A new industry-wide union has been launched for all American and Canadian developers
United Videogame Workers-CWA will launch at GDC this week
The Communications Workers of America union has announced a new industry-wide union which anyone can join.
Following its role in organized labor movements across multiple game development companies – including Activision, Microsoft, and Bethesda among others – the CWA has announced United Video Game Workers (UVW-CWA), a “direct-join, industry-wide video game union” which launched during the Game Developers Conference this week.
UVW-CWA will include game industry workers from the United States and Canada. Members will be collecting signatures demanding “dignity and job security for all video game workers, particularly those facing layoffs.”
“The creation of this union was not done in isolation – it’s a cumulative effort by the thousands of video game workers who have been fighting for years to redefine what it means to stand together and reclaim power in one of the largest and highest-grossing industries on the globe,” Tom Smith, CWA’s Senior Director of Organizing, said in the official announcement on the CWA website.
“These workers are taking a bold stand, joining together to build power for the workers behind the games we all know and love.”
The video game industry has lost over 25,000 jobs in the past two years, with 14,600 layoffs across the industry reported in 2024 alone. The annual GDC State Of The Industry report, published back in January, says that 11% of those who answered the annual survey reported being laid off “in the past year.” Nearly 20 percent of those laid off were not given a reason as to why they were losing their jobs.
The newly formed UVW-CWA’s mission statement states the goal of the union is to “create a game industry that works for us, one that nourishes its talent and invests in its future, rather than constantly seeking short-term profits.”
The group will seek to “link up arms with the laid off, with the freelancer, with the disillusioned contractor, with the disenfranchised and the marginalized, with the workers laboring invisibly to keep this industry afloat.”
