A group of over 450 developers on the game Diablo at Blizzard have voted in favor of unionization with Communications Workers of America (CWA).
Per a press release, this new union consists of game developers, artists, designers, engineers, and support staff across the Diablo franchise, and has been formally recognized by parent company Microsoft.
“With every subsequent round of mass layoffs, I’ve witnessed the dread in my coworkers grow stronger because it feels like no amount of hard work is enough to protect us,” said Kelly Yeo, a game producer and a member of the organizing committee. “I am overjoyed that we have formed a union—this is just the first step for us joining a movement spreading across an industry that is tired of living in fear. We are ready to begin fighting for real change alongside our Diablo colleagues.”
Microsoft laid off around 9,100 employees earlier this year, including members of its gaming division at Activision Blizzard.
The Diablo team follows in the footsteps of hundreds more of their Activision Blizzard and broader Xbox colleagues who have unionized in recent years with some security due to Microsoft’s labor neutrality agreement. Like Diablo, the entire World of Warcraft team unionized last year, and the Overwatch developers followed in May of this year. Xbox’s other unions include Raven Software workers who just won their first contract earlier this month, Zenimax QA workers who got a contract in May, the Bethesda union, the story and franchise development team, and several others.
Over 3,500 workers at Microsoft have organized with CWA to date.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
