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Blizzard Developers Form the 'World of Warcraft Gamemakers Guild' Union
Blizzard
Pubblicato
24/07/2024 alle 15:36
da
Archimtiros
Over 500 developers at Blizzard Entertainment have unionized to form the
World of Warcraft Gamemakers Guild
! Formed under the Communications Workers of America, the union is comprised of employees from the Art, Design, Engineering, Production, Sound, and Quality Assurance teams, simultaneously joined by another 60-person union of Quality Assurance testers for various Blizzard games called Texas Blizzard QA United-CWA.
As
reported by Game Developer
, the CWA called it a significant milestone in a journey that began with an
employee walkout
nearly three years ago, protesting the official handling of a discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuit brought against Activision Blizzard by the state of California, and to call for an improvement in working conditions for employees, especially those from marginalized groups.
CWA, via Game Developer
This victory underscores the growing momentum of worker organizing in the video game industry and will hopefully continue to inspire other video game workers to form unions and raise industry-wide expectations for pay, benefits and respect for workers’ rights.
Likewise, Senior Software Developer Kevin Vigue is quoted in saying that the team was inspired by similar unionization efforts at ZeniMax, Sega, and other studios, further strengthened by recent layoffs and studio closures throughout the industry.
Kevin Vigue, via Game Developer
By forming a cross-disciplinary union, we seek to enshrine that value and ensure that the developers of World of Warcraft, QA included, will always have a voice in our own workplace. We want to both improve our working conditions and protect the things we love about Blizzard, all so we can feel secure in pouring our talents and passion into making World of Warcraft.
We organized not just for ourselves, but also our fellow employees who make the game with us. By ensuring we're all treated fairly in our own workplace, we can focus ourselves on our shared passion: making great video games.
Our union effort predates the recent layoffs, but witnessing them firsthand only served to solidify how important this effort is for the entire gaming industry. With our union contract, we can have a voice to minimize the impact of future layoffs and ensure we retain talent and knowledge whenever possible.
While the team's voice will determine what we bargain for, we've also had numerous conversations with each other in the past few months. We suspect our top bargaining items will include layoff protections, improved work from home policies, transparency around performance and promotions, and pay adjustments to align with the expensive areas we live.
The World of Warcraft GameMakers Guild is now the second largest union at Microsoft, behind
Activision's 600-member QA union
. Both were also aided by Microsoft's
labor neutrality agreement with the CWA
- a set of five provisions agreed upon prior to the
$68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard
last October.
First, Microsoft will take a neutral approach when employees covered by the agreement express interest in joining a union.
Second, covered employees will be able to easily exercise their right to communicate with other employees and union representatives about union membership in a way that encourages information sharing and avoids business disruptions.
Third, employees will have access to an innovative technology-supported and streamlined process for choosing whether to join a union.
Fourth, employees can maintain confidentiality and privacy of that choice if they wish.
Fifth, if a disagreement arises between the CWA and Microsoft under the agreement, the two organizations will work together promptly to reach an agreement and will turn to an expedited arbitration process if they cannot. The agreement does not impact the Activision workforce before the close of the transaction.
Described as a wall-to-wall union encompassing multiple departments and disciplines, it doesn't actually cover
every
developer on World of Warcraft, but is said to have received massive support throughout its various departments. While most unions are broken up by departments which may have different needs and goals, the larger membership also gives the union more bargaining power, and this large-scale movement represents a significant and growing trend of within the video games industry, as embittered employees fight back against the endless churn of an industry driven by seemingly equal amounts of crunch, burnout, and passion.
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