Such is the current case with workers at Bethesda Game Studios.
In July 2024, around 240 workers at the ZeniMax Media subsidiary, which is known for the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games, joined CODE-CWA to form the “first wall-to-wall union” at Microsoft. Two years later, the union and employer have not reached a contract, and for additional reasons described below, CWA announced “emergency rallies” scheduled for July 15. CWA is asking workers, allies, and gamers to join the rallies while claiming, “[t]he bosses are stealing our game industry, and we aim to take it back!”
Why This Is Happening Now
Earlier this summer, Microsoft announced layoffs of around 4,800 workers with the Xbox division accounting for 1,600 of those job losses across various studios. More losses are expected later this year, and due to overlap between studios, industry journalists were unable to pinpoint how many Bethesda workers are part of these cuts. It’s also unclear what CWA aims to accomplish with these events, although a social media post from a claimed Bethesda activist hints at a strategy:
- This is a protest, not a strike.
Workers will picket only during their lunch hours.
- This is a “test” with a possible strike at an undetermined date.
- Currently, the union is not seeking a boycott of games, “as this might negatively affect the teams still working on them. We’d only do that if we were sure the benefits would outweigh the harm.”
Further social media activity suggests a growing list of rally locations planned across the U.S., including at Microsoft campus in Redmond, WA; Irvine, CA; Rockland, MA; and both Austin and Dallas, TX.
How CODE-CWA And UVW-CWA Got Here
It’s been a minute since we checked in on union activity in the gaming industry, and we can now report that, well, it remains a mess.
To briefly recap, CWA’s formerly aggressive plan to unionize tech workers through its CODE-CWA initiative hasn’t put up gangbusters numbers. We’re saying “formerly” because something curious has happened to this effort. CODE-CWA now claims to have organized 7000+ tech workers since 2022, and in 2024, they claimed to have unionized 1,750 gaming workers.
That last number isn’t insignificant, although it’s not particularly impressive in an industry that encompasses over 250,000 jobs, according to the 2026 economic impact report of the industry’s leading trade association, ESA.
In March 2025, the union kind of admitted that the old-fashioned model of organizing through individual employers wasn’t moving toward their goal. At that year’s Game Developers Conference, CWA announced the formation of a direct-join union, United Videogame Workers (UVW-CWA), where workers from any employer can freely join and be required to pay dues without any guarantees that the union will be able to bargain for them.
How’s that been going? Well, it’s confusing. Conveniently, the UVW-CWA offshoot has been keeping membership numbers under wraps, although they clearly haven’t reached the 10,000 member mark that they promised would lead to a publicized petition. Additionally, CODE-CWA members recently found out the hard way that unions cannot protect workers from layoffs, but predictably, the union is deflecting blame toward an employer.
Same Union Song, Different Verse
This feels like a case of unions realizing that they can’t do anything about business realities. Yet they’re still trying to keep up appearances and make an impression that they’re doing something for their members. That’s still the case despite CODE-CWA not reaching a union contract at Bethesda, and if workers think that UVW-CWA is a better bet, well, a direct-join union holds even less bargaining power.
What we have here is different organizing models reaching similar dead ends. That is, CODE-CWA’s certified workplaces and UVW-CWA’s direct-join membership have both run into the same wall. Even taking Microsoft’s labor neutrality stance into account, unions really have no power against layoffs. They can still promise to protect workers, but promises aren’t real leverage at the bargaining table and beyond.
