Quality assurance workers at Blizzard Entertainment's Albany and Austin offices have ratified their first union contract with Microsoft. The group of roughly 70 workers has been in negotiations with Activision Blizzard and Microsoft for three years, since bargaining began in May 2023. The Albany and Austin offices originally unionized separately, but combined their bargaining units during contract negotiations.
"You've got to stick together," Blizzard Austin senior quality analyst Matthew Gant, who's worked at the company for a total of seven years between customer service and QA, told Aftermath in an interview Friday. "You have to be willing to learn. You can't lose hope. You've got to hope for, What can we get tomorrow? How can we better things today?"
The new, three-year contract locks in wage increases (bringing the minimum pay up to $25.50 per hour for all current, unionized workers), AI regulations, a standardized crediting process, disability accommodations, protections for immigrant workers, better severance packages, and restrictions on excessive overtime or "crunch." It's a contract that sets a groundwork for contracts to come, the workers said, and it includes benefits both big and small.
Quality assurance specialist Heather Cameron, a six-year Blizzard veteran, told Aftermath that the contract backdates employees' service time recognition. Blizzard honors its full-time employees when they hit milestones; for five years, Cameron said, people get a sword. QA workers at Blizzard were largely contract workers before 2022, when Blizzard transitioned more than 1,000 QA workers to full-time. Employment dates were set to 2022, not taking into account the years of contract work some had spent dedicated to the company. "This contract now includes service time from Vicarious Visions," Cameron said, referring to Blizzard Albany before it was Blizzard Albany. "There will be people achieving their five-year service award because of that."
Bargaining was slow, on and off for more than three years, she said. It began before Microsoft officially acquired Activision Blizzard, but after Microsoft announced its intent to merge with the company. (Blizzard Albany filed for a National Labor Relations Board election in 2022, and won that vote later that year.) During that process, Microsoft signed a neutrality agreement with Communications Workers of America to prevent union-busting during the organizing process; it would only apply to Activision Blizzard once the merger completed. The group at Blizzard Albany was the second union under Activision Blizzard. Both the Albany and Austin offices worked together to support Diablo 4, so it made sense for them to combine their efforts during contract negotiations. The Austin office unionized in 2024.
"As soon as Texas unionized, it was—all of a sudden—hey, there's people who have the same goals as us," Cameron said. "We started to meet each other and talk to get a sense of who we were and begin to work together."
Brock Davis, a Blizzard Albany test analyst who's been with the company for five years, told Aftermath that the three-year long negotiation was a challenge for the unit. There were long stretches of time just spent waiting for movement or meetings. "Keeping people updated on what's going on with the bargaining process when nothing's happening," he said. "That's very hard."
The three-year process can be demoralizing, especially in the video game industry, where there is a lot of turnover. Layoffs have been especially frequent over the past several years, with people coming and going from studios. Keeping people engaged wasn't easy, but Gant said that video game industry workers are primed to work together.
"Our industry, our art form, is filled with stories about people overcoming the odds against greater numbers, right?" he said. "They do it by making friends along the way, sticking together, and never really giving up. We're already kind of built for this. Look at the stories we're telling. How did they win? By sticking together and using that collective action and never losing hope."
Blizzard Albany and Austin QA union's contract ratification means there are now a handful of union contracts in the video game industry, including at Sega of America and Microsoft. There's been an increase in recognized unions, but the majority of them remain in negotiations—some for years. Davis, Cameron, and Gant hope other unions in the video game industry can look to their contract ratification as a source of hope.
"There's this common saying about planting a tree whose shade you might never sit in," Cameron said. "We planted a little sapling, and we're getting some of the leaves right now. But with time and effort, and more people participating in this—it should be something people know that could get involved in—we can grow that into something even bigger that grows a whole canopy of shade, so to speak, for so many more people."
