'It is a really good time to be at Blizzard' — devs talk ratifying union contract and what's next

Hi there! Ahead of the new work week, I wanted to share a great conversation I had with a few members of Blizzard Entertainment's different unions, who had some encouraging comments about the group's recently ratified contract, locking in several terms and benefits for workers across the company.

It's notable that this win came just days ahead of BlizzCon 2026, meaning the developers of the new StarCraft shooter, Diablo 5, World of Warcraft: Forever, and Blizzard's other projects could take a moment to breathe and be proud of everything they've accomplished, all while knowing they've secured historic protections.

Hi! Before continuing reading, please subscribe so that you never miss a new post from me. Right now it's free, but if you want to help me out, I accept donations over on Ko-Fi, and you can always follow me on Bluesky if you have a tip for a story or just want to talk.

A contract well over a year in the making

As Xbox undergoes its so-called reset under CEO Asha Sharma, including spinning off multiple studios and laying off thousands of employees, the numerous unions under the company's gaming division aren't staying idle.

Blizzard Entertainment is now heavily unionized, with several different units including the development teams of Diablo, Hearthstone, Overwatch, World of Warcraft, as well as the Story and Franchise team, Blizzard Albany QA, and the Battle.net team. Together, these unions encompass almost 1,900 workers across the storied studio.

The teams are all celebrating some big wins, coming off of huge announcements at BlizzCon 2026, but also having achieved a studio-wide ratified contract. It wasn't easy, though. The initial bargaining began a year and a half ago, and progress wasn't coming along quickly, as changes on both sides kept resetting many of the talks.

"Every time a new bargaining chair came in, everybody had to relearn, 'Okay, what's this person's style of communication? What's the best way to talk to them?' All that sort of stuff. So that actually kind of slowed us down by nearly a year," explains Paul Cox, senior product support manager on the World of Warcraft team.

Discussions were eventually aided by the fact that the World of Warcraft team was well ahead in its negotiations compared to the other units, to the point the various teams began coordinating and mobilizing alongside the World of Warcraft group in order garner the same wins.

"After we certified and we saw that WoW (World of Warcraft) was leading the charge, our messaging to our unit was consistently 'We should be mobilizing with WoW, because WoWs wins are our wins," says Mahreen Fatima, a senior environment artist on Diablo 5. "So if we help them get the best contract possible, it's going to mean good things for us too, and in the end, it meant that we got the same contract, so it was a win-win."

"I think that once we solidified the bargaining chair on the business side and on our side, we were basically both like, 'All right, let's do it, let's go.' And we went from having two or three bargaining sessions a month to two or three bargaining sessions a week," Cox says, adding that it all culminated in a massive "five-day, 70-hour, in-person bargaining session" that hammered out the final details.

Blizzard's workers secured some huge wins, including additional severance pay for anyone that is laid off, as well guaranteed hybrid work and 14 months of "recall rights," which mean that anyone who is laid off can also be called back into another position at Blizzard that fits their skill set. I was curious if there were any particular pain points or contentious fights in the bargaining, but the team indicates things went fairly smoothly.

"We were able to convince them that recall rights was a good thing for them. It's not just a good thing for us. Blizzard typically uses a lot of self-published internal tools, you will never get experience using them anywhere else. Being able to just [say] 'Hey, instead of spinning up a new person that's going to take roughly a year before we can actually let that person go off on their own, we just bring back someone that we used to have.' That's beneficial for the company," Cox says, adding that the handful of pain points the bargaining team did run into were usually just misunderstandings, with both workers and management agreeing on a point but not explaining it the right way at first.

"There were a lot of things in there that honestly, when we went into it, we thought that they would be much bigger fights than they actually were. Getting hybrid locked in, for example, pretty much every other Activision studio that is not unionized is in-office four or five days a week at this point," he explains. "So we were like, 'Okay, this is going to be the knock-down, drag-out fight. All right, here we go. We want to lock in hybrid' And they went, 'Yeah, sure.'"

Negotiating, by design, means compromising, and the workers did have to adjust on a few things in hammering out this contract, but none of it jeopardized the major wins that were secured.

"I think for recall rights, we asked for longer, 18 months or two years or something. And we landed on the 14 months, which is still a great win that we're happy with," says Alison Veneto, an editor on the Story and Franchise team.

"We asked for more work-from-home, but we did lock in the hybrid schedule. Like, that's just part of the negotiation. So I think on a lot of things, we asked for even more, but we landed in a place that we were still happy with, which is why we moved the contract forward."

Another hot button issue is the use of generative AI, or the lack thereof. Nothing is clear right now, but with this contract, Blizzard's workers will be discussing and negotiating with management over its usage (if any) across future games and projects.

"What that means is that if there's AI being introduced, that affects our workflows. Our craft, our skill sets, our players, our games. We now critically have a seat at the table to be able to negotiate and bargain over the impacts with leadership, whereas without this contract, in the before times...leadership would be able to just introduce stuff and we would not have had the ability to have a say in it," explains Fatima.

