Only a few months after most of the Warcraft Rumble team was laid off as all future development was canceled, a majority of the remaining workers therein and the Hearthstone team have voted to organize—joining over 1,900 Blizzard workers now in a union under the Communications Workers of America.
As the CWA posted on their site, the new group represents “over 100 workers including software engineers, designers, artists, quality assurance testers, and producers.” They are the fifth group at Blizzard to do so, following the Diablo team’s vote less than two months ago. Microsoft has already recognized the union.
The CWA shared quotes from various developers supporting the motion in its announcement. Game designer on the Hearthstone team and organizing committee member Dominic Calkosz said, “My coworkers, as individuals, have voiced many concerns over the years, but it is easy for any company to ignore individuals.
“We chose to organize in pursuit of a collective voice and a force of solidarity that the industry cannot ignore.”
Another committee member and QA analyst Carol Blean stated in the same post, “I support our union because we deserve to be heard and respected … Real solutions, not free therapy or relocation suggestions, are needed to address being overworked, underpaid, and forced into unreasonable choices.”
These waves of unionization follow Microsoft’s historic, $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, which begat thousands of layoffs and the cancellation of a Blizzard survival game six years into development. Meanwhile, the tech giant achieved “record performance” financially in 2024, raking in $245 billion in revenue—something CWA called attention to earlier this year amid another round of layoffs.
Microsoft’s internal strife marks a much larger ill blighting the games industry, but union votes like the ones passing all over Blizzard mark that developers aren’t keen to take the exploitation sitting down.
