A group of Blizzard employees has organized the first wall-to-wall union at the studio. It includes the entire World of Warcraft development team.
World of Warcraft
The new union, called World of Warcraft Game Makers Guild, represents over 500 employees of all disciplines, including designers, QA testers, producers, software engineers, artists, and more. It was formed with the assistance of Communications Workers of America (CMA), which previously helped other devs at Microsoft’s gaming division unionize.
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/ieewW5KFuI
— WoW Gamemaker’s Guild (@WoWGG_CWA) July 24, 2024
As World of Warcraft senior producer Samuel Cooper told IGN, the team started working on unionization in 2021 after California filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard (eventually settled for $18 million), accusing the company of harassment and misconduct. This resulted in walkouts from Blizzard employees, which sparked the unionization efforts.
After Activision Blizzard merged into Microsoft in October 2023, it became easier for the team to continue the organizational work, thanks to the company’s labor neutrality agreement with the CWA.
“This isn’t an attack against our World of Warcraft leadership or something where we’re like, ‘We hate those guys,’” Cooper explained. “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.”
Microsoft welcomed the new union, saying it will work with the CWA towards a collective bargaing agreement. “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,” Microsoft spokesperson Delaney Simmon told The Verge.
According to the CWA, over 1,750 video game workers at Microsoft now have a union representation with the organization. The World of Warcraft Game Makers Guild is the second-largest union at the company, behind Activision’s 600-member QA union. In 2022, over 300 ZeniMax QA testers also unionized.