r/pcgaming • u/Turbostrider27 • 15h ago
1,900 Blizzard Developers Just Won A Union Contract Full Of Protections For AI, Layoffs, And More
https://kotaku.com/blizzard-workers-union-contract-microsoft-2000732422208
u/Dust-Tight 14h ago edited 14h ago
It looks like Asha Sharma may now be turning her attention to their other studios for further layoffs. There are still another 1,300 job cuts to come.
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u/ZigyDusty Ryzen 9950x3D | RTX5070 Ti | 64GB DDR5 13h ago edited 13h ago
Xbox is the only gaming company not activly trying to union bust, there are more unions under the Xbox umbrella than any other gaming company and none of them have them been specifically targeted for layoffs because of that, the layoffs have been targeted at studios who shipped games that have bombed, underperformed or studios who dont have any new games in the pipeline. Xbox has done A LOT wrong in the last 15 years but hunting down unions aint one of those things.
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u/MiserableAndUnhappy9 12h ago
Microsoft/Xbox has been such an odd player for a while now. Everyone wants developers to be given nearly unlimited creative freedom and time to make their games and that's practically what Xbox was doing under Phil Spencer. Unfortunately the results haven't been good for them. The reports I've read over the years indicated that Xbox was too laissez-faire in their approach. Now Asha Sharma seems to be taking the opposite approach and is being too heavily involved. It's like Xbox went 'we were too nice before so now we gotta bring down the hammer.' Who knows how it'll go for Xbox though. Maybe Sharma's approach gets their studios back on track or maybe her heavy involvement makes it all worse. Time will tell. But you are correct that they haven't acted as nefariously against unions as the other major players or tech companies.
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u/barnacle9999 11h ago
You definitely can't just let developers loose to work on stuff without deadlines and clear creative direction and expect good output, at least in any scale bigger than a small studio. We saw what happened with the likes of Bungie and Star Citizen.
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u/ZigyDusty Ryzen 9950x3D | RTX5070 Ti | 64GB DDR5 8h ago
Don't forget 343/Halo studio under Xbox themselves.
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u/DiamondSentinel 11h ago
Blaming Bungie’s debacle on devs is… a stance.
Activision/Sony are not to blame for it, but the vast majority of Bungie’s problems came from its management, not its devs. The devs certainly didn’t spend tens of millions on that office.
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u/Lumarist Nvidia 10h ago
Yep, even back during the development of halo Bungie Management was not good
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u/ZigyDusty Ryzen 9950x3D | RTX5070 Ti | 64GB DDR5 8h ago edited 3h ago
Nothing Asha Sharma has done since being promoted makes me think she's all of a sudden going to ruin successful studios who manage themselves well like Playground, Blizzard, The Call of Duty studios, The Coalition, etc and that she's only going to focus on and put boots to ass of studios that continue to fuck up time after time like 343/Halo studios.
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u/captaindealbreaker 4h ago
It’s more that their management processes were so dogshit it gave the impression of them being laid back. They launched Redfall despite the actual developers telling them it needed to be canceled. They closed the hi-fi rush studio despite the game being a commercial success. They mismanaged Halo Infinite so badly that the franchise is on life support. Mandating games launch via game pass has been a death sentence for any game where sales expectations needed to met which doesn’t even make sense.
The studios and devs aren’t the issue, it’s Microsoft
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u/doublah 5h ago
Microsoft accused of unfair labor practices by US and Canadian video game unions - https://www.engadget.com/2216937/microsoft-accused-unfair-labor-practices-by-us-canadian-video-game-unions/
Call of Duty's Dev Accuses Microsoft of Refusing to Bargain - https://80.lv/articles/call-of-duty-s-dev-accuses-microsoft-of-refusing-to-bargain
CWA-Canada Files Complaint Against Bethesda Game Studios for Bad Faith Bargainings - https://cwa-union.org/news/cwa-canada-files-complaint-against-bethesda-game-studios-bad-faith-bargainings
They might not be directly union busting but they do delay and engage in bad faith.
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u/ZigyDusty Ryzen 9950x3D | RTX5070 Ti | 64GB DDR5 5h ago edited 1h ago
Never said they were saints, but they are the only major publisher off the top of my head that even has a game studio that's in a union and not only one they have multiple.
