Hearthstone and Warcraft Rumble Developers Form New Union at Blizzard
- Sagar Mankar
- Oct 19
- 2 min read
Blizzard Entertainment developers working on Hearthstone and Warcraft Rumble have officially unionized, forming the latest worker-led group at the Microsoft-owned studio.
The new unit, which includes more than 100 employees across roles such as engineers, designers, artists, QA testers, and producers, will be represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA).
This move follows a growing wave of organizing efforts across Blizzard. Workers on World of Warcraft formed the Warcraft Gamemakers Guild last year, and earlier in 2025, developers from both Diablo and Overwatch also unionized. Just Yesterday, nearly 400 workers from Blizzard’s Platform and Technology department, which oversees the company’s Battle.net platform, unionized.
According to the CWA, more than 1,900 Blizzard employees are now represented by the organization, making it one of the most unionized major studios in the industry.
Microsoft, Blizzard’s parent company, carried out major layoffs across its gaming division this summer, reportedly impacting Warcraft Rumble’s development. For many Blizzard employees, the uncertainty around job security has been a driving force behind organizing. Senior 2D artist Uriah Voth told Aftermath that repeated layoffs on the Hearthstone team motivated him to push for unionization: “It was just this every six-month cadence of experiencing this traumatic event. We need to have some say in these massive decisions that are affecting all of us.”
Another factor was the looming expiration of Microsoft’s neutrality agreement with the CWA, which officially ended in October 2025. That agreement, signed in 2022 during Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, prevented the company from interfering in union efforts. Workers knew that once it expired, forming new unions could become much harder.
Now that the union has been recognized, the next step is contract negotiations. Workers have already outlined priorities such as layoff protections, improved severance packages, recall rights, reduced wage gaps, stronger remote work support, harassment accountability, and limits on AI usage.