One of the world’s biggest and most established MMORPGs, World of Warcraft, has official unionization.
Over 500 eligible individuals who work on World of Warcraft cast official votes earlier today, and the results were certified. As a result, Blizzard Entertainment now has its first-ever “wall-to-wall” union, which includes every member of the game production team rather than just a single department like QA. The majority of the developers in the union are either part of a smaller team in Massachusetts or are situated in Irvine, California. They include designers, engineers, producers, artists, QA testers, and developers. The organization is a division of Communications Workers of America (CWA) and goes by the name World of Warcraft Game Makers Guild, or WoWGG.
Furthermore, a second group of Activision-Blizzard QA employees located in Austin, Texas, have established Texas Blizzard QA United, a distinct union affiliated with Communications Workers of America. Hearthstone, Diablo, and other games are the main projects of the about sixty developers that are engaged. Following the conclusion of their voting today, both unions were certified by an impartial arbiter and received official recognition under Microsoft’s labor neutrality agreement.
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Speaking with me before the election results, World of Warcraft senior producer Samuel Cooper said that the team started organizing towards the end of 2021 in response to a California lawsuit that had been settled, which had claimed that there had been instances of harassment, inequity, and bro culture within the firm. The firm released several statements in the weeks and months that followed, but in June 2021, Blizzard employees organized a walkout demanding further action. According to Cooper, the walkout served as the “spark” for further organizational initiatives and the creation of WoWGG.
What then caused the three-year delay? Putting together an event for 500 people takes time.
Cooper asserts, “You can not just send out an email blast and hope for a swarm of responses.” Individual discussions between persons who are acquainted and concerned about one another predominate. It is exponential as well as progressive. The more people are having those talks the more of them you have.
According to Cooper, his motivation for becoming active in organizing was to have “a more democratized approach of representing employees in the workplace.” Later, he persuaded Paul Cox, a senior quest designer, to participate. Cox tells me he wanted to make sure ground-level employees’ perspectives were included in Blizzard’s response to the California lawsuit because he was angry that they were not being heard.
This is not a ‘We hate those folks’ kind of thing or an attack on our World of Warcraft leadership, he clarified. “All we want is for our voices to be heard and for us to eventually not be simply a bunch of numbers on a spreadsheet.” None of the names mean anything to these individuals because you have to go up high enough and they have never met any of us.
The “spark” and early organizing work for WoWGG was done while the company was still separate from Microsoft, but it was acquired last year. Because of Microsoft’s previous commitment to labor neutrality, Blizzard employees were able to effectively organize in the open without interference from the firm.
Update 1:24 p.m. PT: Microsoft has provided Variety with the following statement regarding the unionization announcements made today: “We will continue to engage in good faith negotiations with the CWA as we work towards a collective bargaining agreement, and we continue to support our employees’ right to choose how they are represented in the workplace.”
