Blizzard's 'Overwatch' Team Just Voted to Unionize (kotaku.com) 36
"The Overwatch 2 team at Blizzard has unionized," reports Kotaku:
That includes nearly 200 developers across disciplines ranging from art and testing to engineering and design. Basically anyone who doesn't have someone else reporting to them. It's the second wall-to-wall union at the storied game maker since the World of Warcraft team unionized last July... Like unions at Bethesda Game Studios and Raven Software, the Overwatch Gamemakers Guild now has to bargain for its first contract, a process that Microsoft has been accused of slow-walking as negotiations with other internal game unions drag on for years.
"The biggest issue was the layoffs at the beginning of 2024," Simon Hedrick, a test analyst at Blizzard, told Kotaku... "People were gone out of nowhere and there was nothing we could do about it," he said. "What I want to protect most here is the people...." Organizing Blizzard employees stress that improving their working conditions can also lead to better games, while the opposite — layoffs, forced resignations, and uncompetitive pay can make them worse....
"We're not just a number on an Excel sheet," [said UI artist Sadie Boyd]. "We want to make games but we can't do it without a sense of security." Unionizing doesn't make a studio immune to layoffs or being shuttered, but it's the first step toward making companies have a discussion about those things with employees rather than just shadow-dropping them in an email full of platitudes. Boyd sees the Overwatch union as a tool for negotiating a range of issues, like if and how generative AI is used at Blizzard, as well as a possible source of inspiration to teams at other studios.
"Our industry is at such a turning point," she said. "I really think with the announcement of our union on Overwatch...I know that will light some fires."
The article notes that other issues included work-from-home restrictions, pay disparities and changes to Blizzard's profit-sharing program, and wanting codified protections for things like crunch policies, time off, and layoff-related severance.
"The biggest issue was the layoffs at the beginning of 2024," Simon Hedrick, a test analyst at Blizzard, told Kotaku... "People were gone out of nowhere and there was nothing we could do about it," he said. "What I want to protect most here is the people...." Organizing Blizzard employees stress that improving their working conditions can also lead to better games, while the opposite — layoffs, forced resignations, and uncompetitive pay can make them worse....
"We're not just a number on an Excel sheet," [said UI artist Sadie Boyd]. "We want to make games but we can't do it without a sense of security." Unionizing doesn't make a studio immune to layoffs or being shuttered, but it's the first step toward making companies have a discussion about those things with employees rather than just shadow-dropping them in an email full of platitudes. Boyd sees the Overwatch union as a tool for negotiating a range of issues, like if and how generative AI is used at Blizzard, as well as a possible source of inspiration to teams at other studios.
"Our industry is at such a turning point," she said. "I really think with the announcement of our union on Overwatch...I know that will light some fires."
The article notes that other issues included work-from-home restrictions, pay disparities and changes to Blizzard's profit-sharing program, and wanting codified protections for things like crunch policies, time off, and layoff-related severance.
can they move staff to an differnt team to de-unio (Score:2)
can they move staff to an differnt team to de-union them?
Re:can they move staff to an differnt team to de-u (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not a fan of OverWatch and team based shooters it's just not my bag but it has a very very specific style graphically and gameplay wise and that comes from a very specific team.
I suspect that leverage is how and why they survived multiple rounds of union busting by professionals.
Re: (Score:2)
Team 4 has already had considerable turnover since 2023 when they launched OW2. It's not the same team that started work on OW2 in 2019, and it's definitely not the Overwatch launch team from 2016. It's been shaken up multiple times.
That being said, the new union will need to negotiate a contract, and they could bake in specific projects into the contract terms. Potentially. Team4 would be foolish not to protect themselves from malicious reassignment.
Reassignment is often desirable (Score:3)
Team 4 has already had considerable turnover since 2023 when they launched OW2. It's not the same team that started work on OW2 in 2019, and it's definitely not the Overwatch launch team from 2016. It's been shaken up multiple times. That being said, the new union will need to negotiate a contract, and they could bake in specific projects into the contract terms. Potentially. Team4 would be foolish not to protect themselves from malicious reassignment.