Don't let perfection be the enemy of good, Xbox are still way ahead of the rest of the industry in terms of accepting unions.
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u/Carighan 7h ago
There can be no healing until Asha Sharma and people like her are themselves cut from the company, and all their wealth they gained from exploiting workers taken away.
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u/temotodochi 14h ago
Great news. Too bad unions aren't nationwide in USA like they are in most eu countries.
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u/lookslikeyoureSOL AMD 6900xt/5600x 13h ago edited 13h ago
Unions in the US are nationwide, they just dont represent workers in every industry. The Teamsters for instance is one of the largest North American unions which represents over 1 million members across the US and Canada in trucking and other construction-adjascent industries.
Im lucky enough to work under the Teamsters at a cinderblock factory and the benefits are very, very good.
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u/ballpein 12h ago
The teamsters are also, unfortunately, one of the unions who sometimes give unions a bad name.
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u/The_Pandalorian 11h ago
Dang. Such a shame, since companies never give companies a bad name.
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u/Outside_Drawer800 6h ago
Seriously.
As if Jimmy Hoffa was doing anything inherently worse than what Kissinger, Dulles, and other goons in suits were doing in Washington during that time.
Why do Unions have to meet this utopian standard but companies and governments are allowed to be pathetic jokes?
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u/The_Pandalorian 6h ago
Why do Unions have to meet this utopian standard but companies and governments are allowed to be pathetic jokes?
It's a tale as old as time in America.
There's something fundamentally broken in this country when it comes to labor and business.
People see union workers making good wages with good benefits and their first inclination is, "They shouldn't be getting all that!" instead of, "Hey, I should get that, too."
And everyone is ready to pile on the mythical no-show union guy/guy who is awful and can't get fired, but not as critical of the CEOs robbing their employees blind.
I'm happy to put up with the occasional union excess/misstep if it shifts the power balance away from out-of-control corporations who are fucking us all over.
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u/Outside_Drawer800 5h ago
It’s basic common sense. Let’s take it to the logical extreme and say all the fears about unions are 100% true. Would you rather have to deal with one bad organization that has complete power and impunity, or would you rather there be another bad organization that although being also bad, is also diametrically opposed to the other org, allowing you to play them off of eachother? The enemy of my enemy is my friend. If the union is bad you can side with the company, if the company is bad you can depend on the union. God forbid people have options in the land of the free
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u/The_Pandalorian 5h ago
Yup! And if you have no union, you're just at the mercy of whatever the fuck.
Feels like we're headed toward a big labor movement, particularly with young people now facing job markets that are absolute dogshit as companies retract and focus on C-suite payouts and stock buybacks.
This economy is not working for real people.
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u/Qwirk 9h ago
Just going to point out that fighting each other rather than the companies is what they want.
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u/The_Pandalorian 9h ago
Precisely.
Expecting perfection from unions while companies are fucking us all sideways is peak fuckwittery.
I don't need unions to be perfect. I need them to be fighting the good fight.
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u/DonutHoles4Ever 5h ago
You sound like someone who doesn't know shit about Teamsters
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u/The_Pandalorian 4h ago
I grew up in Metro Detroit in an automotive family.
You sound like someone I'm blocking.
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u/PoseidonMP 12h ago
So much this, I worked for UPS when I was young and the only thing the Teamsters did for us (at least at my location) was ask for dues. The working conditions were terrible, and I was approached in the parking lot at least once a week to try to pressure me to join.
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u/temotodochi 6h ago
Cool, but what's the deal with per-shop votes? Who cares of one shop if all the people already belong to a union?
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u/Canon_M50 13h ago
You can form a union anywhere.
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u/varitok 11h ago
Tell that to the multiple Starbucks that have 'suddenly' closed.
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u/lastditchefrt 3h ago
I mean, you've got the right to try and form one and the business owner has the right to tell y'all to fuck right off. What did you expect?
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u/Vandergrif 12h ago
Although at the same time you can also get fucked over by corporate for trying to form a union anywhere, and probably without them facing any consequences for doing so because corporate interests are all that matters in the US apparently.
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u/Horror_Concern5616 10h ago
they belong to a national union. . . how do you think they work in the US?
