On Tuesday, workers at Proletariat, the Boston-based studio Blizzard bought earlier this year to support World of Warcraft development, announced they recently filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Proletariat is the third Activision Blizzard studio to announce a union drive in 2022, but where past campaigns at Raven Software and Blizzard Albany involved the quality assurance workers at those studios, the effort at Proletariat includes all non-management workers. The 57 workers who want to form the Proletariat Workers Alliance include animators, game designers and software engineers. The group seeks representation from the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the union that helped QA staff at Raven Software and Blizzard Albany organize. "Everyone in the video game industry knows Activision Blizzard's reputation for creating a hostile work environment, so earlier this year, when we heard that Blizzard was planning to acquire Proletariat, we started to discuss how we could protect the great culture we have created here," said Dustin Yost, a software engineer at Proletariat.

Activision Blizzard has been hit with multiple lawsuits alleging a sexist and discriminatory workplace culture. Activision Blizzard has been hit with multiple lawsuits alleging a sexist and discriminatory workplace culture. Workers in one division of Activision Blizzard, the major video game company behind popular franchises such as Call of Duty, Overwatch, and Candy Crush, have voted to join the Communication Workers of America. The employees unionizing are 28 quality assurance testers at Raven Software, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard. The final vote count was 19 votes in favor, 3 against.

A dozen QA contractors laid off at Activision Blizzard-owned Raven Software in December will not be among those converted to full-time employees. The layoffs sparked an intense internal backlash and led 200 workers from across the company to walk out in protest. In response, remaining employees at Raven Software, which produces games like "Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War" and "Call of Duty: Warzone," have spearheaded unionization efforts, with several dozen members of its quality assurance department requesting recognition from the National Labor Relations Board, which is expected to deliver a ruling in the next few months.

Playing video games for a living is not the plum gig it might seem to be. There are the hours (long). And the tedium (it's not known as "quality assurance" in the industry for nothing). "Pay is the hardest thing to advocate for in quality assurance, because they want to make it seem like you're testing video games, so you should be thankful," says Jessica Gonzalez, a former senior QA analyst at Activision Blizzard who is now helping to organize a union drive of 34 game testers at the company's subsidiary Raven Software. Until recently, those testers were making $15 an hour, less than the cost of living in Madison, Wisconsin, where the unit is based.