The Hearthstone team and the remaining crew from Warcraft Rumble have officially voted to organize with the Communications Workers of America, joining more than 1,900 Blizzard employees now represented by the union. The CWA says the new bargaining unit represents “over 100 workers including software engineers, designers, artists, quality assurance testers, and producers,” making this the fifth distinct Blizzard group to unionize. The move follows a wave of staff departures at Blizzard and comes only months after most of the Warcraft Rumble team were laid off when future development was canceled.
In its announcement, the CWA carried quotes from developers about why they organized. Dominic Calkosz, a game designer on Hearthstone and a member of the organizing committee, argued that individual complaints were easy to ignore, so the team “chose to organize in pursuit of a collective voice and a force of solidarity that the industry cannot ignore.”
QA analyst and committee member Carol Blean added, “I support our union because we deserve to be heard and respected … Real solutions, not free therapy or relocation suggestions, are needed to address being overworked, underpaid, and forced into unreasonable choices.”
This vote is part of a larger context of industry consolidation and job cuts following Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Developers at Blizzard have repeatedly pointed to layoffs, canceled projects, and management decisions as reasons to seek a collective voice. The Diablo team, for instance, organized and later received recognition from Microsoft, setting a recent precedent within the company.
Organizing efforts like this one are also a response to the churn in mobile and live service projects, where teams can shrink or vanish overnight. Warcraft Rumble itself had a turbulent year after Blizzard scaled back the project, leaving a skeleton crew that has now joined Hearthstone staff in the union drive. Union announcements do not instantly change working conditions, but they do change the balance of power in negotiations. With multiple Blizzard groups now organized under the CWA, developers have a more straightforward path to bargaining over pay, staffing, and workplace protections across teams big and small.
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