'What I Want To Protect Most Here Is the People’ Overwatch…

Summary

Overwatch 2 developers formed a union for protection against sudden layoffs and unfair wages.
Game industry unions are gaining traction globally, with Blizzard's Team 4 being among the latest.
The union formation was spurred by previous Blizzard controversies and major Microsoft layoffs.

The Overwatch 2 team at Blizzard has formed a union of nearly 200 developers, featuring every ground-level artist, engineer, and designer who works on the game. The Overwatch Gamemakers Guild joined the ranks of the Communications Workers of America with the goal of giving Overwatch 2's developers more protection against sudden layoffs, unfair wages, and other issues that have rocked the industry as of late.

Unions are groups of affiliated workers who band together to fight for better wages, treatment, and rights against employers. Though they have a storied history across the globe, they have only started forming in the video game industry in the last few years, with the United Videogame Workers announced at the GDC as one of the more recent and significant examples.

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By Matti Robinson

Now, another massive union has formed in a particularly prolific game studio. As reported by Kotaku, the developers at Team 4, the group responsible for Blizzard’s Overwatch 2, have joined the CWA. Dubbed the Overwatch Gamemakers Guild, this wall-to-wall union includes nearly 200 artists, designers, engineers, and any other non-executive developer at the studio. While this union will not provide full protection against layoffs and the like, it does give the developers a platform from which they can defend themselves and their livelihoods. “We’re not just a number on an Excel sheet,” Overwatch 2 UI artist Sadie Boyd said. “We want to make games, but we can’t do it without a sense of security.”

Team 4 Forms Overwatch Gamemakers Guild Union

The road to unionization began with the controversies surrounding several key Blizzard executives back in 2021. Harassment and abuse by lead developers like Jesse McCree – whose name Overwatch 2 hero Cassidy shared until he was renamed after the lawsuits – gave them not only an objective, but ammunition in the form of precedents to protect themselves with. Pay disparities, return-to-office mandates, and hostile adjustments to Blizzard’s profit sharing over the years only added more fuel to the fire.

That said, according to Overwatch 2 test analyst Simon Hedrick, the major Microsoft layoffs from 2024 were the turning point. “Up to that moment, I’d been really happy in what I was doing,” he admitted. But, when nearly 2,000 Blizzard developers were laid off overnight in the wake of the Microsoft buyout, they realized they had to do something. “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.”

We’re not just a number on an Excel sheet. We want to make games, but we can’t do it without a sense of security.

Team 4 marks the second wall-to-wall union at Blizzard Entertainment; in July 2024, over 500 WoW employees formed the World of Warcraft Gamemakers Guild to protect themselves in a similar fashion. This new Overwatch 2 union now needs to negotiate its first contract – a process Microsoft has notoriously dragged its feet on in the past – but has otherwise hit a major milestone in its declaration. “Our industry is at such a turning point,” Boyd said. “I really think with the announcement of our union on Overwatch... I know that will light some fires.”

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