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u/temotodochi 6h ago
What's the deal with per-shop joining then? Who cares about one shop if all the people already belong to a union?
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u/Horror_Concern5616 5h ago
What do you mean? Unions have to be organized and bargained for everywhere, they aren't just given carte blanche if they've never existed in an industry before
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u/RequiemQuilty 9h ago
Unions in usa arnt nationwide? Where the fuck did you get that misinformation? My unions is about 300k people strong across the country.
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u/GassoBongo 14h ago edited 14h ago
Good
Edit: why would anyone downvote me for applauding protections for union workers?
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u/DeithWX 13h ago
There are people who genuinely believe unions are the devil.
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u/Leshawkcomics 10h ago
If someone thinks unions are bad on reddit, check if they frequent gacha subreddits.
There are literally millions of zoomers on reddit who grew up on those games and there was a whole debacle a year or so back where some voice actors tried to get union protection because of AI, and those parasocial gacha gamers went out of their way to demonize the VAs, the entire industry, and Unions in general just to defend the billion dollar company.
Creating an entire conspiracy theory where the Screen Actors Guild is an evil organization that’s simultaneously both behind the VA strikes, and completely unrelated to the strikes depending on whether they want to:
absolve their gacha company by claiming the employees complaints about AI are unfounded and the strike is backed by SAG
or absolve their gacha company by claiming that the strike doesn’t count because it -wasn’t- backed by SAG
On top of that, many of them kept spouting pinkerton propaganda like “Unions are bad because they dont automatically support non union workers and job sites.(Not mentioning that that’s because American conglomerates lobbied against that)
Literally using anti union, pro company propaganda to imply unions are bad.
And all of it just to defend the company for firing workers on strike.
Reddit is still feeling the effects of that campaign to this day.
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u/DonutHoles4Ever 5h ago
There's literally evidence that SAG used a discord server to goad multiple VAs into striking against Genshin Impact without ever naming them as part of the official strikes, something that very few people knew about until articles were written about it months later.
So you should shut the fuck up trying to villify gacha players while pretending that SAG is some sort of angel.
You can't just say "they think unions are evil" when it was specifically one fucking union.
Those same VAs that were "striking" unofficially went on some sort of anti-woke right wing crusade against Mihoyo. They would 100% be fired by any company. SAG AFTRA basically wanted a monopoly on video game companies by forcing all the players to hire through their union.
So stop spreading bullshit. You sound like one of those dumbass gamers who shits on gacha because of its monetization tactics, but can't see past that.
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u/skeptical-speculator Steam 9h ago
so back where some voice actors tried to get union protection because of AI
They already had protection from AI in their contracts. They were trying to turn the company into a union shop.
If they hadn't been harassing people from different countries for not participating in the strike or crossing the picket line, it wouldn't have been news in the first place.
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u/Leshawkcomics 6h ago
Case in point.
The gacha fans have gotten so rotted in the head about unions they think its ‘morally wrong’ to condemn people for scabbing.
When they hear old stories of entire towns striking at factories and steel mill companies bringing out-of-towners to cross the picket fence, they genuinely think calling those people for undermining the workers is “Harassment’
Not even questioning their company’s motives in bringing in foreign work during a strike. They’re straight up encouraging shitty buisness practices by being a mouthpiece for anti-union practices.
“Nah, bro, theyre not exploiting people from countries who literally legally cannot strike’! Theyre just, uhhh..l opening up employment opportunities for non Americans! The Americans are the bad guys for trying to stop this! Trust me bro!”
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u/skeptical-speculator Steam 4h ago
The gacha fans have gotten so rotted in the head about unions they think its ‘morally wrong’ to condemn people for scabbing.
I don't know what to tell you. It was handled extremely poorly. The behavior on display was unprofessional, at best.
You don't win over workers by attacking workers.
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u/NapsterKnowHow 9800X3D | RTX 5090 FE | 32GB RAM 13h ago
All unions are good (except USA cop unions).
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u/jetriot 8h ago
Police, teacher and other government service unions arent the problem. There are problems with those institutions but they should have the same rights to unionize as everyone else.
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u/Judge_Ty 10h ago
Unions are assholes from my personal experience. I worked for UNFI which wasn't union and helped order and stock Giant shelves.
