This week has been a significant one for union organisers at Activision Blizzard. A group of over 100 developers working on Hearthstone and Warcraft Rumble have voted “strongly in favor of wall-to-wall union representation” in partnership with the Communications Workers of America (CWA). This follows a previous vote by around 400 Blizzard platform and technology workers to unionise with the CWA as well.
The newly formed union includes a variety of roles such as quality assurance testers, artists, designers, software engineers, and producers. The decision to unionise was influenced by the World of Warcraft developers who voted to unionise last July. Organising committee member and game designer Dominic Calkosz stated, “My coworkers have expressed many concerns individually over the years, but it’s easy for a company to ignore individuals. We chose to come together in pursuit of a collective voice and a sense of solidarity that the industry cannot ignore.”
The timing of the union formation is crucial given the current climate in the game development industry. With major game cancellations, widespread layoffs at companies like Microsoft, and policy changes that negatively impact developers, the need for solidarity and support is more evident than ever. Solidarity to all the newly unionised workers in the industry.
In addition to internal tensions at Microsoft, there is also controversy surrounding the company’s offering of Azure cloud services to the Israeli Ministry of Defense during the current conflict in Gaza. While contracts related to these services have been cancelled, Xbox remains a target of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement. To explore how the game industry intersects with this ongoing issue, check out this insightful piece where Edwin discusses the perspectives of game developers and tech workers.
