The move to Microsoft has helped the 500-strong World of Warcraft union, which was sparked by the 2021 controversies.

If you missed it, World of Warcraft’s development team, which has approximately 500 members, formed a union last month. It is affiliated with the Communication Workers of America.

The end of a vicious three-year saga is a milestone. It began with horrifying reports of harassment, abuse, and sexual misconduct at Activision Blizzard, which led to the resignation of several employees in 2021.

Activision-Blizzard settled a sexual harassment lawsuit for $18 million with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2022. It settled a separate California civil rights lawsuit for $54 millions, with an additional $47 million going to employees. The settlement concluded that "no widespread or recurring pattern of gender harassment" had occurred.

Before the settlement, Bobby Kotick characterized employee complaints as "a very active labour movement trying to destabilise the business" before insisting he was not "anti-union... I have no aversion towards a union". I have a strong dislike for a union who doesn't follow the rules. Kotick resigned after Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard.

According to a recent interview by The Gamer, WoW senior producer Samuel Cooper said that the change in atmosphere following the acquisition helped union efforts to come to fruition. Microsoft's pro-union stance made Cooper and his coworkers feel more secure in establishing their union: "Legally a company cannot retaliate for you for organizing." It's still scary, but it becomes less so when you see your co-workers standing there with you. "And neutrality allowed us be very visible on the campus."

Cooper also reaffirmed previous statements he made in an IGN article that the waves 2021 departures planted the seed for the current union. "There was this walkout series... the way that it was able come together so rapidly without any prior groundwork really became proof of concept. We knew we could. We knew we could make big differences together and that we shared many values.

While Kotick claimed to not be against unions Activision's anti-union history is pretty obvious. After not recognising a QA team at Raven Software in the year 2022, the US Labor Relations Board found that a number of raises had been withheld as retaliation.

A statement from 2021, which was released in 2010, drew the ire of workers and the Campaign to Organise Digital Employees via CWA. The CWA argued that statements such as "take the time to consider the implications of your signature on the legally binding document presented to you CWA" were "tired anti union talking points straight out of the union busting script".

Cooper says that the CWA has representatives from other video game unions, such as Sega and ZeniMax, on campus to talk to people.

It's not true that the transition from Blizzard to Microsoft was easy for everyone. A rash of layoffs, 1,900 in total, spread across Xbox and Blizzard, left many Blizzard staffers reeling, as they had only recently started working at the company. Microsoft also closed down four studios, including Tango Gameworks, Arkane Austin and others, after the purchase. This move, coupled with Hi-Fi Rush’s real popularity, caused a wave borderline existential fear amongst the industry.

Mind, that's in the context of historic layoffs industry-wide--though it's also in the context of Microsoft spending $68.7 billion dollars on buying a shiny new company. As is typical, these things are a mess. Blizzard’s newly formed union should protect those who remain from a similar fate.