Blizzard Developers Form the 'World of Warcraft Gamemakers Guild' Union
Over 500 developers at Blizzard Entertainment have unionized to form the World of Warcraft Gamemakers Guild! Formed under the Communications Workers of America, the union is comprised of employees from the Art, Design, Engineering, Production, Sound, and Quality Assurance teams, simultaneously joined by another 60-person union of Quality Assurance testers for various Blizzard games called Texas Blizzard QA United-CWA.
As reported by Game Developer, the CWA called it a significant milestone in a journey that began with an employee walkout nearly three years ago, protesting the official handling of a discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuit brought against Activision Blizzard by the state of California, and to call for an improvement in working conditions for employees, especially those from marginalized groups.
CWA, via Game Developer
This victory underscores the growing momentum of worker organizing in the video game industry and will hopefully continue to inspire other video game workers to form unions and raise industry-wide expectations for pay, benefits and respect for workers’ rights.
Likewise, Senior Software Developer Kevin Vigue is quoted in saying that the team was inspired by similar unionization efforts at ZeniMax, Sega, and other studios, further strengthened by recent layoffs and studio closures throughout the industry.
Kevin Vigue, via Game Developer
By forming a cross-disciplinary union, we seek to enshrine that value and ensure that the developers of World of Warcraft, QA included, will always have a voice in our own workplace. We want to both improve our working conditions and protect the things we love about Blizzard, all so we can feel secure in pouring our talents and passion into making World of Warcraft.
We organized not just for ourselves, but also our fellow employees who make the game with us. By ensuring we're all treated fairly in our own workplace, we can focus ourselves on our shared passion: making great video games.
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