Blizzard’s Overwatch 2 Team Is The Latest Group At Microsoft To Unionize

Blizzard’s employees have been through a lot over the last few years. Between all the drama at Blizzard under Activision and the merger with Microsoft, followed almost immediately by layoffs and then more layoffs, those who are still part of the company have reason to be cautious when dealing with their employers.

That’s where unions come in.

At this point, it probably won’t surprise anyone to hear that the Overwatch 2 team at Blizzard elected to unionize. That’s not just the team shooter's QA team or any specific department, but about 200 devs working on the game in some fashion.

This news comes via a statement from the Communication Workers of America to Kotaku, wherein they stated that developers from the Overwatch team had become “the latest group of video game workers at Microsoft-owned studios to form a wall-to-wall union”. The statement also added that an “overwhelming majority of workers have either signed a union authorization card or indicated that they wanted union representation via an online portal”.

Of course, now comes the difficult part, bargaining. While Microsoft has kept to its labor neutrality agreement, the first group under the company’s banner to unionize is still bargaining for a contract three years in.