The Verge first reported that 600 QA workers at Activision have formed a new union at the publisher. The new union, like the company's other unions, was organized through the Communications Workers of America (CWA), and the new union is now the largest in the US video game industry, surpassing the 300 members of another Microsoft subsidiary and fellow CWA union, Zenimax Workers United), another Microsoft subsidiary and the same CWA union, has 300 members.

It is worth noting that Microsoft signed a labor-neutral agreement with the CWA in 2022, when union organizing efforts were in full swing throughout the industry, especially at studios under the Activision Blizzard umbrella. This was not only an important victory for the CWA, but also a strategic move in Microsoft's years-long (and ultimately successful) campaign to close its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

The agreement apparently helped Activision's QA workers unionize quickly and cleanly at the company, but it doesn't mean that the house Bill Gates built is a worker's paradise, or yet.

Still, it is encouraging that union organizing continues to be successful in the industry, especially since union protection is one of the most effective bulwarks against mass layoffs that workers can pursue. It also seems to me that we must reach out to Microsoft here, given how other giant companies are responding to union activism, as Amazon, Space X, and Trader Joe's have argued that the National Labor Relations Board is unconstitutional.