According to a new report from the game’s developers: The Communications Workers of America (CWA) has confirmed that more than 500 employees at Blizzard Entertainment have formed a “wall-to-wall” union. World of Warcraft The Game Makers Guild (or “WoWGG-CWA” for short), made up of over 500 members including designers, engineers, artists, and QA testers that make up the entire team developing the legendary MMORPG, was formed along with a separate union of 60 QA testers at Blizzard’s Austin, Texas, campus, marking another major development in the ongoing unionization drive in the video game industry.
As the article states, WoWGG-CWA The “earthquake” made organizing possible Labor Neutrality Agreement The agreement, signed in 2022, yeahThe initial 250 workers at Bethesda Game Studios fall out and Starfield It is now owned by Microsoft following the landmark acquisition of Activision Blizzard earlier this week.
“WWe’re organized not just for ourselves, but for the colleagues we make games with – ensuring everyone is treated fairly in the workplace allows us to focus on our shared passion: making great video games. “Our union work predates the recent layoffs, but witnessing it firsthand has made it even more clear how important this work is to the entire gaming industry,” Blizzard senior software engineer Kevin Vig said in a statement about the unionization. “The union contract gives us a voice to minimize the impact of future layoffs and retain as much talent and knowledge as possible.” The negotiations will be dictated by our team’s input, but we have had multiple conversations over the past few months. We believe the main areas of negotiation will include termination protections, improved work-from-home policies, transparency around performance and promotions, and salary adjustments to reflect the expensive geography in which we live.”
The move comes not only as part of an industry-wide labor movement, but also in the wake of a devastating wave of job cuts currently underway across the gaming industry, with 10,000 already laid off across the industry in June alone, including around 2,000 at Activision Blizzard earlier this year.
Being generally poorly treated by employers is nothing new in the entertainment industry, as the content industry’s insatiable appetite for content proves. With any luck, these new video game unions will be as successful as the unions representing writers and actors were last year. Unionization efforts across the entertainment industry seek to protect the rank-and-file workers who make the games, movies, and TV shows we love from sudden mass layoffs, AI invasions, and more.
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