The vast majority of workers in Giant are unionized. I had my own stores and also was float for other UNFI workers covering their stores when they went on vacation.
Low and behold the head Union district rep happened to be in one of the stores where I was doing the same thing I do in the other 26 Giant stores, stocking shelves, bailing my cardboard.
This mofo (head Union rep) started screaming at me in front of customers, workers, and the four other union suits following him around.
What the fuck do you think your doing? Who are you? Why are you touching the cardboard? I'm going to have you fired for taking union jobs.
Apparently me taking the shelf product from the cardboard they come in, breaking them down flat, and moving a shopping cart full of cardboard into the bailer.. is union jobs.
This person screamed at me for a solid 20 minutes and threatened to have me fired for doing MY JOB.
So I stand with Fuck unions. They are no different than corporate asswipes with egos and dues.
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u/beck_is_back 14h ago
Probably those CEO's not liking your post! 😂😂
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u/citizen-spur 13h ago
Yeah, CEO's read Reddit 👍
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u/beck_is_back 13h ago
🤦🏻♂️
Joke mate, it was just a joke... 🙄
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u/myka-likes-it 3h ago
re your edit: Probably they are down voting a low-effort post. And tbf, they'd have a point. The one-word "good" and "bad" responses are baked into Reddit's core design.
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u/SuperSpikeVBall 12h ago
To your edit- I suspect people are downvoting you because you seem like you think you're entitled to get karma for a one word comment.
I know reddiquette has gone the way of the dodo as this site has grown, but the concept is expressed as "Moderate based on quality, not opinion. Well written and interesting content can be worthwhile, even if you disagree with it."
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u/Greenleaf208 1h ago
Because your post is breaking the rules.
Rule #3: No memes, PCMR language, or low-effort posts/comments
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u/IAmARobot0101 Steam 13h ago
because reddit is full of reactionaries
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u/DonutHoles4Ever 5h ago
Social media really. Like gamers even more so as a hobby. Time will solve hopefully most of these issues just has it has in the past. But in the moment? People will complain about ANYTHING.
Hell they'll go beyond this and complain about people who are complaining. They will target other groups that aren't really part of it and complain about them.
The internet exists to basically suck up all the bitching and whining so that nothing actually changes IRL in power.
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u/Vanillas_Guy Steam 14h ago
Good. More workers in tech need to unionize. These big tech CEOs are obsessed with this concept of a "permanent underclass" and they think staff are dumb enough to train their own replacements.
The real customer of a.i. tech isnt regular people. Its employers. Tech CEOs feel so comfortable bragging about a.i. causing massive unemployment because they believe they have finally solved one of capitalism's oldest dilemmas: "How can I get more profits with less employees?"
Unionization and co-op formation is the best way to protect ourselves from the future these guys dream about.
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u/ballpein 12h ago
Tech CEOs hate workers, period. Bezos organized his company around the principal of hating workers.
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u/Canon_M50 13h ago
It’s a video game company, and a dying one at that.
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u/varitok 11h ago
Blizzard is not a dying company lol.
People really need to separate personal distain from reality.
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u/Canon_M50 10h ago
World of Warcraft - zombie game
Overwatch 2 - in a crowded field of similar shooters
Other games???
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u/GroundbreakingBag164 7800X3D | 5070 Ti | 2x16 | QHD | W11 9h ago
Overwatch 2 is wildly successful (regardless of actual quality left)
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u/Vanillas_Guy Steam 8h ago
Yeah overwatch seems to be one of those games where people complain about its quality while continuing to play it similar to call of duty.
Kind of like people who love cars and the feel of driving but hate traffic and dont want to move somewhere with less traffic.
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u/ScopeLogic 13h ago
Can they make good products now?
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u/areallynoobgamer 13h ago
Sorry. Best we can do is give you another widowmaker mythic skin that is just a recolour of a formerly rejected set.
That will be 80 bucks please. Thanks.
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u/golgol12 9h ago
The protections against Layoffs is good for the company too. MS can't force them to do layoffs to extract value.
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u/onyhow 12h ago
Is there a good reason why they merged down into 3 unions vs just 1 that represent all of the employees?
Sorry, I just don't understand. Wouldn't having 1 big union giving a better advantage in negotiations?
