Overview

• About 160 Blizzard Story and Franchise Development employees voted to join the Communications Workers of America, and Microsoft honored the outcome under its 2022 neutrality agreement
• The SFD unit, responsible for in-house cinematics, animation, narrative content, archiving and franchise history, is the first studio of its kind in North America to form a union
• This new cohort boosts the total to nearly 3,000 organized workers across Microsoft’s gaming divisions, including recent unions at Raven Software and ZeniMax
• Organizers pointed to fading job stability after Microsoft’s rounds of layoffs and a need for transparency and fair policy application as primary drivers
• The team will now embark on negotiations for its inaugural contract, following the extended bargaining precedents set by Raven Software and ZeniMax