unionize

The team making Diablo 4 and other entries in Blizzard’s action-RPG franchise is the latest inside of Microsoft to unionize. Workers say the move is to help them negotiate fair terms around issues like like layoffs and remote work. “Passion can’t protect us from job instability,” software engineer Skye Hoefling said in a press release. “Our union allows us to focus on making magical experiences for our players instead of worrying about the unstable job industry.”

The Diablo team, known within Blizzard as Team 3, joins the Overwatch and World of Warcraft teams in organizing with the Communications Workers of America (CMA). That national organization signed an agreement with Microsoft during its acquisition of Activision Blizzard that would keep the tech giant neutral on all internal union drives, erasing some of the barriers that usually stop workers from organizing.

Microsoft has voluntarily recognized the Diablo developers’ union and they will now get in line to begin bargaining their first contract. Over 300 ZeniMax QA testers at the company won their first contract earlier this summer.

A “passion tax” for working in games

So what made the Diablo team want to jump on the union train within Blizzard? Part of it is the way companies use “getting to make games” as a kind of excuse to establish worse working conditions than those often experienced by workers in competing roles in tech and entertainment. “My entire career as a developer has seen my peers and I paying the ‘passion tax’ for working in an industry that we love,” software engineer Nav Bhatti said in a press release. “At some point you have to choose between fight or flight, and forming a union is us doing just that — standing our ground in the industry.”

Workers also laid out specific concerns around remote work flexibility, budget cuts, and the growing influence of AI in the development process. Mass layoffs in early 2024 were one of the catalysts. A battle over remote work that began back in 2023 was another. A mandatory return-to-office policy forced people hired during the pandemic to relocate and limited which talent teams could hire. “There’s no real argument against remote work, except the control part, where now they know where you are and what you’re doing,” Blizzard producer Ryan Claudy told Aftermath.

AI creep is here

The sudden rise of AI, which Microsoft is placing $80 billion bets will completely reshape the modern economy, is also on the Diablo team’s mind. “[Generative AI] is starting to creep in a lot,” Diablo 4 producer Kelly Yeo told Aftermath. “I can only speak for art, where in the visual development stage, if people don’t feel like they have concept art support, they’ll just toss things into Stable Diffusion or whatever and then do mood boards and stuff and give that to the teams to give them guidance.”

She continued, “There is definitely a growing concern across most of the artists like ‘Is this going to replace us?’” Other game teams have already come under fire for AI art that makes it into the finished product. A Call of Duty associate director at Treyarch recently told IGN that only work hand-crafted by the team is allowed into the game, but that AI slop sometimes gets through “accidentally.” And some developers at King recently told Mobilegamer that Microsoft was pressuring them to incorporate AI into all aspects of their workflows.

Despite notable unions forming at Sega of America and some overseas European game studios, most of the organizing in the U.S. so far has been confined to Microsoft-owned companies due to the neutrality agreement. Big publishers like Electronic Arts and Take-Two, which have undergone their own ruthless cost-cutting efforts in the past year, have so far remained impervious to workers organizing. If annual mass layoffs continue, that might change.

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