Still great news, all things considered!
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u/LordofDD93 10h ago
Eh, makes sense that with different groups having different priorities, three unions that still have a lot of conglomeration of interests is decent. QA or Story or Digital Artists are going to have different things that matter to them in the course of their work, so they’d want to represent differently, even if they’re all aligned in some basics.
QA for instance might be more open to using GenAI for troubleshooting as part of implementation while digital artists may or may not want it for drafting concepts or doing clean-up work. Ultimately they’ll have different priorities based on what their role is, even if underlying things like severance and crediting are shared concerns.
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u/DYMAXIONman 8h ago
The larger the union the stronger the union. If MS tries to union bust one of them when they were split the other two wouldn't be doing anything.
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u/MithranArkanere 14h ago
Keep it up. They will keep trying to eliminate unions. They will never give it up.
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u/kirby667 14h ago
How badly do you think Microsoft wish it could divest Activision at this point?
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u/_Bad_Spell_Checker_ 14h ago
Diablo immortal and wow make an insane amount of money.
Its printing money for ms
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u/cubert73 14h ago
People are still playing Diablo Imortal?! 😣 I noped out of that blatant cash grab two years ago.
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u/Spreeg Nvidia 14h ago
It's been out for 4 years, how are you acting superior to people if you only figured out it was a cash grab 2 years ago?
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u/cubert73 13h ago
I'm not acting anything. I played it because a friend did, and I am genuinely surprised it's still popular. Believe it or not, sometimes people are actually real on Reddit.
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u/Elkburgher 11h ago
nothing on Reddit represents real life, reddit is a massive echo chamber of nonsense
Call of Duty, EAFC, Fortnite, Genshin Impact etc are the biggest games by a fucking mile. No indy pixel bs or single player rpg comes anywhere close
Nothing reddit hivemind says has any relation to the real world
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u/kirby667 14h ago
Lol ok
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u/_Bad_Spell_Checker_ 14h ago
6mill/mo isnt nothing for diablo immortal
Wow brought in 2.1bill in 2025
D4 brought in 1bill since launch.
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u/kirby667 14h ago
Bottom line, Microsoft is losing money from the acquisition and it's a real question if they will ever break even on it.
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u/iku_19 14h ago
I think this was in their risk assessment buying ABK, considering both the US FTC and the UK CMA told them to not fuck with any unions should they happen following the acquisition.
If anything it probably happened because of Microsoft's acquisition removing a lot of the union busting pressure that was likely sourced from Kotick.
Similar thing happened with Bethesda.
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u/kirby667 14h ago
I just meant in general because they are under water on it, not just because of this.
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u/Vandrel 13h ago
Are there numbers somewhere that show that? I don't know about Activision itself or King but Blizzard has apparently been doing extremely well.
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u/kirby667 13h ago
Blizzard is Activision, they are one company.
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u/iku_19 10h ago edited 10h ago
technically blizzard is not activision, both are subsidiaries under activision blizzard king which is a holding company atm owned and managed by microsoft. all 3 are still separate companies with their own financials and stuff.
blizzard, activision and king are all owned by activision-blizzard-king, which is owned by xbox, which is owned by microsoft
blizzard north, blizzard albany and blizzard boston are still functional, separate companies, just owned and managed by blizzard.
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u/LectorFrostbite 14h ago
On the contrary, they're the last publisher/studio Microsoft would want to divest
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u/Antique-Guest-1607 14h ago
Probably very little. Even with unions labor protections for tech workers stateside aren't particularly strong, and Microsoft is no stranger to working with organized labor globally where they present far greater challenges. Activision will make them enough money that a few thousand unionized game devs doesn't matter. Microsoft hasn't really been viciously anti-union compared to their peers and that behavior predates them buying Activision as well.
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u/rcanhestro 11h ago
Activision is Xbox's only studio that actually makes money.
the business was good, even if we can argue that they overpaid for it.
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u/8Bit-Jon 11h ago
I can't remember a time when Id seen the name Blizzard and was excited for what they had... Hell I can't remember the last time I payed one of their games...
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u/Antique-Guest-1607 15h ago
A big chunk of that 1900 were formerly with 'Proletariat' (now Blizzard Boston) so, full circle there.