The Communications Workers of America (CWA) has confirmed that over 500 employees at Blizzard Entertainment have formed a wall-to-wall union at the Microsoft-owned studio.
The new unit is called World of Warcraft Game Makers Guild (WoWGG-CWA) and comprises the entire World of Warcraft development team, including designers, engineers, artists, quality assurance testers, and more. Another 60-person unit of Blizzard QA testers called Texas Blizzard QA United-CWA has formed simultaneously in Austin, Texas.
Staff were able to organize without interference thanks to a seismic Labor Neutrality Agreement that was struck in 2022. That agreement was subsequently extended to other Microsoft employees within ZeniMax, paving the way for almost 250 workers at Bethesda Game Studios to unionize earlier this week.
The CWA said Blizzard’s latest union represents a “significant milestone” in a journey that began when employees walked out and rallied at Blizzard Entertainment HQ in California in 2021 to protest Activision Blizzard’s response to a California DFEH sexual harassment lawsuit.
“This victory underscores the growing momentum of worker organizing in the video game industry and will hopefully continue to inspire other video game workers to form unions and raise industry-wide expectations for pay, benefits and respect for workers’ rights,” added the CWA.
Unionized Blizzard devs want to ensure “every voice matters”
Speaking to Game Developer about their decision to unionize, Blizzard senior software engineer Kevin Vigue said the unit hopes to make good on the company mantra “every voice matters.”
“By forming a cross-disciplinary union, we seek to enshrine that value and ensure that the developers of World of Warcraft, QA included, will always have a voice in our own workplace,” they said.
“We want to both improve our working conditions and protect the things we love about Blizzard, all so we can feel secure in pouring our talents and passion into making World of Warcraft.”
Vigue explained the World of Warcraft team was inspired by the unionization efforts at ZeniMax, Sega, and other studios that have made a collective push for better working conditions. Their resolve, he added, was only strengthened by the wave of the mass layoffs and studio closures that have carved through the game industry.
“We organized not just for ourselves, but also our fellow employees who make the game with us. By ensuring we’re all treated fairly in our own workplace, we can focus ourselves on our shared passion: making great video games,” they continued.
“Our union effort predates the recent layoffs, but witnessing them firsthand only served to solidify how important this effort is for the entire gaming industry. With our union contract, we can have a voice to minimize the impact of future layoffs and ensure we retain talent and knowledge whenever possible.”
WoWGG-CWA will now elect a representative bargaining committee from the World of Warcraft team and survey its members to understand which issues need prioritizing. “While the team’s voice will determine what we bargain for, we’ve also had numerous conversations with each other in the past few months,” added Vigue. “We suspect our top bargaining items will include layoff protections, improved work from home policies, transparency around performance and promotions, and pay adjustments to align with the expensive areas we live.”
Game industry unions building momentum in the United States
Workers have formed a number of unions within Activision Blizzard and Microsoft in recent years.
Prior to the Call of Duty and World of Warcraft maker being acquired by Microsoft, QA staff at Raven Software and Blizzard Albany succeeded in their attempts to organize–despite reports of interference. More than 300 QA workers at Bethesda also voted to unionize in January 2023, becoming the first union to form within Microsoft.
Those efforts have continued post-merger. In March 2024, roughly 600 QA workers at Activision Blizzard formed the largest certified union in U.S. video game history when they established AQAU-CWA. Bethesda Game Studios Montreal employees are also attempting to unionize and filed for certification with the Quebec Labor Board in June 2024. Now, almost 750 employees have unionized across Blizzard Entertainment and Bethesda in the past two days.
To learn more about the surge in unionization across the game industry, we sat down with union workers and insiders to discuss the power of collective action during a tumultuous period for studios and developers. Read the full story here.