Austin Workers Unionize at Game Studio Blizzard

A win for unions and gaming industry workers in Texas: Quality assurance workers at Blizzard Entertainment – the studio behind the Diablo and Hearthstone franchises – have successfully unionized.

In a press release issued late Wednesday, it was announced that 60 QA workers at the Austin office of the Microsoft-owned studio have joined the Communications Workers of America, and the studio has officially recognized their membership.

“We're celebrating our victory,” said Jonathan Boakes, a test analyst on Diablo Immortal and one of the organizers behind this initiative.

Quality assurance is a key component of game development, and it's a lot more than just playtesting. QA workers are tasked with finding bugs and providing input on gameplay, but are also involved in testing development, localization for different markets, and risk assessment. They're often the difference-makers between a game simply working and being a success, and Blizzard has often highlighted how the QA staff provide what they call the Blizzard Polish. “[QA] takes into account things the developers may not be thinking about," Boakes explained, but in many firms it is “at the bottom of the list.”

While that 60 may not sound like a lot, this is just the latest in a wave of unionization by designers, developers, engineers, and other roles within the gaming industry. At the same time as the Austin deal was happening, more than 500 staffers on the global World of Warcraft team were recognized by Microsoft, following in the footsteps of 240 workers at another Microsoft subsidiary, Bethesda Game Studios (Fallout, The Elder Scrolls), earlier this month. So even though it's only a small number of new members in Austin, "it’s been really cool to see the celebration across other companies and other unions," said Boakes.

Workers’ rights in the gaming industry have been a notorious problem going back decades, with many game designers on short-term contracts and crunch (when staff and freelancers are worked to death to hit deadlines) a seemingly endemic issue. Within the last six months, there have also been mass layoffs at EA, Embracer, and Microsoft, all seemingly more driven by investors and stock prices than by any other factor.

The industry has also seen widespread allegations of union busting. That includes at Activision Blizzard, which in 2022 was found by the National Labor Relations Board to have withheld raises from QA workers in their Madison, Wis., offices due to their union organizing efforts.

Management interference aside, unionizing efforts within the gaming industry have historically been slow (a problem across much of tech), which is why the CWA launched the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE-CWA). To date, they have worked with more than 4,000 worker-organizers at firms from indie startups to AAA publishers, including the Blizzard QA staff.

However, when Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard in 2022, the corporation signed a labor neutrality agreement with the CWA, setting out a path for union organizing and recognition, under which Microsoft agreed to take a neutral position while workers organized – basically, no union busting and no punishment for organizers. At the time, CWA President Chris Shelton said that “Microsoft’s binding commitments will give employees a seat at the table,” while Microsoft President and Vice Chair Brad Smith called it “an avenue to innovate and grow together.”

Boakes credited that agreement with making this unionization effort possible. There had been earlier attempts during their three years with the company, but those efforts had gone nowhere. “Having the opportunity to just organize freely without fear of retaliation was really, really helpful,” they said.

Working under the terms of that neutrality agreement, the organizers at Blizzard Austin had the majority of the QA workers either sign union cards or show their support for unionization through an online portal (one of the innovations set out under that 2022 agreement). Those numbers were confirmed by a neutral arbitrator, and Blizzard has now officially accepted the results, thereby recognizing the CWA for future negotiations.

Celebrating the deal, CWA District 6 Vice President Derrick Osobase said his members were “honored to welcome the quality assurance workers of Blizzard Entertainment to CWA, and we look forward to signing a collective bargaining agreement with Microsoft that improves their conditions of work and reflects the value of their contributions to Blizzard’s products.”

However, as Boakes noted, now comes the real hard work. The next step is to survey members to discuss what they want to discuss in contract negotiations. “Pay is always going to be a big aspect,” they said but “right now, we're seeing a lot of layoffs happening [and] that's one issue that our union is focusing on.”

That’s where Boakes hopes employers realize that unions can be true partners. “The loss of talent can really hurt the art of making games,” they said, and no one should want that. “We want to make good games. We work for Blizzard because we love working at Blizzard.”