More Studios Unionizing!

The video game industry’s union push isn’t dead yet. In fact, it seems to be growing. Slowly but surely, more shops across more studios and publishers are organizing for better working conditions. CD Projekt Red and Avalanche Studios both formed unions in Poland and Sweden respectively. Part-time Starfield testers were let into the ZeniMax union at Microsoft. Indie studio Tender Claws was the first group to actually successfully negotiate its first contract, a binding document that codifies things like pay, benefits, and career advancement. And a group of roughly 200 marketing staff, community managers, localizers, and testers at Sega of America formed the industry’s first cross-disciplinary union.

Every labor movement comes with setbacks. Unionized testers at contracting agency Keywords Studios were laid off after BioWare dropped their contract. They recently picketed at the Dragon Age and Mass Effect studio for their old positions back, accusing Keywords of union-busting. And Sega workers filed an unfair labor charge against the Sonic and Persona publisher for threatening to offshore 100 of their jobs over unionizing

But the silver lining to Microsoft’s now-completed acquisition of Activision Blizzard is that employees there will all have a much easier time unionizing due to the tech giant’s labor neutrality agreement. Whether that means the Call of Duty publisher’s existing QA union at Raven Software will finally get the contract they’ve been negotiating for over a year remains to be seen. – Ethan Gach, senior reporter