Tang released a game in a awards ceremony. But do you know what is cooler? Tang released an alliance. Like many people in the game industry has resolved for an advertising evening and returning to the blockbuster movie, a group of US workers quietly succeeded in organizing something of their own. The staff at Zenimax Online Studios launched their trade union with 461 members, as published on the Bluesky social media last night.
Members include engineers, artists, web developers and game designers. Most of these workers are based in Maryland, saying that alliance, but others are spread across states, in California, New York, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Texas.
“With a union, we want to promote improvements to work together,” they said, “including work security, protection against AI, paying salaries and better benefits – in an industry that we are passionate about.”
That refers to “work security” is a clear concern, with a large number of firing in recent years, thousands of them have fallen into the studio owned by Microsoft. Zenimax Online Studios are developers behind the online Elder Scrolls and they themselves owned by Windows Peddlers.
Microsoft has officially recognized the Trade Union, but you should know that a labor agreement after acquiring Big Fat Activision Blizzard last year means they do this because they are asked to do so. This explains partly why Zenimax QA workers can also recently allians with easier than a studio under another company.
Zenimax online alliance arises last night was founded under American media workers, a parent union that has organized workers across the states for a few years. Earlier this year, a group of parents also helped another group of Elder Scroll developers at Bethesda Game Studios established their own trade union, including 241 workers.
“We are working against some quite large corporations,” a CWA organizer told Nic when he talked to them recently about their organizational campaign. The imbalance of power is very clear.
I might think that no stealth attack was greater than doing it as soon as Geoff Keighly stood on the stage. Good job.
