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Title: Blizzard's 'Overwatch' Team Just Voted to Unionize

Link: https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/05/11/032...

"The Overwatch 2 team at Blizzard has unionized," reports Kotaku: That
includes nearly 200 developers across disciplines ranging from art and
testing to engineering and design. Basically anyone who doesn't have someone
else reporting to them. It's the second wall-to-wall union at the storied
game maker since the World of Warcraft team unionized last July... Like
unions at Bethesda Game Studios and Raven Software, the Overwatch Gamemakers
Guild now has to bargain for its first contract, a process that Microsoft has
been accused of slow-walking as negotiations with other internal game unions
drag on for years. "The biggest issue was the layoffs at the beginning of
2024," Simon Hedrick, a test analyst at Blizzard, told Kotaku... "People were
gone out of nowhere and there was nothing we could do about it," he said.
"What I want to protect most here is the people...." Organizing Blizzard
employees stress that improving their working conditions can also lead to
better games, while the opposite - layoffs, forced resignations, and
uncompetitive pay can make them worse.... "We're not just a number on an
Excel sheet," [said UI artist Sadie Boyd]. "We want to make games but we
can't do it without a sense of security." Unionizing doesn't make a studio
immune to layoffs or being shuttered, but it's the first step toward making
companies have a discussion about those things with employees rather than
just shadow-dropping them in an email full of platitudes. Boyd sees the
Overwatch union as a tool for negotiating a range of issues, like if and how
generative AI is used at Blizzard, as well as a possible source of
inspiration to teams at other studios. "Our industry is at such a turning
point," she said. "I really think with the announcement of our union on
Overwatch...I know that will light some fires." The article notes that other
issues included work-from-home restrictions, pay disparities and changes to
Blizzard's profit-sharing program, and wanting codified protections for
things like crunch policies, time off, and layoff-related severance.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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