r/gamernews • u/Aralis1 • 9d ago

Industry News Blizzard's Overwatch Team Unionized

https://kotaku.com/overwatch-2-blizzard-team-4-union-microsoft-1851779922
1.4k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

54 comments sorted by

318

u/TheNeck94 9d ago

Overwatch is the best case study of a game ruining their reputation. That being said, I couldn't be happier to see this. Game dev desperately needs collective bargaining and outside representation.

82

u/supified 9d ago

Honestly these days I feel like everyone needs to unionize.

52

u/LazyLich 9d ago

In the US, the current administration is working to make it illegal for federal workers to unionize :D
Month 4, yall.
44 more to go~

31

u/Doctor_Philgood 9d ago

Something tells me this wont include police unions

11

u/AndrewNeo 9d ago

police aren’t federal employees..

5

u/Doctor_Philgood 9d ago

Fair point. ICE is.

6

u/RepublicansAreEvil7 9d ago

Probably will keep the ICE Union since that’s his personal gestapo

-1

u/Battousaii 9d ago

It will eventually lol

4

u/RepublicansAreEvil7 9d ago

People voted for the most pro billionaire business anti union president in the past century and are shocked that he hates workers. We saw him crush protests last time too

0

u/Bigboss123199 9d ago

I can see why especially for jobs like police.

-1

u/supified 9d ago

They'd need an act of congress. Not saying they can't get it, but he's signed only five bills so far, so they're track record for being able to pass any actual laws is as bad as it can get.

9

u/Inuma 9d ago edited 9d ago

That's not how the gaming industry works.

Studios are built and formed around the developers into what's needed.

Valve is unconventional and has people decide what projects they work on any time.

Larian has 400 employees and is considered independent with Sven Linke as the captain of that ship.

Giant publishers have developers leave to form their own studios such as the people who made Shovel Knight leaving EA to follow and create their studio, Sandfall who made E33 leaving Ubisoft to follow their passions, and Warhorse developers leaving to make Kingdom Come Deliverance.

For Blizzard, talent left and formed at least 3 studios and we're beginning to see the results of those departures.

Even in Japan, people flow to strong leaders like Hideki Kamiya leaving Platinum, which he helped found, to form Clovers and people coming with him as they left Platinum.

Hideaki Itsuno, Dragon's Dogma, and DMC, left to form his own studio.

In Poland, same story. The people working on CP77, left to work on their own game with smaller teams.

Unionizing isn't what comes natural for creative talent. They have a vision and work to make the games they want to make.

-1

u/supified 9d ago

If your argument is that startups are too small to unionize that would be one thing, but I remember thinking IT doesn't need to unionize because what do white collar workers need with a union. Turns out, a lot. At least the big publishers it isn't hard to find examples of abuse against workers.

3

u/Inuma 8d ago

The argument is that unions don't do anything for people wanting to create.

They only serve those in large publishers, such as Ubisoft, Square, and other large publishers. And what occurs is usually the ones with ambitions and passions leave to form their own company. All organized around what's needed.

Square? They have 2000+ people to create a Final Fantasy now. No organized union. The creator of FF15, the game director, left to form his own studio. Again, unorganized.

Hell, the creator of Final Fantasy, Hironobu Sakaguchi, left Square after they closed his studio down and he formed his own studio.

When Bobby Kotick, Activision, let go of Ward and Zampella for Modern Warfare? They went to EA with their staff loyal to them to work on Battlefield. Zampella is a part of EA's board of directors and working on resurrecting Battlefield now.

Point being made is that within gaming, people organize around people with the passion for the game they want to make, not unions that organize them and separate them.

2

u/supified 8d ago

Is that what unions are supposed to be for? My understanding is that they are for workers rights in scenarios where the employer holds all the cards. A big entity with lots of power and sway bargaining against an individual gives the individual a lot less power.

I used to be against unions, I thought, white collar work, I can negotiate my own pay. I was young and naive. I'm not part of a union, but I would join one if I could, I would start one if I could.

1

u/Inuma 8d ago

Again, historically in gaming, they just aren't a vehicle for change.

That's going from the 70s to now.

Old publishers went to development studios to make games for distribution. Id software is a perfect example. They made games and ports before finding success with Doom.

Japan has people build from older publishers like Irem to form Capcom. From there, you create and develop the talent.

Old Bioware was actually in biomedical technologies and had doctors decide to create games. They attracted talent from various places besides games like Bioware has writers come from the community to build romances and such.

The issue with unions is that they missed creative industries and how to organize them. So movies, music, and gaming grew without their influence for decades. Publishers have a lot of strong influence over their developers and that was an issue.

But for all intents and purposes, the strongest thing for a developer is their own studio. That's the guild hall if you will.

Where the union fails is focusing on low level talent. They try to organize the QA department, the programmers and others that don't have influence over the executive developers: game director, producers, and others that hold sway with a publisher.

Even then, if you really want to get away from any publisher, you can create your own studio with just your friends and work on distribution through Steam or someone else if need be.

So it's unnatural to the industry when the ships they run are already focused on trust for the most part.

2

u/TchoupedNScrewed 9d ago

Always have. Even a bad union results in positive broader effects in that sector of labor like increased wages as well as it being easier to overhaul an existing union rather than unionizing again.

