‘World of Warcraft’ Development Team Unionizes In Notable Step for Game Worker Organizing Efforts

In a major step forward for the still-nascent video game unionizing movement, hundreds of development team members at massively multiplayer online role-playing game giant World of Warcraft have unionized.

A majority of workers voted to join a union aligned with the Communications Workers of America in a contest that took place between June 24 and July 23, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. The CWA now reps 1,750-plus game workers at Microsoft.

“We are honored to welcome the workers of the World of Warcraft development team to CWA. We look forward to signing a collective bargaining agreement with Microsoft that improves conditions for workers,” said CWA Local 9510 president Peter O’Brien. “The employees at World of Warcraft are gaining the backing of thousands of members across the region who will stand in solidarity with them as they bargain their first contract.”

Per the terms of a labor neutrality agreement that CWA struck in 2022 with Microsoft, which completed its acquisition of video game holding company Activision Blizzard the following year, the group was automatically eligible to conduct an internal vote with results certified by a third-party arbitrator. The new bargaining unit at the Blizzard Entertainment-owned game is composed of more than 500 artists, designers, engineers, producers, quality assurance testers and additional game developers.

“The decision by workers on World of Warcraft to form a union marks a key inflection point in the broader movement for video game worker organizing industry-wide. This victory, built on years of foundation work since the launch of the Game Workers Unite movement at GDC, reflects a deeply rooted commitment to change,” stated Tom Smith, senior director of organizing at CWA.

These results are significant in part due to the prominence and popularity of World of Warcraft, which is commonly considered one of the most successful MMORPGs of all time. “The World of Warcraft team winning their union is the culmination of a long dream that myself and so many others have held,” says CWA senior campaign lead Emma Kinema, who previously worked in gaming herself. “We’re not just getting smaller shops organized — not just indie studios, not just tabletop — but actually the heart of the industry, the heart of AAA game development, having a strong, powerful union that can represent the voices of the workers there. That’s exactly what this campaign represents.”

The union also signifies the CWA’s first “wall-to-wall” union at Activision Blizzard, meaning that it covers all non-managerial workers on the World of Warcraft development team. The CWA has previously unionized only quality assurance (QA) workers at Activision Blizzard through subsidiaries like Raven Software and Blizzard Albany, as well as Activision Publishing QA. A previous wall-to-wall union attempt at the company faltered in 2023, with CWA withdrawing its petition for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board at the developer Proletariat after worker support fell off.

The World of Warcraft effort began about two years ago, says Kinema, after the Communications Workers of America started actively organizing Activision Blizzard workers a year prior. During that time, workplace activism was surging as employees decried Activision Blizzard’s response to a lawsuit from the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing alleging widespread sexual harassment and discrimination at the company.

The campaign at World of Warcraft started off “a little slow,” according to narrative designer and organizer Josiah Clark. But the neutrality agreement got the ball rolling on cultivating more employee interest, permitting union organizers to have a visible presence on the company’s Irvine campus and soothing some nerves about potential company backlash. “A lot of employees at first were a little bit apprehensive, but I think once you talk with people and you started to see people not suffering because of our open support of our union, people started to warm up to the idea,” adds Clark.

Another boost to the union came around the time when Microsoft conducted 1,900 layoffs at Activision Blizzard and Xbox in January. Workers sought more security amid those cuts and a larger round of turbulence in the industry, adds Clark, with major layoffs at gaming companies including Riot Games, Sony Interactive Entertainment and Electronic Arts.

The World of Warcraft organizers haven’t yet laid out a platform of priorities — the group intends to hold elections for a bargaining committee and to survey bargaining unit members to determine which key issues are most popular. But, anecdotally, organizers say at least some members seem to be interested in raising pay as well as instituting layoff protections, the flexibility to work from home and more transparency measures in the company’s review and career development processes.

“The most important thing to us is that the workers in this company, the people who make our games and have built this company’s awesome reputation, are able to have a voice in the decisions in the company and what it’s like to work here,” says senior producer and organizer Sam Cooper.

Organizers are hoping that their success at World of Warcraft will pump adrenaline into other organizing pushes across the largely non-union video game industry. Early unionization attempts in the space motivated this group of organizers, notes Cooper. “If you were to track our momentum, every time another union formed and announced, we got a big boost,” he says. “We’re hoping to have that same impact for other folks.”

Adds his colleague Clark, “I think this is one of those big [moments] like, hey, boom, you see this? This is a full dev team that joined.” Kinema continues, “I think when people look back on the history of the game union movement, they will look at this as a massive turning point.”