Another Microsoft-Owned Studio Team has Formed A Union with Communications Workers of America

Blizzard’s Story and Franchise Development team is the studio’s in-house cinematics, animations, and narrative team. They produce promotional materials, in-game cutscenes, and other narrative content for Blizzard’s franchises like Diablo, Warcraft, and Overwatch. According to a statement from CWA, the team is now the first of its kind to form a union in the North American game industry, “joining nearly 3,000 workers at Microsoft-owned studios who have organized with CWA to build better standards across the video game industry after Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard in 2023.” 

In that same statement, principal editor and member of the organizing committee Bucky Fisky said, “After more than a decade working at Blizzard, I’ve seen all the highs and lows. For years, Blizzard has been a place where people could build their careers and stay for decades, but that stability’s been fading.” He goes on to say that “with a union, we’re able to preserve what makes this place special, secure real transparency in how decisions are made, and make sure policies are applied fairly to everyone.” CWA Local 9510 President Jason Justice also shared “these workers are setting the standard for animation, cinematics, and storytelling across the video game industry, creating the breathtaking cutscenes, trailers, and other narrative content that fans have come to love across all Blizzard franchises.”

Unionization has been gaining significant momentum in the video game space, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who has watched or experienced the nauseating amount of layoffs occurring for several years now. In fact, there’s been enough layoffs to earn a Wikipedia page. The workers of the Story and Franchise Development team are not the first to unionize under Microsoft (which has been a big contributor to layoffs itself), as Blizzard’s Overwatch 2 and World of Warcraft teams already had unions. Fallout developer Zenimax also has a union that just recently ratified a historic contract. 

Even more recently, QA workers at Call of Duty developer Raven Software, a studio that also falls under Microsoft’s ownership, ratified their contract after a three-year battle. On top of this, unions were a hot topic during the most recent Game Developer Conference in March, where the first industry-wide union, the United Videogame Workers-CWA Local 9433, was launched. If this momentum continues, players can expect to enjoy more games from unionized and, hopefully, better protected workers in the coming future.