GDC Festival of Gaming today released its State of the Game Industry survey, where it revealed insights collected from over 2,300 industry professionals. One of those insights is that game developers seem to be, by and large, in favor of unions. A whopping 82% said they would join one, which is a big leap from last year’s results, which could be down to how many unions are now part of the industry.
The exact results, according to GDC’s survey, are 82% of respondents saying they would support the unionization of the games industry, 5% saying they would not, and 13% saying they were unsure. Compare this with the same results from 2025, which showed that 58% said yes,10% said no, and 31% being unsure — though GDC itself did not that the numbers don’t really compare since they changed the question since the previous year.
A similar chart from the report shows that 62% of respondents said they weren’t part of a union, but were interested, 12% said they were part of a union, and 16% saying they weren’t interested (10% said it didn’t apply to them). Of those who were in a union, only 2% were part of a company union, and 10% were part of an industry-wide union.
Out of the respondents, no one 18-24 opposed unionization, and 86% of those under 45 were in favor. Similarly, 88% of those who’ve been laid off in the last two years and 87% of those with an income less than $200,000 per year were in favor. On other side, 58% of leaders from companies with at least 20 employees said they were in favor, while 24% were unsure.
Currently existing unions in the industry
Game developers have been slowly unionizing over the course of the last few years. The major wave seems to have begun in the quality assurance sector, as one of the first recognized unions — Game Workers Alliance — came from workers at Raven Software. Similar union votes cropped up at Sega of America, Experis, Bethesda Game Studios and Activision Blizzard.
2025 also saw the rise of unions fighting for workers rights. In addition to the aforementioned union organizing, SAG-AFTRA also partook of a highly publicized battle with major video game companies to protect the rights of video game performers. Several video game companies have also recognized these unions and begun contract negotiations.
This will likely seem especially important in the wake of continued layoffs. As the report notes, those who have been laid off within the past two years are overwhelmingly in favor of unions. Recently, Ubisoft Workers Canada has been rallying behind the workers of the recently closed Ubisoft Halifax, which resulted in the loss of 71 jobs.