Its already started, within Blizzard. Communications Workers of America Union across the WoW and Overwatch teams.

Also, no union employees at Blizzard were impact by Microsoft's Xbox layoffs/restructuring.

Goes to show, Unions are important and work. The best time to unionize was several years ago. The next best time is now.

This was the main issue - they DID unionize, so MS had to choose between firing everyone and firing no one. So they fired everyone.

There's a good chance that Blizzard was spared a lot of this round of layoffs because they're in labor contract negotiations right now.

they've been treated like shit for 30+ years (at least in america). I spent a few years early in my career in gaming and once I left I never looked back, it's a horror show. Crunch, constant 'there are 1000 people who want your job' pressure from management whenever you complain about crunch, low pay (even if you were working 40hours a week), terrible benefits (vacation, get real), ship a successful game probably get laid off anyways, etc etc.

Working in games I thought working for a bit 'straight' corporation would be literal hell, I was very very wrong.

Just to say, if they haven't organized by now I'm not sure what it would actually take.

> if software engineering unionization ever starts to take hold

So, you know, do that. <insert "c'mon, do something" meme>

With the current trajectory of AI, I see unionisation efforts dead in the water.

It needed to happen 10+ years ago - unfortunately we've missed the window to unionize