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Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft employees form another union under Microsoft
By Samuel Tolbert,
16 hours ago
What you need to know
Workers at Microsoft-owned Blizzard Entertainment who develop World of Warcraft's expansions and updates are unionizing.
The "wall to wall" union includes around 500 members of departments across art, engineering, production, sound, and more.
This comes just days after around 240 employees at Microsoft's Bethesda Game Studios in the U.S. also unionized.
Microsoft has remained neutral in employee unionization efforts, a direct contrast to the approach most other big companies have taken.
More and more workers are unionizing, but nowhere so much as the game studios under Microsoft.
Practically the entire development team for World of Warcraft at Blizzard Entertainment is forming a union, as shared on Wednesday. This "wall to wall" union covers around 500 employees across multiple departments.
"We're the World of Warcraft Gamemakers Guild: the first wall-to-wall union at Blizzard! We're thrilled to include WoW's QA, Art, Sound, Design, Engineering and Production voices for a democratized workplace," the team wrote on X (formerly Twitter ). "At this crucial moment in games, we stand together as one. For Azeroth!"
As part of Microsoft's bid to acquire the company, it agreed to remain neutral in any employee unionization efforts, allowing union votes to proceed more easily than at most other companies.
Microsoft-owned studios are leading the charge for unionization in games
Employees at all four Bethesda Game Studios offices have also unionized. (Image credit: Xbox Game Studios) Top Xbox recommendations
This comes just days after around 240 employees at Bethesda Game Studios' three U.S-based offices also unionized, which came shortly after the initial unionization of Bethesda Game Studios' Montreal office . Like with the World of Warcraft Gamemakers Guild, these unions are "wall to wall," meaning they encompass multiple departments instead of just being limited to quality assurance workers.
These teams are joining the already-considerable unions under Microsoft that have been established over the last year, including the quality assurance teams at Activision Central Quality Assurance , Raven Software, Blizzard Albany, and ZeniMax Media .
I am personally quite thrilled to see this continue, and I am happy Microsoft has kept to its word about remaining neutral. With one big union after another coming, it's hard to see this stopping anytime soon, and I expect we'll be learning of further unions across other studios at Xbox in the near future.
This will hopefully serve as an example for workers outside of Microsoft, with employees at other companies filing for protection and banding together to ensure fair raises, opportunity, and more.
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