Blizzard’s Battle.net Workers Vote to Unionize Under CWA

Nearly 400 workers from Blizzard Entertainment’s Platform and Technology department, which oversees the company’s Battle.net platform, have officially voted to unionize under the Communications Workers of America (CWA).

Blizzard’s Battle.net Workers Vote to Unionize Under CWA

The newly formed unions are split into two groups: one representing software engineers, designers, project managers, and other tech-focused staff, and another covering localization, quality assurance, and customer support workers. According to a CWA spokesperson, the decision to divide into two bargaining units was “mutually agreed” upon by both Microsoft and the union.

Microsoft has already recognized the unions after employees signed authorization cards and voted through an online portal. The timing was significant as workers managed to finalize their vote just before the expiration of Microsoft’s neutrality agreement with the CWA. That agreement, signed in 2022 during Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, streamlined the unionization process by removing the need for National Labor Relations Board oversight.

Unionization isn’t new to Blizzard. Teams working on World of Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, and even Blizzard Albany’s QA division have already organized in recent years. What’s different now is the scale: Battle.net is the backbone of Blizzard’s online ecosystem, powering everything from account management to esports infrastructure, making this unionization one of the largest groups yet.

From here, the unions will begin negotiating their first contracts with Microsoft and Activision Blizzard. Only two other unions under the company umbrella—Raven Software’s QA team and ZeniMax Media QA workers—have reached contract agreements so far, and both took years of negotiations.

Looking ahead, workers like Alex Kohn, a senior data scientist, say they want to secure protections around layoffs and return-to-office policies. Fair treatment for QA and customer service staff is also a priority.