Even before Microsoft laid off 1,600 employees (with 1,600 more to come) earlier this year—prompting multiple series of demonstrations at studios across the country—Blizzard workers were marching outside the house that Warcraft built in Irvine, California. Since 2024 teams across countless projects like World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo, Story & Franchise Development, and Platform & Technology had unionized one by one, with Microsoft and Blizzard voluntarily recognizing those unions per the terms of a legally binding neutrality agreement brokered by CWA, the larger union helping game workers organize. But when workers and higher-ups reached the bargaining table, they failed to see eye to eye. And that’s when higher-ups gave workers any bargaining time at all.
Two years of tumult later, Blizzard unions finally have a contract, and its terms extend to all unionized units at the company (as opposed to different sets of rights and protections for different teams). It covers 1,900 workers in total and includes the above units as well as Hearthstone & Warcraft Rumble and Quality Assurance, the latter of which previously secured its own contract.
“We really started mobilizing as one Blizzard unit in [the] last couple of months, and I think that really helped put the pressure on,” Paul Cox, senior game designer on World of Warcraft, told Aftermath.
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