Blizzard Workers Win Historic Union Contract
A group of 1,900 employees at Blizzard Entertainment, represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA), has ratified a union contract with Microsoft that could set a new standard for game developers. The agreement guarantees wage increases, workplace flexibility, AI guardrails, job-recall rights for laid-off workers, and formal dispute resolution systems. It comes amid Microsoft's ongoing layoffs across Xbox Game Studios and a broader push for unionization in the gaming industry.
It’s a new day at Blizzard, where greater power for workers is translating into more innovative games for players.
- ffsm8
It's interesting to observe that there seemingly is a very high relationship with groups of people producing garbage and seeking extra protection through other means to "level the playing field" aka force everyone to be on their level.
- WatchDog
Are there any unionized game studios that continue to produce highly acclaimed games?
Bethesda used to make great games, but the last great game they made was Skyrim in 2011, they unionized in 2022, and just recently they had some big layoffs.
CD Projekt made the highly acclaimed Witcher 3 in 2015, Cyberpunk disappointed on it's release in 2020, although it's reviews are mixed. CD Projekt unionized in 2023.
Blizzard have been in decline for a long time, they mostly focus on maintaining the cash cows games WoW and hearthstone. Although Diablo has is mostly well regarded(ignoring immortal). They haven't made any new ambitious game for a while. Their last attempt at making something ambitious was Titan, a cancelled MMO that they worked on for 6 years and supposedly spent $80 million on, cancelled in 2013.
The decline seems to begin well before the unionization, so I wouldn't say it's causal, it's more of a symptom of the company no longer being a place that can foster high functioning teams, where people feel like they are valued and working on something important.
- bentt
This is probably the beginning of the end for Blizzard as an identifiable company. MSFT will just absorb WoW, Overwatch, and Diablo and spin up new internal studios to support them rather than have their feet held to the fire by a union. They did it with Halo. Of course, it produced garbage, but that never stopped Microsoft.
- strictnein
Might be a better article on this: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/20...
The Gamespot one is really poorly written. Not sure if it's AI bad or human bad. An example:
> Laid-off union members will also get an additional four weeks of pay–regardless of how long they worked at the company–hybrid schedules that allow them to work from home, and formal systems to settle disputes within the workplace.
Laid off workers get to utilize hybrid schedules?
- aliasxneo
Use to be a huge Blizzard fan back in the day. Can't get behind basically anything they are doing today. Time will tell if something like this just reinforces whatever is broken or results in real improvement. I'm cynical on the matter.