate as a service secondary to the company. We were not invited to the christmas parties. We were not on the same floor as the bulk of the development team (I think FX and A few producers were on our floor)

Even *then* that company still gave us shirts that said developer on them. The perception and understanding of test has been shifting drastically in the industry, and Ive been watching it happen with the help of some amazing high profile developers speaking to our credit.

But this man and his shit take, it comes from a dark fucking time and it stems from an abusive fucking mindset that can still be found in some corners of the industry.

There are still many that don’t see QA as “developers” because we don’t actually put lines to code. We don’t write lines to scripts. We don’t add lines to art. Many don’t think we add at all. But they’re wrong.

We make lines be lines.

We are the glue that holds everything together. We are the threads that hold the seams.

And that’s even before I get into the outdated notion that we don’t add anything. A lot of QA people *do*. I have shipped debug scripts for raids

And that’s not to count our feedback, our playtest notes, or even some of us *fixing the bugs we find*.

BUT EVEN WITHOUT THOSE THINGS WE ARE STILL FUCKING DEVELOPERS.

Just because we don’t additively do things doesn’t mean shit. AND IN SOME CASES OUR BUGS DO

I can tell you a handful of times I put in bugs on missing content or content that wasn’t working as intended that would have shipped missing otherwise. THAT’S ADDITIVE.

So to hearken back to the Ancient, Shitty times when QA wasn’t seen as developers, YOU BET YOUR FUCKING ASS WE GET UPSET WHEN YOU SAY THAT.

And it IS a social status thing you fucknugget because people tried to use it against us to deny us BASIC THINGS LIKE FOOD

Not a “ohoho look at me Im a gamedeveloper ”, it’s because we have the same blood, sweat, and tears in the product as anyone else. And for DECADES we had that division forced upon us by using the “developer” title as a fucking split between the classes

It was an EXCUSE to mistreat us. It was a REASON to handwave away fair treatment. It was a RATIONALIZATION to keep us paid like shit.

So to say that you care about those things but that we’re not developers? *No you fucking don’t you shitbasket*

When the pandemic is over, I’m going to hug all my coworkers at Bungie (consenting of course) because I have *always* felt like a Developer there, never an other.

The industry has some ground to cover still, but progress and change are slow. We’ll get there someday. Without you.