Over 160 Blizzard employees in Irvine be part of union as gaming-industry labor motion expands

More than 160 employees at online game firm Blizzard Entertainment have voted to unionize.

The employees, who produce in-house cinematics, animation, trailers, promotional movies and different narrative content material, are simply the newest batch within the online game {industry} to unionize, with greater than 6,000 having organized throughout the U.S. and Canada.

A wave of organizing within the {industry} has been pushed in recent times by such points as crunch-time hours earlier than a product releases, job insecurity and office harassment.

The newly unionized employees are largely based mostly in Irvine, the place Blizzard Entertainment’s campus is positioned. They will be part of Communications Workers of America Local 9510 in Orange County.

John Gearratana, a cinematic producer who works out of the Irvine campus, stated he and different employees had grow to be pissed off with frequent layoffs and with lack of distant work choices. Activision Blizzard laid off about 400 employees final yr.

“People who work in games, a lot of the reason is they love [games], they want to make them and share them with people,” Gearratana stated. “But these waves of layoffs are really hard. It makes it hard to make games, it makes it hard to be creative, and it makes it hard to want to do this work.”

Microsoft Corp.-owned Blizzard Entertainment has acknowledged the union.

The firm is a subsidiary of Santa Monica-based Activision Blizzard, the most important recreation firm within the Americas.

Activision Blizzard was created in 2008 when Santa Monica-based Activision merged with the father or mother firm of Blizzard Entertainment. It’s recognized for profitable titles reminiscent of “Call of Duty,” “Warcraft,” “Overwatch,” “Hearthstone” and “Candy Crush.” It was acquired in 2023 by tech large Microsoft.

The employee vote didn’t should undergo a typical election overseen by the National Labor Relations Board as a result of Microsoft pledged to take a impartial stance towards employees who sought to type a union.

Microsoft’s pledge, uncommon amongst largely nonunionized tech giants, has paved the way in which for 1000’s of extra employees to extra simply unionize.

“We continue to support our employees’ right to choose how they are represented in the workplace,” a Microsoft spokesperson stated in a press release final yr.

Blizzard didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

Nearly 3,000 employees at Microsoft-owned studios have unionized with CWA so far, in response to union spokesperson Sean Nesmith. CWA is the most important media and telecommunications labor union within the U.S.

North America noticed its first online game union type on the finish of 2021 at Vodeo Games, an indie studio with a few dozen staff.

In 2022, a small group of high quality assurance employees at Raven Software, an Activision Blizzard-owned recreation studio in Wisconsin, unionized — marking the arrival of the primary labor union at a significant U.S. gaming firm.

And final yr, greater than 500 recreation builders at Blizzard Entertainment who work on the blockbuster online game “World of Warcraft” elected to type a union.