They started with flyers. The group of World of Warcraft Activision Blizzard developers, determined to unionize, were testing the waters after Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition. Microsoft had agreed to abide by a labor neutrality agreement, effective 60 days after the deal closes, that would allow workers to explore collective bargaining without fear.
Even with that agreement on their side, developers were still nervous about showing interest in a union, says Paul Cox, a senior designer at Quest who served on the union’s organizing committee. “Before[the agreement]there were a lot of people who were like, ‘I’m interested, but I’m really worried about retaliation. I’m terrified that my name will appear anywhere,’” he adds.
That fear wasn’t unfounded. Prior to the Microsoft acquisition, when they were still under the direction of Activision Blizzard, unionized quality assurance workers at a studio in Albany, New York, accused management of engaging in anti-union tactics. According to one quality assurance tester WIRED spoke to at the time, management was hostile to their efforts, forcing employees into “spontaneous meetings” and “spreading misleading or false information about unions and the unionization process” in a company Slack channel.
On July 24, Microsoft voluntarily acknowledged the World of Warcraft The developers’ union, a unit comprised of more than 500 employees spanning multiple departments, is an achievement that has long been unthinkable in the video game industry. Because of its size and the breadth of departments involved, it is the first of its kind at Activision Blizzard. Those QA testers in Albany eventually managed to establish their union, but they were only a relatively small group.
He Warcraft developers follow the steps Bethesda Game Studios, another Microsoft-owned company, created the first union at a major studio across its entire team, with 241 members. Microsoft also voluntarily recognized that union.
“It was only after the Microsoft acquisition that things started to get worse,” Cox says of union initiatives. “The lack of fear of retaliation really helped.”
It’s also helpful to reach out to as many colleagues as possible. “When you’re trying to talk to people about a union, you can really only do it one at a time,” Cox says. To accomplish that, organizers set up tents on the company campus so people could stop by and get information. Being able to exist openly in a space that people might pass by on their way to lunch, for example, made that process quicker and easier.
Activision Blizzard did not respond to a request for comment before publication.
Cox says that because it was previously difficult to communicate with other employees due to the discreet nature of the organization, he and his colleagues didn’t realize there was a World of Warcraft The QA group was already trying to unionize. Once they met, they joined forces. As for deciding who should be in the union, Cox says it came down to a very simple idea.
“It was all about the game creators,” he says. “The people without whom the game couldn’t be made.” It doesn’t matter if it’s writers, sound designers or producers. “We fought hard to make sure everyone was in the same boat, as much as possible.”
