With support from Microsoft, ZeniMax Studios have voted to form the company’s first union in the U.S., according to the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union.
A “supermajority” of around 300 quality assurance workers at Microsoft’s video game subsidiary ZeniMax Studios voted in December to form the nation’s largest video game union, with results certified on Tuesday.
Microsoft bought ZeniMax for $7.5 billion in 2021, gaining ownership of its popular video game franchises such as Doom, The Elder Scrolls, and Fallout.
When the employees announced they were unionizing, Microsoft vowed to remain neutral and let the employees make their own decision about joining, CWA said.
According to the CWA, when Microsoft learned of its employee’s plans to unionize, it vowed to remain neutral and let the employees make their own decision about joining.
“Microsoft has lived up to its commitment to its workers and let them decide for themselves whether they want a union,” CWA President Chris Shelton wrote in a statement. “Other video game and tech giants have made a conscious choice to attack, undermine, and demoralize their own employees when they join together to form a union. Microsoft is charting a different course, which will strengthen its corporate culture and ability to serve its customers, and should serve as a model for the industry and as a blueprint for regulators.”
Microsoft’s compliance in part comes from a promise it made to try and build public support for its $68.7 billion acquisition of rival video game developer, Activision Blizzard.
In June, Microsoft agreed to a legally binding pact with the CWA union to stay neutral if Activision Blizzard workers sought to form a union. The company likely made the deal to appeal to federal regulators and the Biden administration, as they sued to block Microsoft’s planned Activision Blizzard acquisition in December.
The labor and antitrust implications of the merger would be massive, in part justifying the federal government’s concerns.
Two small groups of Activision Blizzard workers were the first to certify unions last year in Middleton, Wisconsin, and Albany, New York.
Quality assurance workers are often seen as expendable at video game companies, a stigma that has led to their mistreatment in the past.
“This is an empowering victory that allows us to protect ourselves and each other in a way we never could without a union,” said Skylar Hinnant, a Senior Quality Assurance Tester in a statement. “Our hope and belief is that this is the year in which game workers across the country exercise their power and reshape the industry as a whole.”
