World of Warcraft‘s development team at Blizzard Entertainment has officially unionized.
According to Bloomberg, The Communications Workers of America (CWA) has confirmed that over 500 employees, including designers, engineers, producers, artists, quality assurance testers, and more, have formed the “first wall-to-wall union at Activision Blizzard” called the World of Warcraft Game Makers Guild (WWGMG).
In addition to this, 60 Blizzard QA testers have also joined the CWA under a new unit in Austin, Texas called the Texas Blizzard QA United who primarily work on Diablo and Hearthstone.
“We continue to support our employees’ right to choose how they are represented in the workplace, and we will engage in good faith negotiations with the CWA as we work towards a collective bargaining agreement,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement.
The news follows the announcement of 600 person Activision QA union that was formed earlier this year.
We’re the World of Warcraft Gamemakers Guild: the first wall-to-wall union at Blizzard! We’re thrilled to include WoW’s QA, Art, Sound, Design, Engineering and Production voices for a democratized workplace. At this crucial moment in games, we stand together as one. For Azeroth! pic.twitter.com/ieewW5KFuIJuly 24, 2024
Speaking to IGN, World of Warcraft senior producer Samuel Cooper said that the effort to unionize started in 2021, before Microsoft’s acquisition, following the California lawsuit that alleged harassment and inequality at the studio.
“This isn’t an attack against our World of Warcraft leadership or something where we’re like, ‘We hate those guys’,” Cooper said. “We just want to make sure that our voices are being heard and that at some point we don’t end up as numbers on a spreadsheet. Because you go up high enough and these people have never met any of us, none of the names mean anything to them.”
Cooper continued, saying, “We had a lot of folks who, rightly or wrongly, felt fearful before. There are legal protections for organizing, but it can still be scary to have that change… We had CWA folks on campus for weeks on end, right in the middle, next to the big bronze orc. I think that really made people feel like it’s not scary. I know they’re not allowed to retaliate, but now I have confidence that they’re not going to retaliate.”
The CWA said (via GameDeveloper) that WWGMG represents a “significant milestone” for employees at Blizzard Entertainment.
“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,” it added.
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