"There's a lot of anxiety in the air because Blizzard is a company that prides itself on its handcrafted feel and look, and that takes time and effort to make," she adds. "And I think people want to know that we have some security in being able to continue to defend and be a part of the handcrafted feel that Blizzard has become known for. I'm really excited about being able to at least have a voice and a seat at the table to continue to protect and defend what Blizzard is known for, from a craft angle, because I'm an artist."

Everyone on the team believes that the support from players and fans — from simply voicing support online to showing up in-person for the rallies against the recent Xbox layoffs — played a big part in showing Blizzard's management how serious the unions are.

"Our mobilizing teams for our different units did such amazing job turning out at rallies and they were very visible at the Blizzard campus and in our chats...I think by the time we got to this mega bargaining session, the company had seen the enormous support for the union throughout the workers in the company," says Veneto.

That continued into BlizzCon itself, where the unions had a physical presence, and the team says fans had nothing but love and support for everything they were doing.

"We were just inundated with folks who just wanted to come up and say like how proud they were of us. They were really happy for us. We were also giving out pins to celebrate, we had one for each of the units. We had 7,000 pins in total and they all went like hotcakes. And there was not a single person who was even remotely negative," says Cox, adding that some people were even inspired and asking for advice on unionizing their own workplaces.

Looking ahead, the teams at Blizzard are proud of everything they've accomplished and eager to continue working on new games, and there's a sense of relief and security that's felt absent across much of the games industry over the last several years.

"I will highlight that it is a really good time to be at Blizzard and playing Blizzard games," says Fatima. "I've even had friends of mine who are in the industry, but at other studios, reach out to me, talking about our contract, wanting to know details and going so far as to apply to Blizzard because of our contract, because they know with certainty that, 'Oh, these are going to be the working conditions and what it's going to be like to be at Blizzard.'"

"I think all of my coworkers are really excited about being able to make this game, Diablo 5, with certainty about our workplace conditions and with less anxiety hanging over us because of layoffs that keep happening in our industry."

Even so, this doesn't mean the workers who fought this far are suddenly going to stop pushing. There are still things that are unclear in the months ahead, and everyone will be pushing in support of other Xbox unions and workers, as well as groups fighting to unionize in the wider games industry.

"One of the things that comes to mind is continuing to act in solidarity with our brothers and sisters at Bethesda and ZeniMax, [as well as] Rockstar, for example, who are still fighting for their right to unionize and fighting for their union first contract," says Fatima.

"I think the other angle is, now the work begins to make sure that our contract is defended and followed. We're all new to this, managers included. They're probably going to go through training very soon. And I'm sure mistakes are bound to be made where people don't apply the contract fairly and equally. And we have to be there to step in, in the form of grievances or what have you to make sure that the contract is applied fairly."

"Coming at it from a company side of thing, unions are not scary," says Cox. "You don't need to union bust. It's your workers just trying to make sure that they feel safe and secure in their working environment. And if you have safe and secure workers, you're going to get better work from them."

"Video games are the most profitable entertainment sector in the entire world, and the workers should be accessing a greater share of that success," adds Veneto. "I think of the great things that we did with this contract with the wins, like the layoff protections and AI guardrails...it's just really going to help to protect our jobs and our ability to keep these games really great. So I think it's a really positive situation for everybody."

Resident Evil movie thoughts

I don't usually talk about movies, TV shows, or books here, and while that's going to stay the case, there's a little bit of wiggle room where video game adaptations or supporting media are concerned.

I recently saw Zach Cregger's Resident Evil (2026) in theatres. I loved both Barbarian (2022) and Weapons (2025), so I had pretty high expectations going in, despite the dire state of prior Resident Evil movies. I'm happy to say it's a fantastic time, and it perfectly captures the experience of watching someone unfamiliar with the series play a Resident Evil game for the first time.

Some of the creature designs are gnarly, and despite a couple of good scares, it's Cregger's funniest film yet. If buckets of blood don't bother you, I highly recommend giving it a watch, regardless of your familiarity with Capcom's iconic series.

Kojima and Xbox roll out a Skarsgård

During the Xbox presentation for Tokyo Game Show 2026, Hideo Kojima revealed that actor Bill Skarsgård will be playing the lead role in Physint. I'm truly fascinated by the events of this game's early production, as it started with PlayStation but is now continuing with Xbox.

A spy thriller that's a modern successor to Metal Gear Solid, with a tagline of "The next Cold War begins" sounds awesome as a concept, but it's likely to be a long while before we see more, as Kojima and Xbox are currently also working together on the horror title OD, which is currently undergoing additional recording with actors Sophia Lillis and Hunter Schafer.

As I was wrapping up writing this, an interview with Kojima dropped on IGN, where he talks about being shocked by PlayStation dropping Physint, worrying about the fate of his studio, and subsequently expanding his partnership with Xbox.