In the past few years, thousands of games workers under Microsoft’s many umbrellas have unionized due to a neutrality agreement Communications Workers of America (CWA) bargained while the company was in the process of swallowing Activision Blizzard whole. But that doesn’t mean Microsoft has made things easy. Months ago, for example, World of Warcraft developers and those supporting their ongoing contract negotiations demonstrated outside Blizzard’s offices in Irvine, California to let higher-ups know they wouldn’t stand for any more stalling. When I relayed that anecdote to Alison Veneto, an editor of cinematic content on Diablo and Overwatch, during a call this week, she replied, “We did that again yesterday.”
Now, with yet another round of historically horrific layoffs looming, the broader map of the landscape does not exactly favor unionized workers: Microsoft hasn’t officially informed unions about layoffs, and recent negotiations around layoff protections have yet to bear fruit. The clock is very much ticking.
"Our Warcraft team put a layoff proposal on the table a couple weeks ago, and the company had rejected a lot of it,” Veneto told Aftermath. “But now that it's a lot more applicable, the union and Microsoft were negotiating over the weekend on some of the layoff proposals we had on the table."
As for specific protections, top of the list, considering the circumstances, is “really strong severance.”
“We would also like a voluntary severance program, where people who might want to take that severance because they're close to retirement or have other life situations can take it, and so that would reduce the amount of people who are laid off involuntarily,” she said. “We would also like two years of recall rights if your position reopens, which actually happened a good deal after the previous layoffs—and that you would be able to keep your seniority if you come back in a recalled position. But one of the big things is that they own all of these studios. Can we just transfer people into open roles not only at your studio, but other Xbox studios?"
There is precedent here. Zenimax senior encounter designer Morgan Goin said that “many” direct transfers happened after the studio’s second MMO, Project Blackbird, was cancelled last year, and “several” people from Arkane Austin transferred when that studio closed as well.
“The problem is that they generally treat those [potential transfers] as if they were new hires entirely coming into the ecosystem, rather than an internal transfer,” Goin told Aftermath. “There's no reason to re-interview a lot of these people if you know that they're good workers. Almost all of their skills are transferable; they might have even worked on the same engine, depending on which studio it is.”
Recall rights are another big sticking point—again, with precedent.
“In the January 2024 layoffs, a lot of my team was laid off back then,” Mahreen Fatima, a senior environment artist on Diablo, told Aftermath. “Then later in the same year when other environment art positions were opened, we have some recruiters who are super kind, and they did actually try their best—even though we don't have recall rights—to reach out to folks who had been laid off to try to get them positions or interviews first. I know some people who were hired back in.”
Veneto added that Blizzard’s cinematics unit has also rehired many people who were previously let go, but as temp hires rather than full-time. “It’s very unfair to people who worked at the company for ten years or more,” she said.
But all of this is contingent on higher-ups actually playing ball, rather than prematurely taking their ball and going home. The Warcraft union has been negotiating its contract for almost two years, putting it ahead of other Blizzard unions. But the company is doing its damndest to keep the process in first gear.
“[The Warcraft union] is into the big issues now, but it's not moving as fast as we would like, and it's moving really slowly for the other tables,” said Veneto. “Even when we're asking for stuff that's already been approved at the Warcraft table, [the company] is dragging their feet on it, and it really feels like the rest of us should be moving faster.”
“I've personally made statements at the [Diablo] bargaining table to our leadership, to the folks on the other side, like, ‘Hey, you're giving World of Warcraft these agreements so far; you should also give them to us, because it doesn't make sense for Blizzard to suddenly be having an imbalance or disparity in the workplace conditions that they have across their franchises,’” said Fatima. “Never before has there been any question about ‘Oh, I get this much PTO or holiday on World of Warcraft, I'll get the same if I'm on Overwatch or Diablo,’ so for them to hesitate at all … it's going to be obvious that you have a favorite child, and then it's going to cause issues in morale.”
It goes further than that. In some cases, Microsoft is also keeping the act of negotiating itself to a minimum.
“The big thing for [us] is that they have reduced the amount of time that they're bargaining with us per month, so the amount of time we have at the table asking questions, sending proposals back and forth [has decreased],” said Goin. “That time is really vital for getting language that both sides can live with, because ideally the best compromise is one that you're both kind of unhappy with, right? … At the start, we were getting on average about 12 hours of bargaining time over the course of several days [per month]. We’re down to four at [Zenimax Online Studios].”
Microsoft has thrown other wrenches in the process besides. In some cases—for example, at ZOS—Microsoft is refusing to pay salaries of employees while they bargain, forcing CWA to instead make up the difference. At Blizzard, that’s not an issue (albeit only after unions fought higher-ups over it), but the company is keeping all the different studios separated, while Zenimax studios are sometimes allowed to bargain together when they’re discussing the same issue.
And all the while, policies that would tremendously benefit workers in this current moment go untended.
"[A cross-unit session] is where we proposed the reduction in force (RIF) proposal that has been sitting on [the company’s] desk since February,” said Goin. “We have not heard a peep—no discussion, nothing from them."
Zenimax’s QA union, one of the few Microsoft shops that already has its contract, was previously able to secure 60 days of bargaining for laid-off workers, as well as improved severance. There’s now also a grievance and arbitration process in place.
“This means that if there's any violation in how layoffs are executed on the Zenimax QA bargaining unit, we can grieve it,” Autumn Mitchell, a senior QA tester at Zenimax, told Aftermath. “We actually were able to open some grievances over how layoffs were executed last year and were able to fight on behalf of working people and working game developers as a result. That's not something that these other units who are in open bargaining have.”
But units that remain mired in the bargaining process have a different, exceptionally potent tool in their toolbelts: the ability to strike.
“[Zenimax QA] agreed to a no-strike, no-lockout clause, which effectively says they can't lock us out of work and we can't stop work,” said Mitchell. “That keeps the peace while the contract is alive. But these other units that are still bargaining don’t have those terms, so they have a pretty credible strike threat right now.”
“One interesting thing is that because all of our development units are still in bargaining, currently they all still have that credible strike threat,” Goin added. “That means that the development teams behind World of Warcraft, Elder Scrolls Online, [Bethesda Game Studios]—which includes the Elder Scrolls and Fallout IPs—could all theoretically make a credible strike threat, and we are all part of the same parent union.”
That, of course, would be a particularly drastic course of action, but short of that, union members have already—just this week—held a press conference and spoken out publicly, actions that would have put non-union workers at risk. Meanwhile, CWA continues to negotiate with Microsoft over layoff protections even as the clock ticks down.
“I will say, this should be a galvanizing moment for anyone who's not in a union right now,” said Fatima. “Layoffs are going to happen. If they don't happen now, there's going to be more layoffs in the future. We work at Microsoft.”
Even so, unionized workers are trying to fight for everyone at the company—not just themselves.
“We would love for there not to be layoffs, but if there are layoffs, we would like to get protections, and we would like to see that for every worker under Microsoft, if possible,” said Veneto. “We're trying to use the leverage of the bigger teams to push for the smaller teams, because we all want a video game industry that has Call Of Duty and South Of Midnight.”
“This fight, in my opinion, is not just a fight for unions, but a fight for working people,” said Mitchell. “It's a fight for dignity and respect. The issue is that Microsoft has shown over and over again they don't care if you're union or not, they don't care if you've been there for 20 years, or if you've been there for two years, or if you've been there for two months; they're going to treat you like you're disposable, they're going to treat you like you're fodder for their fuel, and that's that. It needs to stop. Period.”
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