Hearthstone and Warcraft Rumble devs join the over 1900 Blizzard workers to unionize: 'We deserve to be heard and respected'

Heroes of Starcraft artwork — (Image credit: Blizzard)

Only a few months after most of the Warcraft Rumble team was laid off as all future development was canceled, a majority of the remaining workers therein and the Hearthstone team have voted to organize—joining over 1,900 Blizzard workers now in a union under the Communications Workers of America.

As the CWA posted on their site, the new group represents "over 100 workers including software engineers, designers, artists, quality assurance testers, and producers." They are the fifth group at Blizzard to do so, following the Diablo team's vote less than two months ago. Microsoft has already recognized the union.

Another committee member and QA analyst Carol Blean stated in the same post, "I support our union because we deserve to be heard and respected … Real solutions, not free therapy or relocation suggestions, are needed to address being overworked, underpaid, and forced into unreasonable choices."

These waves of unionization follow Microsoft's historic, $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, which begat thousands of layoffs and the cancellation of a Blizzard survival game six years into development. Meanwhile, the tech giant achieved "record performance" financially in 2024, raking in $245 billion in revenue—something CWA called attention to earlier this year amid another round of layoffs.

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Justin first became enamored with PC gaming when World of Warcraft and Neverwinter Nights 2 rewired his brain as a wide-eyed kid. As time has passed, he's amassed a hefty backlog of retro shooters, CRPGs, and janky '90s esoterica. Whether he's extolling the virtues of Shenmue or troubleshooting some fiddly old MMO, it's hard to get his mind off games with more ambition than scruples. When he's not at his keyboard, he's probably birdwatching or daydreaming about a glorious comeback for real-time with pause combat. Any day now...

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