Blizzard Announces Plans To Begin Negotiations With CWA

After all their attempts to stop Raven Software employees from unionizing, Blizzard has announced that they will be recognizing the Communications Workers of America and are going to “engage in good faith negotiations to enter into a collective bargaining agreement”. The news was posted on Blizzard’s investor page today and is signed by Bobby Kotick.

The post notes that the contracts will take time, but that they will be working on an agreement that “supports the success of all [their] employees”, and “strengthens [their] commitment to create the industry’s best, most welcoming, and inclusive workplace”. There’s also a bit about delivering world-class games.

The rest of the post is spent talking up what the company has done over the last year, such as shifting contract QA workers to full-time employees. The other ‘achievement’ they note is integrating QA into the game development process “more seamlessly” so they can collaborate with the developers to create better products for players. Apparently, the takeaway here is that QA actually is important. Who knew?