The workforce of almost 200 Activision Blizzard builders behind the Overwatch franchise has unionized. Fashioned beneath the Communications Employees of America (CWA), the Overwatch Gamemakers Guild is the most recent wall-to-wall Blizzard union to be acknowledged by mother or father firm Microsoft for the reason that World of Warcraft growth workforce introduced its personal union final July.
The CWA introduced on Friday that “an amazing majority of staff have both signed a union authorization card or indicated that they wished union illustration.” The Overwatch union unit consists of recreation builders throughout manufacturing, engineering, design, artwork, sound, and high quality assurance, pushing for job safety, wage, and layoff safety enhancements.
“After an extended historical past of layoffs, crunch, and subpar working circumstances within the international online game trade, my coworkers and I are thrilled to be becoming a member of the broader union effort to arrange our trade for the higher, which has been lengthy overdue,” organizing committee member Foster Elmendorf mentioned within the CWA’s assertion.
The CWA says that over 2,600 staff at Microsoft-owned gaming studios have now joined its ranks, together with a union fashioned by 600 high quality assurance staff employed at Activision in March 2024. These strings of unionization efforts comply with a labor neutrality settlement that was signed between the CWA and Microsoft in 2022 that made it simpler for staffers at subsidiaries like Activision Blizzard to arrange.
