From unions to strikes, this has been a busy week | Kaser Focus

If there’s a hot word for this week, it’s undoubtedly “union.” If you’d asked me at the beginning of the week what stories I thought I was going to see — I don’t know what answer I would have given, but “unionization efforts from within the industry’s top studios” probably wouldn’t have been the first or second response. But I’m pleased to see these developments in the industry nonetheless, especially after months and months and months of nothing but layoffs stories.

First we have the formation of the OneBGSUSA union at Bethesda Game Studios (which technically happened last week, but I didn’t talk about it in the last KF). 241 workers formed the first wall-to-wall union at a Microsoft studio. Then, this week, the World of Warcraft team formed the World of Warcraft Game Makers Guild, another wall-to-wall union that consists of over 500 members. In both cases, the unions formed following Microsoft’s 2022 labor neutrality agreement with the Communication Workers of America (the parent union). Microsoft has said it will engage in good faith negotiations with both unions.