Overview

• About 160 Blizzard employees in cinematics, animation, narrative and archival roles voted to join the Communications Workers of America.
• Microsoft honored its 2022 labor neutrality agreement by voluntarily recognizing the new Blizzard unit.
• The SFD division becomes the first in-house cinematic and narrative studio group at a Microsoft-owned publisher to unionize and joins nearly 3,000 organized game workers.
• Collective bargaining will begin soon, drawing on recent contracts at Raven Software and ZeniMax QA for wage gains, job-security provisions and transparency measures.
• Organizers pointed to mid-year layoffs of roughly 9,000 staff and concerns over AI-driven investment priorities as key motivations for the vote.