Congrats to the Overwatch team, the second Blizzard Entertainment development team to unionize

Following World of Warcraft’s footsteps, the Overwatch development team formed the unionized Overwatch Gamemakers Guild (OWGG) today under the Communication Workers of America (CWA). They are the second team at Blizzard Entertainment to form a wall-to-wall group comprised of game developers across all disciplines, including design, production, engineering, art, sound, and quality assurance. This news comes after confirmation that “an overwhelming majority of workers have either signed a union authorization card or indicated that they wanted union representation via an online portal.” Microsoft (Blizzard’s parent company) has formally recognized the union.

This move has been a long time coming for any development team, but especially the Overwatch team. They’ve survived a lot as a group: community frustrations over the removal of PVE from the development roadmap were a huge hit to the sequel’s popularity. And this turned into a big problem for employees on the Overwatch team due to a 2023 policy change at Blizzard that changed employee bonus payouts, tying them to each franchise’s performance instead of company performance. The policy change followed a long battle between Blizzard leadership and (then) parent company Activision, with CEO Bobby Kotick arguing that the “most lucrative products should be rewarded the most.” In short, due to the poor financial performance of OW2, the team received 0% of their bonus targets — absolutely brutal for folks who had worked so hard to turn the first title into one of the most popular games of all time, and counted on those bonuses as part of their pay.

The OWGG-CWA will be in good company — over 2,600 workers at Microsoft-owned studios have formed a union with CWA since the tech behemoth entered a labor neutrality agreement. Since launching their Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE-CWA), over 6,000 United States and Canada workers have organized under the CWA.

Keep it going, team — every worker deserves good working conditions and a living wage regardless of the game they working on.