Blizzard's 'Overwatch' Team Just Voted to Unionize (kotaku.com)
(Sunday May 11, 2025 @03:35AM (EditorDavid)
from the battlefield-brawl. dept.)
- Reference: 0177436681
- News link: https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/05/11/0328248/blizzards-overwatch-team-just-voted-to-unionize
- Source link: https://kotaku.com/overwatch-2-blizzard-team-4-union-microsoft-1851779922
" [1]The Overwatch 2 team at Blizzard has unionized ," reports Kotaku:
> That includes nearly 200 developers across disciplines ranging from art and testing to engineering and design. Basically anyone who doesn't have someone else reporting to them. It's the second wall-to-wall union at the storied game maker since the [2] World of Warcraft team unionized last July ... Like unions at Bethesda Game Studios and Raven Software, the Overwatch Gamemakers Guild now has to bargain for its first contract, a process that Microsoft [3]has been accused of slow-walking as negotiations with other internal game unions drag on for years.
>
> "The biggest issue was the layoffs at the beginning of 2024," Simon Hedrick, a test analyst at Blizzard, told Kotaku... "People were gone out of nowhere and there was nothing we could do about it," he said. "What I want to protect most here is the people...." Organizing Blizzard employees stress that improving their working conditions can also lead to better games, while the opposite — layoffs, forced resignations, and uncompetitive pay [4]can make them worse ....
>
> "We're not just a number on an Excel sheet," [said UI artist Sadie Boyd]. "We want to make games but we can't do it without a sense of security." Unionizing doesn't make a studio immune to layoffs or being shuttered, but it's the first step toward making companies have a discussion about those things with employees rather than just shadow-dropping them in an email full of platitudes. Boyd sees the Overwatch union as a tool for negotiating a range of issues, like if and how generative AI is used at Blizzard, as well as a possible source of inspiration to teams at other studios.
>
> "Our industry is at such a turning point," she said. "I really think with the announcement of our union on Overwatch...I know that will light some fires."
The article notes that other issues included work-from-home restrictions, pay disparities and [5]changes to Blizzard's profit-sharing program , and wanting codified protections for things like [6]crunch policies, time off, and layoff-related severance.
[1] https://kotaku.com/overwatch-2-blizzard-team-4-union-microsoft-1851779922
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/24/24205366/world-of-warcraft-developers-form-union-blizzard-entertainment
[3] https://aftermath.site/microsoft-zenimax-cwa-union-contract-negotiations-strike
[4] https://kotaku.com/blizzard-diablo-iv-world-warcraft-remote-work-delays-1850421033
[5] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-03-22/blizzard-entertainment-makes-big-changes-as-overwatch-2-struggles
[6] https://kotaku.com/diablo-iv-activision-blizzard-crunch-delay-release-date-1849871922
> That includes nearly 200 developers across disciplines ranging from art and testing to engineering and design. Basically anyone who doesn't have someone else reporting to them. It's the second wall-to-wall union at the storied game maker since the [2] World of Warcraft team unionized last July ... Like unions at Bethesda Game Studios and Raven Software, the Overwatch Gamemakers Guild now has to bargain for its first contract, a process that Microsoft [3]has been accused of slow-walking as negotiations with other internal game unions drag on for years.
>
> "The biggest issue was the layoffs at the beginning of 2024," Simon Hedrick, a test analyst at Blizzard, told Kotaku... "People were gone out of nowhere and there was nothing we could do about it," he said. "What I want to protect most here is the people...." Organizing Blizzard employees stress that improving their working conditions can also lead to better games, while the opposite — layoffs, forced resignations, and uncompetitive pay [4]can make them worse ....
>
> "We're not just a number on an Excel sheet," [said UI artist Sadie Boyd]. "We want to make games but we can't do it without a sense of security." Unionizing doesn't make a studio immune to layoffs or being shuttered, but it's the first step toward making companies have a discussion about those things with employees rather than just shadow-dropping them in an email full of platitudes. Boyd sees the Overwatch union as a tool for negotiating a range of issues, like if and how generative AI is used at Blizzard, as well as a possible source of inspiration to teams at other studios.
>
> "Our industry is at such a turning point," she said. "I really think with the announcement of our union on Overwatch...I know that will light some fires."
The article notes that other issues included work-from-home restrictions, pay disparities and [5]changes to Blizzard's profit-sharing program , and wanting codified protections for things like [6]crunch policies, time off, and layoff-related severance.
[1] https://kotaku.com/overwatch-2-blizzard-team-4-union-microsoft-1851779922
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/24/24205366/world-of-warcraft-developers-form-union-blizzard-entertainment
[3] https://aftermath.site/microsoft-zenimax-cwa-union-contract-negotiations-strike
[4] https://kotaku.com/blizzard-diablo-iv-world-warcraft-remote-work-delays-1850421033
[5] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-03-22/blizzard-entertainment-makes-big-changes-as-overwatch-2-struggles
[6] https://kotaku.com/diablo-iv-activision-blizzard-crunch-delay-release-date-1849871922
Damn good for them (Score:4, Insightful)
by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
United we bargain divided we beg.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
by Anonymous Coward
what is the end result of this line of thinking? every person is a 1 employee entrepreneurship?
Re: (Score:3)
by phantomfive ( 622387 )
> Why don't you use your talents to create your own software?
They did, in fact, do that.
Re: (Score:1)
by zenlessyank ( 748553 )
And your greedy, racist crackers are no better. Be an anarchist and fuck both sides. They only tell you what to do because you let them.
Re: (Score:1)
by Mirnotoriety ( 10462951 )
Why the minus one score. Everything you said is patently obvious. The woke mind virus attacks the host eventually causing it to self destruct.
can they move staff to an differnt team to de-unio (Score:2)
can they move staff to an differnt team to de-union them?
Re:can they move staff to an differnt team to de-u (Score:4, Insightful)
It would be incredibly risky. OverWatch is still tremendously profitable and popular and if they shake up the team that makes it they run the risk of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs right around the time they need to compete with marvel rivals.
I'm not a fan of OverWatch and team based shooters it's just not my bag but it has a very very specific style graphically and gameplay wise and that comes from a very specific team.
I suspect that leverage is how and why they survived multiple rounds of union busting by professionals.
Re: (Score:2)
Team 4 has already had considerable turnover since 2023 when they launched OW2. It's not the same team that started work on OW2 in 2019, and it's definitely not the Overwatch launch team from 2016. It's been shaken up multiple times.
That being said, the new union will need to negotiate a contract, and they could bake in specific projects into the contract terms. Potentially. Team4 would be foolish not to protect themselves from malicious reassignment.
Reassignment is often desirable (Score:2)
> Team 4 has already had considerable turnover since 2023 when they launched OW2. It's not the same team that started work on OW2 in 2019, and it's definitely not the Overwatch launch team from 2016. It's been shaken up multiple times. That being said, the new union will need to negotiate a contract, and they could bake in specific projects into the contract terms. Potentially. Team4 would be foolish not to protect themselves from malicious reassignment.
Reassignment is often desirable. Working on one project for an extended period becomes tedious. Hence the turnover you mention. Malicious assignments are more likely to be keeping one on the same project. Spending less time creating new stuff and more time maintaining old stuff. Typically a development team is overjoyed when they can hand off the recently launched to a maintenance team and start working on the new incarnation. This time we'll get it right, we'll learn from our mistakes, toss out a lot of th