Developer of the Boston based Game Studio Proletariat announced plans to unionize on Tuesday. If successful, around 60 employees will continue to work there World of Warcraftis new dragonflight extension would join the growing ranks of organized labor through parent company Activision Blizzard and beyond.
The group, dubbed the Proletariat Workers Alliance, is unionizing with the Communications Workers of America and says it supports an overwhelming majority of the studio’s qualified staff. While it has petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for a union election, it is also asking Activision Blizzard to voluntarily recognize the union in a break with the call of Duty
“Everyone in the video game industry knows Activision Blizzard’s reputation for creating a hostile work environment. When we heard earlier this year that Blizzard was planning to acquire Proletariat, we started discussing how we could protect the amazing culture we’ve created here. ” Dustin Yost, a software engineer at the studio, it says in a press release. “By forming a union and negotiating a contract, we can ensure that we can continue to do our best and create innovative experiences at the frontier of game development.”
The Proletariat Workers Alliance would be unique among gaming unions in that it represents all non-management employees in the studio and not just QA employees as is the case with Raven Software, Blizzard Albany and union efforts currently at Microsoft’s Bethesda Studios
Activision Blizzard did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether it would voluntarily recognize the union or seek to fight it, as it has made prior efforts within the company. The Publisher recently attempted to block the Blizzard Albany union on the grounds that it helps the development of games such as DiabloIV. Ultimately, the NLRB didn’t buy it, but in the case of Proletariat, those concerns would be moot anyway, since a studio-wide vote is exactly what workers are asking for.
proletariat was Founded in 2012 by former developers of Zynga, Insomniac Games and Harmonix, funded by venture capital and investments from companies like Take-Two. It is the most famous release before coming to Blizzard spellbreaka free-to-play magic shooter released in 2020. The game finally became closed last Junehowever, and proletariat was acquired to work on it World of Warcraft the following month.
“At Proletariat, we’ve always emphasized taking care of each other as people, and we’re committed to preserving the best of our studio,” said James Van Nuland, an Associate Games Producer at Proletariat, today. “We hang together.”