World of Warcraft (WoW) artists, designers, engineers, producers, quality assurance (QA) testers and other game developers have unionized. The staff of more than 500 workers voted to unionize the Blizzard Entertainment studio with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) creating the World of Warcraft Gamemakers Guild, according to an X post from the union's official account. The Blizzard studio is the latest major game studio to form a union during uncertain times of layoffs and studio closures across the gaming industry. Bethesda Game Studios, the studio behind the Fallout and Elder Scrolls franchises, formed its union with the help of CWA last weekend that includes 241 workers. "What we've accomplished at World of Warcraft is just the beginning," said Eric Lanham, a test analyst and Wow Gamemakers Guild member, in a statement released by the CWA.

More than 150 workers whose labor underpins the AI systems of Facebook, TikTok and ChatGPT gathered in Nairobi on Monday and pledged to establish the first African Content Moderators Union, in a move that could have significant consequences for the businesses of some of the world's biggest tech companies. The current and former workers, all employed by third party outsourcing companies, have provided content moderation services for AI tools used by Meta, Bytedance, and OpenAI--the respective owners of Facebook, TikTok and the breakout AI chatbot ChatGPT. Despite the mental toll of the work, which has left many content moderators suffering from PTSD, their jobs are some of the lowest-paid in the global tech industry, with some workers earning as little as $1.50 per hour. As news of the successful vote to register the union was read out, the packed room of workers at the Mövenpick Hotel in Nairobi burst into cheers and applause, a video from the event seen by TIME shows. Confetti fell onto the stage, and jubilant music began to play as the crowd continued to cheer.

A group of Tesla workers in New York has sent company chief Elon Musk a letter stating their intention to unionize, according to Bloomberg. It could end up being the first Tesla union if successful, seeing as previous attempts fizzled out before organizers could petition for a vote. The employees involved in the campaign are in charge of labeling data for Tesla's Autopilot technology at the company's Buffalo, New York facility. Bloomberg says the group is asking for better pay, job security and a better work environment that eases the production pressures placed on them. Workers told the news organization that they've been skipping bathroom breaks, since Tesla keeps a close eye on their every move.

More than 280 workers at TCGplayer, a marketplace for trading card games like Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon, are trying to unionize. A supermajority of the workers have filed for a union representation election with the National Labor Relations Board. If their efforts are successful, they'll form the first union at eBay, which bought TCGplayer in 2022 in a deal worth up to $295 million. Employees of several card and tabletop companies have unionized, including Card Kingdom, Bellevue Mox Boarding House, Noble Knight Games and Paizo. The TCGplayer workers are similarly trying to organize with the Communications Workers of America ( CWA), which has also worked with several video game studios in their unionization attempts.

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.

Amazon has unveiled its latest warehouse robot. It says "Sparrow is the first robotic system in our warehouses that can detect, select, and handle individual products in our inventory." The robotic arm uses AI and computer vision to recognize and handle millions of items, according to Amazon. The company says that, by employing robots in its warehouses, it can conduct operations more efficiently and safely. "Sparrow will take on repetitive tasks, enabling our employees to focus their time and energy on other things, while also advancing safety," Amazon said.

Blizzard Albany is the second Activision Blizzard studio that has attempted to unionize at the company, which is facing multiple investigations over sexual harassment. Known for its work on franchises including Guitar Hero and Crash Bandicoot under its former name, Vicarious Visions, the studio officially merged with Activision Blizzard in April to become Blizzard Albany. The studio's quality assurance department there took cues for its organizing campaign from Raven Software, another Activision-owned studio in Madison, Wis., where on May 28, a group of QA testers under the name Game Workers Alliance won their bid to unionize. They are currently undergoing bargaining efforts for a contract.

The first video game studio in the US to unionize is shutting down. On Wednesday, Beast Breaker developer Vodeo Games announced it had failed to secure funding to produce an additional release beyond its debut title. "Despite a year of avid efforts, we've been unable to secure funding for our next project from publishers and investors," Vodeo Games said in a tweet spotted by Polygon. "As such, we've run out of funds and aren't able to keep the team together -- and there simply is no Vodeo without our incredible team." Vodeo Games was founded in 2021 by Threes! designer Asher Vollmer.

In the four-day hearing with the NLRB that ended Tuesday, Activision Blizzard and the workers argued over whether workers should be allowed to form a so-called "micro union" of several dozen employees inside the quality assurance department. Shortly after the department announced its intentions to unionize, Activision Blizzard announced the testers would be redistributed around the company and embedded into different departments, a fact Baldwin noted in her letter. The company also argued that all Raven employees should be allowed to vote on unionization. A larger group would require more employee votes in order to unionize, whereas the testers had already reached the needed majority of votes within their department.

The video game industry has a reputation for long hours and toxic environments. But now, a small studio is hoping to chart a different path as the first unionized video game company in North America.