Blizzard’s Diablo Team Unionizes as Microsoft Layoff Fears Mount

More than 450 designers, engineers, artists and support staff on Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo franchise have voted to unionize with the Communications Workers of America, expanding the wave of labor organization inside Microsoft-owned game studios. Microsoft, honoring a neutrality pledge it made to secure its 2023 acquisition of Activision Blizzard, voluntarily recognized the new unit. The Diablo workers, known internally as Team 3, join recently formed unions representing Blizzard’s Overwatch and World of Warcraft groups as well as ZeniMax QA testers, bringing the number of Microsoft employees organized with the CWA to about 3,500. Developers cited anxiety over Microsoft’s industry-wide cost cutting—including roughly 9,000 layoffs in July—as well as disputes about remote-work rules and the growing use of generative AI as key motivations for collective bargaining. “Passion can’t protect us from job instability,” software engineer Skye Hoefling said in a statement released by the union. The organizing drive comes amid continued turbulence in the games business: Crystal Dynamics, an Embracer subsidiary co-developing the now-cancelled Perfect Dark reboot, announced fresh layoffs on the same day. With technology firms trimming payrolls and experimenting with AI, labor organizers expect further union campaigns across large publishers.