Reassignment is often desirable. Working on one project for an extended period becomes tedious. Hence the turnover you mention. Malicious assignments are more likely to be keeping one on the same project. Spending less time creating new stuff and more time maintaining old stuff. Typically a development team is overjoyed when they can hand off the recently launched to a maintenance team and start working on the new incarnation. This time we'll get it right, we'll learn from our mistakes, toss out a lot of th
Re: (Score:2)
Reassignment at a game dev house is often a precursor to layoffs, or the beginning of the end for the previous assignment. Possibly both.
Re: (Score:2)
Reassignment at a game dev house is often a precursor to layoffs, or the beginning of the end for the previous assignment. Possibly both.
Historically, not at Blizzard, its usually requested.
Re: (Score:2)
Not for live service titles with a long expected lifespan. Nobody at Valve wants off the CS:GO/CS2 team except as a promotion, for example. Though Valve is kinda weird. In contrast look at Respawn and what they're going through: would you rather have been working on Apex or the Titanfall extraction shooter? If you had been reassigned to the Titanfall title six months ago, you'd be screwed.
Re: (Score:2)
Not for live service titles with a long expected lifespan. Nobody at Valve ...
At Blizzard, reassignment is normally a request. When a Blizzard team needs someone they tend to recruit an experienced dev from a different company, not "poached" from another internal team. Well, except QA. Aspiring designers, artists and programmers are noted and loaned to a dev team occasionally for a small task. It's sort of like an audition for entry level positions. Another exception would be someone in more of a maintenance / legacy product role, they might be offered a "promotion" to a development
Re: (Score:2)
In order to break the union they would have to make quick and brutal changes to the team. You would lose all sense of continuity. 4 years is a long time in the game industry and a bit of turnover here and there even if you ended up with a whole new team ship of Theseus style wouldn't break things.
But if blizzard goes in there to break the union they're going to have to fire basically everyone. You can replace
Re: (Score:2)
Again, it'll pertain to the terms of the contract. Team4 specifically is assigned to Overwatch and Overwatch-related properties, and they can keep it that way except in edge cases specified in the contract. The CWA probably has boilerplate for this sort of thing.
Damn good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
what is the end result of this line of thinking? every person is a 1 employee entrepreneurship?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Why don't you use your talents to create your own software?
They did, in fact, do that.
Re: (Score:2)
Are they extortion groups too?
Yes, they are (Score:1)
They are in fact that, but that owes to the fact that corporations are extractive and exploitative by nature, while humans tend to be sharing and cooperative.
Re: (Score:2)
Only boot lickers think government lists like the DHS watchlist are a good idea. Nice try, fascist. What's next, checking my urine before I fly to make sure I haven't eaten falafel in the past 24 hours?
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but maybe don't do it after you destroy and shut down a popular game and replace it with an inferior micro-transaction-ridden version that swiftly declined in popularity.
Honestly the micro transactions (Score:2)
It does help that the game is perfectly playable and fun without the microtransactions and it helps that it runs on relatively low end hardware. It's been a graphics card shortage for going on 10 years now. You can pick up a $400 mini PC with an AMD 780m a
Re: (Score:2)
What is a Limming?
I think it's a lime-flavored Lemming. [*shrug*]
Re: (Score:1)
fuck off, bot.
I left at the peak... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
My question is, when during that time was the decision made to never make any more 40-man content?
That was the end of WoW for me and most of my guild. That is what we existed for. The move to 20/25 man stuff completely ruined the guild dynamics, forced a perception of 'A' vs 'B' teams, etc. Everything went to shit at that point.
in favor of a union in this case (Score:1, Funny)
I ironically find myself agreeing with the employees here.
Overwatch is such a pablum of woke crap that I endorse anything that will kill it more quickly. Go union!