Overview

• More than 160 members of Blizzard’s Story and Franchise Development team voted to join Communications Workers of America Local 9510, and Microsoft voluntarily recognized the outcome.
• This unit is the first in-house cinematic, animation and narrative studio in North America to form a union, expanding labor representation beyond game development and QA.
• The new SFD union joins nearly 3,000 CWA-represented workers across Microsoft’s gaming divisions, following organizing wins at Raven Software, ZeniMax QA, World of Warcraft and Overwatch 2.
• Organizers pointed to Microsoft’s mid-2025 layoffs of roughly 9,000 roles and the company’s emphasis on AI investments as catalysts for demands for transparency, pay and job security.
• No collective-bargaining agreement has been reported yet, and upcoming negotiations will establish standards for in-house narrative and cinematic production across Microsoft’s studios.