Over 160 Blizzard workers in Irvine join union as gaming-industry labor movement expands
More than 160 workers from the Blizzard Entertainment video game company voted to unionize.
Workers, who produce internal kinematics, animation, trailers, promotional videos and other narrative content, are only the last lot of the video game industry to unionize, with more than 6,000 organized in the United States and Canada.
A wave of organization in industry has been motivated in recent years by problems such as hours of crisis before the release of a product, insecurity of employment and harassment in the workplace.
The newly unionized workers are largely based in Irvine, where the Blizzard Entertainment campus is located. They will join the Communications workers from Local America 9510 in the County of Orange.
John Gearratana, a film producer working on Irvine campus, said that he and other workers had become frustrated by frequent dismissals and by the lack of remote work options. Activision Blizzard dismissed around 400 workers last year.
“The people who work in games, a great reason is that they like [games]They want to do and share them with people, “said Gearratana.” But these waves of layoffs are really difficult. It is difficult to make games, it is difficult to be creative, and it is difficult to want to do this job. »»
Blizzard Entertainment belonging to Microsoft Corp. recognized the union.
The company is a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, based in Santa Monica, the largest game company in the Americas.
Activision Blizzard was created in 2008 when Activision, based in Santa Monica, merged with the parent company of Blizzard Entertainment. He is known for his successful titles such as “Call of Duty”, “Warcraft”, “Overwatch”, “Hearthstone” and “Candy Crush”. It was acquired in 2023 by the Microsoft technology giant.
The workers’ vote did not have to go through a typical election supervised by the National Council for Labor Relations because Microsoft is committed to adopting a neutral position towards workers who sought to form a union.
Microsoft’s engagement, unusual among largely unshoted technology giants, has paved the way for thousands of additional workers to be easily unionized.
“We continue to support the right of our employees to choose the way they are represented at the workplace,” Microsoft spokesperson said last year in a press release.
Blizzard did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
According to the Union spokesperson, nearly 3,000 studios workers belonging to Microsoft have unionized with CWA. CWA is the largest media and telecommunications union in the United States
North America saw its first form of video union at the end of 2021 in Vodeo Games, an independent studio with a dozen employees.
In 2022, a small group of quality insurance workers at Raven Software, a game studio belonging to Activision Blizzard in Wisconsin, unionized – marking the arrival of the first labor union in a large American game company.
And last year, more than 500 game developers at Blizzard Entertainment working on successful video games “World of Warcraft” chose to form a union.
