How Game Developers Can Unionize After Activision Blizzard

On July 28, hundreds of Activision Blizzard employees went on strike to demand better working conditions for women, BIPOC workers, and LGBTQ +.

The strike came a week after the state of California sued the corporation, alleging sexual harassment and discrimination at work. The details of the lawsuit are damning: Former Blizzard game director Alex Afrasiabi allegedly harassed multiple women at the company’s annual BlizzCon event. Male senior management also hung out in a hotel room that many called the “Cosby suite” in honor of the alleged – and later convicted – rapist Bill Cosby. Women frequently faced an overwhelming frat boy culture, which included “bucket crawls” in which drunken men roamed the office harassing women and making sexual advances.

While significant, the #ActiBlizzWalkout story is not an anomaly. The strike was a response to disruptive working conditions in the gaming industry in general, including but not limited to empowering, racist and sexist. cultural practices; pay inequity; exploitative labor practices by contract; and development crisis.

In recent years, we have seen unprecedented organizing among gaming workers to fight these conditions. At Quantic Dream, the French game studio, workers have for years spoken out against a deeply entrenched sexist culture. In 2019, more than 150 workers left League of Legends developer Riot’s Los Angeles office to protest forced arbitration and endemic sexist culture. In 2020, in the Communication Workers of America Campaign to Organize Digital Employees We had the privilege of organizing with predominantly BIPOC, queer, and female hired game writers at Lovestruck to win the first successful strike in the history of our industry. Workers at game development companies have discovered that their power lies in taking collective action against their bosses and have used their collective strength to challenge power dynamics and inequalities in their workplace. The systemic problems of our industry require systemic solutions: unions.

Image: Activision Blizzard

Despite the increasing frequency of the word in gaming industry circles, it is worth emphasizing what exactly a union is and how it works. Because in 2021, organizing is more necessary than ever. It can empower workers and prevent the erosion of labor laws that allows companies like Activision to run amok without consequence.

A union provides an economic security floor for workers facing systemic oppression (BIPOC, queer people and women, in particular). A union allows workers to level the playing field and rebalance uneven power dynamics where executives have unilateral power over our work and our lives. A union can result in better wages, better working conditions, and better health care.

We constantly speak on Twitter, at gaming industry conferences, and on private Discords about the many instances of sexism and racism in our industry, but rarely do we discuss the real systemic underpinnings that enable the rampant exploitation and abuse of underserved workers and low income. . The bosses and managers of the gaming industry may call their employees “family” and throw them a pizza party every now and then, but they will fight tooth and nail against workers who want any semblance of agency and democracy in their work lives. In a crude display of this willingness to end unions, look no further than hiring Activision Blizzard. WilmerHale “Union Avoidance” Law Firm to purportedly investigate the culture of the company immediately after the lawsuit.

A union can address the deep and essential connection between economic rights and social justice. The reality is that when marginalized gambling workers experience inequality, harassment or abuse, they do not always have the same degree of economic security and independence to push back, as do their more privileged counterparts.

If non-men and racialized people face pay inequality with their male counterparts of the same title and experience, transparent union pay scales, which are established through collective bargaining and then published publicly as part of an eventual contract, can level the gap. playing field. If a queer worker wants to speak out against homophobia and transphobia in the workplace or in our games, “just cause” protections can be put in place in a union contract to help ensure that they will not be fired, unless the company can demonstrate financial need or a history of poor job performance.

Ultimately, a union allows workers financial autonomy and the ability to speak out about their working conditions without their bosses retaliating against them. It provides a form of protection for workers in precarious situations during times of deep uncertainty.

Union organizing also has a unique property for any form of activism: by its very nature, it requires bridging divisions in our workplace and our working class to be successful. Union organizing teaches us that regardless of our personal problems and personal backgrounds, we all benefit from supporting each other. Whether you are a white male seeking better accreditation practices or a queer developer of color seeking to end racist pay inequalities, we all have a better chance when we come together.

Game workers unite On twitter

We often hear gaming workers say that they are eager to have a union that can solve their problems. Well here’s the thing: no one is coming to save us. We workers must step up and save ourselves. We have to stop running from company to company, always looking for greener pastures. Millions of workers before us have organized their unions and taken back their agency. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

There is no doubt that #ActiBlizzWalkout made a mark on the gaming industry. It’s thanks to those workers that Activision Blizzard could become a model game studio where workers really have authority over their work. This moment has inspired others in the industry and is yet another spark to propel our movement for gaming worker power toward that larger national vision that we all share.

Get organized where you are. Stop, plant your feet, and take deep roots in the workplaces and communities you’re already in. There will never be a magical national union that appears instantly to solve our problems; We must start by organizing our studio, our publishing house, our company. We have to get a couple, first, tiny grips of worker power in our industry, and from there we can build a truly national and international movement, from the bottom up.

Here are concrete steps you can take to start creating those handholds today:

If you are a game worker who wants to organize your workplace:

• Get in touch with me and the CODE-CWA organizers here
• Attend the organizers training here

If you are a fan who wants game developers to have a better quality of life inside and outside the workplace:

• Educate yourself and your community about workers’ rights
• Don’t stop calling for boycotts every time workers speak up,
• Follow the example of workers and focus your agency

• Put pen to paper and commit in writing to respect your employees’ freedom of association by signing a union card verification neutrality agreement

Emma Kinema is a former game developer and current campaign leader for the CODE-CWA Initiative of Communications Workers of America, which organizes tech and gaming workers through Alphabet Workers Union, Voltage Game Writer Punch, Union Change.org, NPR Digital Media United, Glitch Union, Mobilize Union, Blue state union, and more.