On Friday, May 9th, 2025, the Communication Workers of America announced the creation of the Overwatch Gamemakers Guild-CWA, a union representing nearly 200 employees, and offering “wall-to-wall” representation for developers working under Blizzard Entertainment on the Overwatch competitive shooter. This isn’t the first union formed at Blizzard either, as the World of Warcraft development team similarly formed one in 2024. Wall-to-Wall unions represent the entire workforce of a company, rather than a more targeted discipline-based union, such as the QA union formed at Raven Software back in 2022.
Overwatch Gamemakers Guild organizers Frank Le Cocq, Foster Elmendorf, and Jess Castillo have stated in their announcement of the union’s formation that the decision to unionize was spurred on by the thousands of layoffs that have plagued the industry over the last few years. Microsoft, which finished acquiring Activision Blizzard in 2023, terminated over 1,900 positions across its company, with many of these layoffs being at the newly acquired studios.
Le Cocque stated:
The massive layoffs in the video game industry—and at my own studio—became one of the first reasons I started to learn about how to organize to create a healthier workplace for everyone.
Unization under the banner of Microsoft and Xbox Game Studio has been made easier, thanks in part to the company’s 2022 “labor neutrality” agreement with the CWA. This unique accord allows employees to unionize without pushback or fear of retaliation from Microsoft. Despite this, Studios have accused Microsoft of not bringing that same attitude to the contract bargaining table. Zenimax quality assurance workers, who are organized under the CWA, voted to authorize a strike, accusing Microsoft of refusing to make concessions concerning worker pay, outsourcing, and return-to-office policies.
The Raven Software QA workers’ union has additionally levied accusations against Microsoft, accusing the company of what they referred to as “bad faith bargaining” over their union contract. In both of these instances, Microsoft has publicly defended its positions, stating their proposals were “fair”.
Castillo additionally stated:
Unionizing is about having a seat at the table so that we can work with leadership to build better, more sustainable working conditions. Ultimately, when we’re supported and thriving, we can deliver the best possible experiences to our players, which is what brought all of us here in the first place.
Following the last few turbulent years, including over 14,000 layoffs across the industry last year alone, there has been a much bigger push for unionization. The expectation is that even more unions will emerge in the future.
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