World of Warcraft support studio to form third union under Activision Blizzard

As two unions under Activision Blizzard move forward into contract negotiations, a third subsidiary studio is organizing. Workers at Boston-based World of Warcraft support studio Proletariat are unionizing under the Communications Workers of America, just like Raven Software and Blizzard Albany before them. Proletariat’s group of 57 workers, which includes all of the studio’s positions except management, is called Proletariat Workers Alliance. They announced their petition in late December.

Activision Blizzard has not responded to the request for voluntary recognition.

Proletariat Workers Alliance is looking to secure the company’s current paid time-off plan, as well as flexible remote options, healthcare benefits, and ensuring transparency and diversity are top priorities. Activision Blizzard has not responded to Polygon’s request for comment.

“At Proletariat and with our peers across the industry, many of us love our jobs,” Proletariat senior engineer Dustin Yost told Polygon. “We at Proletariat care a lot about our team. We want to make sure we have a real voice in our future, in order to have a positive impact on our company for the benefit of our team, our company, and anyone enjoying the content we create. Doing right by each other is the goal here.”

With Activision Blizzard’s recognition of the union pending, Proletariat Workers Alliance will likely go to a vote with the National Labor Relations Board — the same process that both Raven Software and Blizzard Albany’s QA unions went through. Activision Blizzard challenged the election in both studios’ cases, and sought to expand the proposed bargaining unit beyond QA testers.

Companies sometimes fight to expand the size of a unit to water down union organization efforts, to increase the probability of a union vote failing. But an NLRB ruling in 2022 made it easier for organizers to unionize smaller groups within a company (called micro-units), which puts the onus on a company to provide overwhelming evidence that a group should be opened up.

CWA has filed multiple unfair labor complaints against Activision Blizzard for its alleged union-busting tactics; Activision Blizzard representatives have denied any wrongdoing. For Proletariat, the expanded unit likely won’t be an issue: The group is already looking to include all non-managerial workers.

Seth Sivak founded Proletariat in 2012, and the studio operated independently, working on games like Spellbreak and StreamLegends until Activision Blizzard acquired the studio in 2022. Sivak is now vice president of development at Blizzard Entertainment, overseeing the Boston-based Proletariat studio, which is now working on World of Warcraft. Allison Brown, a software engineer developer in testing, told Polygon that union talk started before the acquisition, but around the rumblings of working with the company.

“There was a concern that suddenly becoming part of a bigger organization that we might lose some of the things that made Proletariat special,” Brown said.

She continued: “No matter how much trust we have for management […], things can change. I started in the industry 14 years ago, I’ve been laid off more than once. I’ve watched benefits change and get worse. There’s no control over it. But if we’re bargaining collectively, if we get these things in writing, there are mechanisms in place to make sure that we have a voice.”

Raven Software and Blizzard Albany both won their union votes in 2022. The next step for them is negotiating a contract with Activision Blizzard; both unions will have separate contracts. Should Proletariat’s workers vote in favor of their union, they’ll do the same, again with their own, separate contract.

Activision Blizzard’s response to previous unionizing efforts has been in contrast with Microsoft’s so-called labor neutrality agreement. The agreement, signed with CWA, means that Microsoft will not interfere with organizing efforts at the company — neither with current Microsoft workers, or with workers potentially joining Microsoft as part of its $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard (currently subject to a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit).

That agreement was tested late last year when QA workers at ZeniMax Media, responsible for franchises like The Elder Scrolls, Doom, and Fallout, announced their intention to unionize. Microsoft agreed to recognize the union after a speedy vote outside of the NLRB; the company was able to sidestep a lot of the bureaucracy because of the neutrality agreement. ZeniMax QA workers voted through union authorization cards and an online portal, where a supermajority of workers pledged support for the union.

“Proletariat as a company has always had strong values of transparency and respectful collaboration and understand why those values are important to us,” Yost said. “We believe that unionization is the culmination of these values, and we want to work collaboratively with management. We hope they’re going to choose to remain neutral and voluntarily recognize our union.”