Over 160 Blizzard workers in Irvine join union as gaming-industry labor movement expands

More than 160 workers at video game company Blizzard Entertainment have voted to unionize.

The workers, who produce in-house cinematics, animation, trailers, promotional videos and other narrative content, are just the latest batch in the video game industry to unionize, with more than 6,000 having organized across the U.S. and Canada.

A wave of organizing in the industry has been driven in recent years by such issues as crunch-time hours before a product releases, job insecurity and workplace harassment.

The newly unionized workers are largely based in Irvine, where Blizzard Entertainment’s campus is located. They will join Communications Workers of America Local 9510 in Orange County.

John Gearratana, a cinematic producer who works out of the Irvine campus, said he and other workers had become frustrated with frequent layoffs and with lack of remote work options. Activision Blizzard laid off about 400 workers last year.

“People who work in games, a lot of the reason is they love [games], they want to make them and share them with people,” Gearratana said. “But these waves of layoffs are really hard. It makes it hard to make games, it makes it hard to be creative, and it makes it hard to want to do this work.”

Microsoft Corp.-owned Blizzard Entertainment has recognized the union.

The company is a subsidiary of Santa Monica-based Activision Blizzard, the largest game company in the Americas.

Activision Blizzard was created in 2008 when Santa Monica-based Activision merged with the parent company of Blizzard Entertainment. It’s known for successful titles such as “Call of Duty,” “Warcraft,” “Overwatch,” “Hearthstone” and “Candy Crush.” It was acquired in 2023 by tech giant Microsoft.

The worker vote did not have to go through a typical election overseen by the National Labor Relations Board because Microsoft pledged to take a neutral stance toward workers who sought to form a union.

Microsoft’s pledge, unusual among largely nonunionized tech giants, has paved the way for thousands of additional workers to more easily unionize.

“We continue to support our employees’ right to choose how they are represented in the workplace,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement last year.

Blizzard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Nearly 3,000 workers at Microsoft-owned studios have unionized with CWA thus far, according to union spokesperson Sean Nesmith. CWA is the largest media and telecommunications labor union in the U.S.

North America saw its first video game union form at the end of 2021 at Vodeo Games, an indie studio with about a dozen employees.

In 2022, a small group of quality assurance workers at Raven Software, an Activision Blizzard-owned game studio in Wisconsin, unionized — marking the arrival of the first labor union at a major U.S. gaming company.

And last year, more than 500 game developers at Blizzard Entertainment who work on the blockbuster video game “World of Warcraft” elected to form a union.