Union interest in the video game industry has passed the tipping point

The last few years seemed to be pretty good for the video game industry, if you only look at profits. There's an abundance of incredible, highly rated games to play – The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Baldur's Gate 3, Alan Wake 2, among so many more – as the industry returns to growth, expected to swell to a $185 billion valuation this year. After all that success, it's probably surprising to hear that 2024 has been a devastating year for the people who make video games: More than 20,000 game industry workers have been laid off since the start of 2023.

In what has been one of the most volatile periods in the video game industry, there is an upside: increased interest in union organizing means workers are moving toward workplace protections. After years of grassroots work on social media and in the halls of gatherings like the Game Developers Conference over the past decade, workers are organizing into unions in their fight against a notorious culture of overwork, low pay and harassment. Unions are on the rise in the gaming industry, as workers seek to make meaningful, sustainable change.

Several of the industry's largest companies now have union representation for employees. ZeniMax QA workers under Microsoft are officially unionized to start the year – and the company's neutrality agreement will soon apply to Activision Blizzard employees now under Microsoft. Unions there have continued to pop up, with wall-to-wall unions at both Bethesda Game Studios and with the World of Warcraft team. Alongside them, workers at CD Projekt Red and Avalanche Studios organized for a seat at the table as well. Behind the scenes, workers across the industry meet with their co-workers to eventually do the same.