Over 500 World of Warcraft developers have unionized

The Communications Workers of America has announced that over 500 workers of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft development team have voted to unionize. Notably, the union is wall-to-wall, rather than just covering one of the departments.

Calling themselves the World of Warcraft Game Makers Guild, the union includes production, artists, engineers, designers, and QA. This was partially enabled by a labor neutrality agreement that Microsoft signed with the CWA before their acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The agreement also enabled ZeniMax’s QA to unionize last year, while Bethesda followed suit with a wall-to-wall union just a few days ago.

The announcement is part of an ongoing push to organize for better working conditions in the face of massive layoffs that have been shaking the industry. While the industry’s problems with long working hours during “crunch” times have been talked about since 2004’s “EA Spouse” blog caught attention, unionization has become crucial in the face of problems like the encroachment of generative AI on jobs. Many people get into the industry out of passion, but they should be treated as fairly as any other worker. Here’s hoping this trend continues.

Update: This article was updated on the 13th of August, 2024, to remove a statement regarding Bobby Kotick. The original version of this article referred to a Wall Street Journal report regarding allegations against Bobby Kotick. The allegations originate from a now-dismissed complaint filed by the California Civil Rights Department (‘CRD’) in 2021. Investigations have found that Kotick did not turn a blind eye toward, ignored, condoned, or tolerated harassment, retaliation, or discrimination or acted improperly with regard to the handling of any instances of workplace misconduct. Additionally, in May 2023, Activision publicly released its inaugural annual Transparency Report, which further confirmed that there has never been widespread or systemic harassment at Activision.