Video Game Union Organizers’ New Tactic for Workers: Don’t Unionize, Technically

The predominant union organizing video game workers in the U.S. has announced an initiative that will attempt to change industry conditions outside of “traditional legal frameworks.”

On Wednesday the Communications Workers of America announced the launch of a new direct-join organization, United Videogame Workers-CWA, at a labor-organizing panel at the Game Developers Conference. The group — not a certified union, but something more like a large-scale organizing group — is open to a wide range of workers in the field across employers, from full-time employees to contractors to former staffers who have been laid off. The group’s first initiative will be to circulate a petition addressing recent industry workforce cuts, while it is later planning on producing a worker “bill of rights” that will demand specific workplace standards.

The news comes after years of the CWA pursuing traditional unionizations at indie and AAA video game studios and notching some victories. Still, the wins have been modest so far: Since 2020, the CWA has unionized disparate groups of workers at SEGA of America, ZeniMax QA, Tender Claws and Raven Software QA. Its efforts have organized around 6,500 workers across both tech and video games to date, the union claims.

In an opinion piece published in a CWA zine circulated at GDC, CODE-CWA senior campaign lead Emma Kinema argues that with President Donald Trump in the White House, the Department of Labor and National Labor Relations Board are “under attack.” She adds, “We can no longer expect to rely on traditional legal frameworks to build worker power and to improve workplace conditions.”

Kinema points to the sit-down strike of Flint, Michigan autoworkers between 1936 to 1937, when workers staged a major work stoppage that eventually led to union recognition for General Motors employees. “History shows us that formal union certification certification and a collective bargaining agreement are not the only ways to secure worker wins,” she writes.

It’s difficult not to see the move as a recognition that the CWA’s current unionization strategy hasn’t done enough, or at the very least doesn’t position organizers for success in the current industry and political climate. The CWA states that, amid sweeping layoffs at giant firms like Riot Games and Take-Two Interactive, one in 10 developers were laid off last year. The United Videogame Workers group will be open to those who were cut in addition to current employees at industry workplaces.

Key issues for the group are improving wages, regulating working hours and “crunch” time, addressing large-scale layoffs and changing video games’ “bigoted culture,” according to the new United Videogame Workers website. Leaders for the group will be elected annually while dues “are calculated on a sliding scale based on 1 percent of your income, starting at a minimum of $15 USD/17.30 CAD,” the website adds. Those dues will be funneled toward paying for staffers like lawyers and organizers, staging educational campaigns and contributing to strike funds.

The CWA stresses in its materials for the United Videogame Workers group that it’s still encouraging eligible video-game workers to pursue traditional unions. Nevertheless, the CWA seems to have ambitions for a more sweeping movement in the long run and is arguing that this organizing group offers a first step.

“In this time of unprecedented union popularity, the labor movement should be flinging its doors wide open and helping all types of workers build power,” Kinema writes in her opinion piece. “Beyond the broken institutions of our current times, collective solidarity is where we’ll find strength.”