World of Warcraft’s Entire Development Team Has Officially Unionized

ign.com:

The developers behind World of Warcraft, one of the world’s biggest and longest-running MMORPGs, have officially unionized.

Earlier today, an official vote of over 500 eligible employees working on World of Warcraft was tallied and certified. With this, Blizzard Entertainment has its first ever “wall-to-wall” union, encompassing the entirety of a game development team instead of just one division, like QA. The union includes designers, engineers, producers, artists, QA testers, and other developers, most of whom are based in either Irvine, CA, or are part of a smaller team in Massachusetts. The group is called World of Warcraft Game Makers Guild, or WoWGG, and is a part of Communications Workers of America (CWA).

Additionally, a second group of Activision-Blizzard QA workers based in Austin, Texas have formed a separate union with Communications Workers of America, called Texas Blizzard QA United. The roughly 60 developers involved primarily work on Diablo, Hearthstone, and other games. Both unions concluded their votes today and have been officially recognized under Microsoft’s labor neutrality agreement and certified by an independent arbitrator.

Speaking ahead of the election’s conclusion, World of Warcraft senior producer Samuel Cooper told me that organizing work on the WoW team began in earnest near the end of 2021 after a (since-settled) California lawsuit alleging instances of harassment, inequality, and bro culture at the company. In the weeks and months that followed, the company put out a series of statements, but in June 2021 Blizzard employees staged a walk-out demanding further action. Cooper tells me the walkout was the “spark” that eventually led to further organizing efforts and, now, WoWGG.

So why did it take three years? Organizing takes time, and 500 people is a lot.

“You can't just fire off an email blast and then have a bunch of people swarm in,” Cooper says. “It's mostly individual conversations between people who know and care about each other. It