Another Wall-to-Wall Union In Gaming Formed In Activision Blizzard's 500+ Strong World Of Warcraft Team

This one has been a long time coming! Ahead of the Microsoft purchase of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft was asked about how they might handle unions forming in their companies as multiple QA teams were pushing to join unions and let's just sat that Activision Blizzard's response at the time was...less than stellar.

Microsoft, for its part, pledged to remain neutral on the topic and allow employees to decide for themselves. Since then, Microsoft has voluntarily recognized multiple unions, mainly within QA departments, including the then largest "wall-to-wall" (meaning across departments) NA gaming union created just days ago at Bethesda. 

It only got to hold that record for a few days as today employees working on World of Warcraft have also unionized under the Communication Workers of America (CWA) in another wall-to-wall union covering the QA, Art, Sound, Design, Engineering, and Production staff behind the popular MMORPG. This makes the "World of Warcraft GameMakers Union" the second largest gaming union overall within Microsoft behind Activision's QA only union which ranks at about 600 members.

The WoW unionized staff total over 500 employees. 

World of Warcraft workers just joined CWA!

We are stoked to welcome them into our union. https://t.co/X2Kv2jba9m

— CWA (@CWAUnion) July 24, 2024

A lot of the credit for this formation is being given to Microsoft's Labor Neutrality Agreement and the hard work of employees who worked for months (sometimes years) to make this a reality. They were able to finally do so when they realized there wouldn't be any retaliation this time around. Speaking to IGN, WoW senior producer Samuel Cooper said, "“We had a lot of folks who, rightly or wrongly, felt fearful before,” Cooper says. “There are legal protections for organizing, but it can still be scary to have that change…We had CWA folks on campus for weeks on end, right in the middle, next to the big bronze orc. I think that really made people feel like it's not scary. I know they're not allowed to retaliate, but now I have confidence that they're not going to retaliate.”

In a statemenet similar to their one regarding Bethesda, Microsoft told Variety, "“We continue to support our employees’ right to choose how they are represented in the workplace, and we will engage in good faith negotiations with the CWA as we work towards a collective bargaining agreement."

(The news was originally broken via Bloomberg)