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In early 2024, Activision Blizzard under its new owner Microsoft sent an email around to employees at its Stockholm office letting them know that one of their most popular company benefits was going away. And in doing so, the company inadvertently sparked a union effort.
IGN has learned that last fall, over one hundred employees at mobile game maker King’s Stockholm location formed a union club with Unionen, Sweden’s largest trade union. The group has since been acknowledged and is in communication with company management in the hopes of eventually securing a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) that will govern their work environment, policies, and benefits going forward.
Unions in Sweden are a bit different from the ones those in the U.S. may be familiar with. In Sweden, eligible workers can join a trade union representing the type of work they do at any time, regardless of whether or not their individual company has organized. As a result, roughly 70% of the country is involved in a trade union (per data shared by Unionen), and the country has a long history of laws more friendly to unions than in many other countries. Trade unions negotiate broadly with their respective sectors over working conditions such as salaries and sick leave, and individual membership in a trade union can confer some small, extra benefits to employees.
But there’s another layer to union membership in Sweden, which is forming a union club and securing a CBA. If enough employees join the same union at a company, they can vote to install a union board to negotiate a CBA on their behalf. That CBA can secure them additional workplace-specific benefits similar to U.S. union contracts, and local union boards can even receive representation at the top levels of company management and a voice in major company decisions. This is what has happened at King Stockholm, following a growing games industry trend already seen at Swedish gaming companies such as Paradox Interactive and, more recently, Avalanche Studios.
The doctor is out
I spoke with Kajsa Sima Falck, an engineering manager at King in Stockholm and a board member of King Stockholm’s Unionen chapter. Falck explained to me that prior to 2024, union talk at the company was relatively quiet. There was a channel in the company Slack dedicated to union discussion for the small handful of union members, but it mostly went unused. She recalls it having only around nine or ten members.
But then, in early January, employees of Activision Blizzard in Stockholm received an email from management with some devastating news. Falck explains that during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Stockholm office had been granted an unusual benefit: a free, private doctor for themselves and their families. The doctor, rumored to have been hand-picked by then-CEO Bobby Kotick, quickly became extremely popular among the staff. She was good at her job, Falck said, quick to respond to phone calls and emails, instrumental in supporting them during the pandemic, and empathetic toward employees’ requests for sick leave or mental health notes. Over time, much of the staff came to rely on her for all their healthcare.
Which is why it was so devastating when employees were told, not long after Activision Blizzard was acquired by Microsoft, that this benefit was being taken away. What’s more, employees were only given a week’s notice as to the end of this benefit, meaning individuals and families suddenly had to scramble to find a new doctor and new healthcare options.
Employees were offered private health insurance benefits effectively to replace the doctor, but Falck noted that the replacement benefits aren’t as good as what they had before. “You have to go through a portal and you have to talk to a nurse every time you want to get an appointment for something,” she says. “So it’s not that personal experience of having a doctor, like a proper person that cares for you, and wants the best for you, and puts you on sick leave if you’re feeling burnt out. She [the private doctor] was a godsend.”
Falck tells me that normally, employees of King Stockholm were fairly quiet about company issues or complaints. But not this time. It seemed like everyone was talking about this, with a number of posts about the change popping up in the Stockholm general Slack channel.
“We had no bargaining power,” she says. “I mean, if we had a CBA in place, we could have had a chance to try to negotiate and talk to our employer.”
With no recourse available, Falck suggested spinning the union Slack channel back up, and suddenly the channel was flooded with interest, eventually reaching 217 members by the time I spoke to her. Over the next several months, the newly-energized group made plans and contacted representatives at Unionen. And in October of 2024, the group officially voted to form a union club with a union board at King Stockholm. [IGN reached out to Microsoft and Activision Blizzard King for comment for this piece, but did not receive a response.]
No gods, only King
Since its official formation, the King union has met with Activision Blizzard HR a few times to discuss how the two groups will communicate going forward, and Falck says their response has been “neutral.” This was to be expected, given the legal protections for unions in Sweden. But Microsoft has also publicly committed to taking a “neutral approach” toward unions, and reports from other newly-formed unions within the company seem to indicate it’s following through with that globally.
Falck says she and the other union members are clear-eyed about the fact that it’s too late to get their private doctor benefit back, much less the same beloved doctor that was so popular among staff. But she says it is an expectation that they will eventually bargain with the company to obtain a CBA that will protect other popular benefits from being pulled out from under them in the same way.
“I think it comes down to being able to protect the [benefits] that we have with agreements to make sure that they don’t do changes without us having influence and being able to negotiate changes,” she says. “That’s where everyone was at when this benefit was taken away, because we have some benefits that are kind of unique. They’re not super unique to the game industry, but they’re quite unique as a whole to companies in Sweden. Like we have a bonus, we have all these things like benefits from Microsoft that are quite good. So we want to make sure we get those protected so if things are going to change, we can at least try to fight that or get it somewhat bulletproof for the future.”
Other important issues Falck mentions may come up are salary and information transparency at the company, as well as protection and transparency around company reorganizations and, critically, layoffs. But most importantly for Falck and her colleagues is the ability to influence their workplace for the good of everyone. As Unionen Stockholm organizer Timo Rybak explains:
“The whole idea of unionizing in Sweden is based on the fact of both parties having influence and getting to the table to discuss matters,” he says. “It’s employees helping their employer have knowledge of the everyday work, which is entirely unavailable to any company president, or any HR representative for that matter, [who are] not a game developer [and don’t] do the daily work of every single employee. That’s just impossible. So giving all of those people a say and a seat at the table, well, that’s just a positive.
“Labor law in Sweden is still skewed towards the employer, their rights are greater than those of employees. But of course, what rights you do have as an employee, you should be protecting and be aware of and that kind of ties into the fact that unionizing is also a way of learning your rights, and especially in an industry like game development or IT at large, which has a very large community of immigrant workers.”
Falck points out that the union has already seen the benefits of simply sharing information on employee rights, saying that a large number of European and American game developers have come to work at King over the years and don’t necessarily understand what they’re entitled to. Organizing has enabled them to share information and educate one another on their rights as employees to better enable them to advocate for themselves individually, and as a group.
For Falck and her colleagues, forming a union club at King may have started as a backlash to an unpopular change. But its purpose is ultimately to protect the things they love about a job they care deeply about. “It’s just a completely different world and a different company that we’re getting used to. So we want to protect what is King, what is the culture, what are the benefits.”
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 rvalentine@ign.com.