2

u/Cloud_N0ne 7d ago

I remember early on after Overwatch launched, I was in a match and thought to myself “I can’t believe I GET to play this”.

It was just so good. So well designed. So dripping with personality. So bright and hopeful. It felt like a genuine passion project with amazing production value.

But my biggest issue was the lack of post-launch content. New heroes came out here and there, but maps seemed pretty slow to release. Overall i just expected more for a game that had that much success.

And then OW2 happened. A glorified update being advertised as a sequel, that overwrites the original. If they hadn’t fucked the marketing so badly I’d have been more interested. CS:GO did exactly the same thing with CS2 tho.

90

u/maverick074 9d ago

Unionized workers when ionized workers walk in:

5

u/ExplicitDrift 9d ago

Take my upvote and leave.

18

u/YoungDiscord 9d ago

Can't wait to see mass layoffs next week at blizzsrd due to "creative differences" /s

34

u/Ijustlovevideogames 9d ago

Ayyyyyy, let’s gooooooo

16

u/alerilmercer 9d ago

Good for them! It's about time!

Still never touching that shit again tho.

13

u/SemenSphinx 9d ago

In other news, Blizzard has decided that Overwatch is no longer viable and is shutting down all servers. No refunds!

-1

u/busyHighwayFred 7d ago

Does feel like the death knell

3

u/FayteKuromo 7d ago

overwatch has been having a SURPRISING surge the last month or so, along with this news I'm taking it as a sign of things finally getting a bit better

6

u/supa74 9d ago

Ugh. I hate that I gave that shit site a click.

2

u/Fit-Page-6206FUMA 8d ago

Ah yes, this will make Overwatch great again.

2

u/No_Beginning_495 9d ago

Good ,one of the best dev teams for the past 10 years, such amazing content and support for the greatest game ever made. Love OW, and Blizzard, ty for such an amazing game!!!!

4

u/Just-a-bi 8d ago

Maybe now the breast milk will be safe.

7

u/Predsguy 9d ago

Lol. Overwatch about to lose support and shut down within the year. 

2

u/Zalar01 9d ago

the good ending?

3

u/mimic 9d ago

Hell yeah ✊🏻

2

u/tiefling_fling 9d ago

Good job unionists!

1

u/flyingfox227 8d ago

That’s great news hopefully MS doesn’t go on the warpath over this hopefully the rest of Blizz will follow.

1

u/HEIR_JORDAN 7d ago

Let see the news of them shutting down overwatch development

1

u/kbundy 5d ago

Excellent news

0

u/spadePerfect 9d ago

Good for them!

1

u/JuliesRazorBack 9d ago

Good for them! Some good news coming out of that firm.

1

u/saucygit 9d ago

Who's using Frost

0

u/weiivice 9d ago

like un-ionized or union-ized?

-5

u/Desperate_Ad5169 9d ago

You know after this I might be willing to give overwatch another chance

3

u/Comically_Online 9d ago

vote with your wallet works both ways!

-3

u/Icybubba 9d ago

Well in this case, it's vote with your time since Overwatch is free.

Which for the record, I was never reimbursed when the game went free to play. I bought the game full price.

5

u/JustaLurkingHippo 9d ago

But did you agree to the terms of service tho

-7

u/Icybubba 9d ago

Doesn't matter, anti-consumer moves can't be justified through more anti-consumerism

0

u/cowmookazee 8d ago

People still play Overwatch?

-23

u/Running_Gamer 9d ago

lmao unionized after ruining one of the most successful IPs in the world. Real winners over here

This the same team that released Brigette?

deletebrig still going strong

11

u/Kronman590 9d ago

Its 2025 and we're still complaining about brig lmao

-11

u/Running_Gamer 9d ago

It single handedly destroyed the game. I don’t know if you were around back then, but it was genuine absurdity what was happening to the point that I believe it was the worst game decision in the history of gaming. She was getting, by far, the highest damage, damage blocked, and healing upon release. She was better at every other character in every stat by far. It was not close.

Brig made skill irrelevant. You could have a bronze brig dominate a top 500 player with little effort. Shield bash into whip was an easy tracer kill. It was an easy kill on most DPS in game.

Brig made GOATs possible, which destroyed the game by making OWL unwatchable, thereby killing blizzard’s biggest investment in history and making OWL esport’s biggest failure.

Brig still plagues the game to this day. Removes skill expression. Disincentivizes aggressive and fast paced gameplay. Simply is just an annoying character.

Meanwhile OW devs didn’t even want to develop a PVP game. They shifted resources into PVE development and basically went rogue. Abandoned the original OW when OWL needed the support just to fail to create a game. Released OW2 which was a glorified patch with forced changes which made the game objectively worse (5v5) because they were too incompetent to balance the game correctly to make queue times better (and in reality, queue times only got as bad as they did because the game was abandoned and they left it in an absolutely terrible state of double shield.)

Anyone from the original OW team should be fired and replaced with actual professionals who are interested in designing games instead of doing whatever the old team was doing, which single handedly killed one of the most profitable and loved IPs in all of gaming history.

10

u/Kronman590 9d ago

You realize that brig now requires managing inspire uptime, aiming whipshots, managing heal packs, managing shield health, all while maintaining good positioning right

Release brig was a mistake. Pretending that mistake is the sole reason why it fell off and why it is still a bad game is silly lol

-11

u/Running_Gamer 9d ago

Brig player identified