Staff at Texas studio Id Software, best known for the Doom franchise, have voted to form a union.
The Communications Workers of America (CWA) union said that 165 workers voted yes to creating a bargaining unit, and will be members of the CWA’s Local 6215 branch. Aftermath reports that that figure is from a total of “around 185” employees.
The Id Software union is “wall-to-wall”, meaning that staff from departments across the company are represented in the bargaining unit.
“The wall-to-wall organising effort at id Software was much needed; it’s incredibly important that developers across the industry unite to push back on all the unilateral workplace changes that are being handed down from industry executives,” Id Software producer and a member of the CWA Local 6215 organising committee Andrew Willis said.
“The union is a way for us, the developers, to take back control of the industry we love and to ensure that it delivers high-quality products from high-quality workers who have health benefits and longevity beyond quarterly profits.”
Senior VFX artist, and fellow organising committee member, Caroline Pierrot added: “I’m very proud to be a part of this effort to organise our studio, to have a voice in decisions that directly affect myself and my coworkers. In an industry that has proven to be very unstable over the last few years, more unions means more power to the workers and a real shot at shaping the future of the industry for the better.”
Back in June 2022, Microsoft entered into a labour neutrality agreement with Communications Workers of America, meaning that any staff at the company can form a union and it would automatically be recognised by the Xbox giant. Later, the CWA would ask the European Commission to approval Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
Since the labour neutrality agreement was signed, a number of divisions in Microsoft’s games business have voted to have union representation.
In July 2024, nearly 250 staff at Bethesda Game Studios voted to unionise, before workers at ZeniMax Online Studios voted to do the same in December of that year.
In 2025 alone, unions have been formed in Blizzard’s story and franchise development team, the studio working on Diablo and the Hearthstone and Warcraft Rumble teams. That’s on top of Activision user researchers voting to unionise and Raven Software finally securing a collective bargaining agreement with Microsoft, three years after it started the unionisation process.
