Blizzard employees has formed two new unions.
As reported by Game Developer, the unions are called the World of Warcraft Game Makers Guild, and called Texas Blizzard QA United-CWA, respectively.
The World of Warcraft Game Makers Guild, or WoWGG-CWA, is a groundbreaking achievement for the CWA. 500 Blizzard employees working on World of Warcraft have formed this wall-to-wall union, and that means they come from the many different divisions of the World of Warcraft team.
Texas Blizzard QA United-CWA is another union comprised of QA testers, with 60 members coming from Blizzard’s Texas location. However, WoWGG-CWA includes not only their testers, but also designers, engineers, artists, and more.
We had reported on Bethesda employees forming One BGS USA earlier this week. This is another wall-to-wall union with members from Bethesda’s different locations in Dallas, Rockville, and Austin. All these unions are able to assemble thanks to a neutrality agreement that Microsoft signed with the CWA.
Ostensibly, video game companies are outside the Communication Workers of America’s purview. However, they gained an interest in helping game developers in the fallout of the 2021 lawsuit by the state of California against Activision Blizzard.
The CWA saw a pathway to assisting Activision Blizzard’s workers, ironically, because of Microsoft’s interest in acquiring Activision Blizzard. They became supporters of Microsoft’s acquisition, in spite of criticism from some that they were aiding industry consolidation.
But now, we can see that the CWA was looking at the bigger picture. Microsoft now has to recognize and work with all these unions coming up from within their game companies, to follow the terms of their neutrality agreement. So far, Microsoft has proven good at their word on this account.
And it looks like these moves could not be coming at a better time. Microsoft was part of the ongoing wave of layoffs in the industry. The CWA cited that they were able to protect their union members who were part of those game companies owned by Microsoft, and that had layoffs.
Yesterday, we reported that Activision already sold content in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 that used generative AI. It’s claimed that Activision’s use of AI also led to layoffs of the company’s artists.
At this point, it seems that the other agreement Microsoft signed is now relevant. Microsoft expanded their labor neutrality agreement from the CWA, to the CWA’s parent organization, the AFL-CIO.
The AFL-CIO also has a deal with Microsoft to work together on public policy regarding AI. While some criticized the AFL-CIO for seemingly signaling approval of AI, this is where they can step in to protect jobs from Microsoft using AI.
Unfortunately, this does not guarantee that Microsoft’s video game developers are now definitely protected. The AFL-CIO, CWA, and their individual Microsoft unions are now tasked to do what they were formed to do. Their success or failure in this regard could help direct the very future of the industry as a while.
