Pay rises, AI regulation, and layoff protection: what Activision Blizzard's newly unionised employees want from Microsoft

Last week, Activision Blizzard’s Story and Franchise Development team (SFD) announced to the world it had unionised alongside the Communications Workers of America (CWA). As of writing, a neutrality agreement is in place while negotiations for a union contract are in the works.

It is not the first time the push for unionisation has surged at Activision Blizzard. Three months ago the Overwatch team unionised, 500 staff from the World of Warcraft team unionised last year, and Raven Software recently ratified its first union contract.

But as yet another wave of layoffs have been made at the company as part of Microsoft’s massive cuts across its gaming studios, this push for employee representation appears more necessary than ever.

To find out more about this next stage in Blizzard’s unionisation efforts, as well as what those at the SFD department want, I talked to two recently unionised Blizzard employees about what’s next for the team going forward.

“The industry has had a lot of instability over the last few years, studios have been hit with layoffs, closures, game cancellations. I feel like it’s the most profitable entertainment sector in the world, and the people who work in it should have a piece of that and some stability to their working conditions.”