Game dev union leader: “Dream job” passion “can open us up to exploitation”

Enlarge / The logo for the newly formed Campaign to Organize Digital Employees.

It's been almost two years now since the launch of Game Workers Unite (GWU), the most concerted effort yet to bring game developers to fight for better working conditions industry-wide. In the years since, we've seen a few stuttering steps toward collective action inside game studios, including an employee walkout at Blizzard to protest the company's controversial policy toward Hong Kong protesters and a walkout at Riot to protest proposed arbitration over sexual harassment allegations (that case was later settled without arbitration).

But while nearly half of developers supported the idea of unionizing in a GDC survey published last year, no major game studios have thus far announced formal plans to form a workers' union.

The industry's stalled labor effort got a potential shot in the arm last week, though, when GWU announced it is partnering with the Communication Workers of America (CWA) to form the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE). The move puts one of the country's biggest unions-with a reported 700,000 members represented across telecom, IT, news media, education, and more-squarely behind the effort to bring tech and gaming workers together for collective bargaining.

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