The Reason Overwatch Devs Unionized Also Applies to Marvel Rivals

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The Reason Overwatch Devs Unionized Also Applies to Marvel Rivals

The gaming industry’s relationship with its talent has always been… complicated. One day you’re celebrated for creating a blockbuster title, and the next you’re updating your LinkedIn profile.

This harsh reality recently drove Blizzard’s Overwatch team to form a union of nearly 200 developers—the second wall-to-wall union at the company following World of Warcraft‘s similar move last July.

But this story isn’t just about Overwatch. It’s about a troubling pattern that’s becoming all too familiar—one that recently played out with NetEase Games’ Marvel Rivals team. The parallels are striking, and they reveal an uncomfortable truth about job security in an industry where success doesn’t guarantee safety.

When success sadly doesn’t guarantee job security

The Overwatch Gamemakers Guild-CWA was formed primarily in response to

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’s sweeping layoffs in January 2024, which cut 1,900 people from its gaming division. This was the final straw for many developers after years of industry volatility.

According to Simon Hedrick, a test analyst at Blizzard (via

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):

The biggest issue was the layoffs at the beginning of 2024. Up to that moment I’d been really happy in what I was doing. People were gone out of nowhere and there was nothing we could do about it

This sentiment isn’t unique to Blizzard. In February 2025, NetEase Games laid off its entire Seattle-based Marvel Rivals team, including the then-game director Thaddeus Sasser, despite the game attracting over 20 million players in its first weeks. The message was clear: even helping create a massively successful game doesn’t protect you from the chopping block.

The term “wall-to-wall” union is significant here—it means the union includes workers across all disciplines, from artists and engineers to writers and QA testers. It’s a comprehensive approach that gives the entire team collective bargaining power, not just specific roles.

For UI artist Sadie Boyd, who joined Blizzard in September 2024, the motivation was simple:

We’re not just a number on an Excel sheet. We want to make games but we can’t do it without a sense of security.

That’s the crux of it all. Developers pour their hearts into creating experiences that generate billions in revenue, yet they’re often treated as disposable assets.

A growing movement across the industry

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The unionization wave isn’t limited to Blizzard. It’s part of a broader awakening across the gaming industry, with over 2,600 workers at

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-owned studios now unionized with the Communications Workers of America (CWA).

This momentum has been building since 2018, when Game Workers Unite emerged as a grassroots organization at that year’s Game Developers Conference. Since then, we’ve seen unions form at studios like Bethesda, ZeniMax, ***** of America, and CD Projekt Red.

Senior Test Analyst Foster Elmendorf put it bluntly:

If [concessions] are given without organizing they can be taken away without it, too. For a long time I felt the video game industry needed more organizing.

Before following up with a particularly damning observation:

It’s been 20 years of asking for better pay and it hasn’t happened yet.

What’s particularly interesting is how Marvel Rivals has struggled to maintain its initial momentum since those layoffs. Yes, correlation doesn’t prove causation, but it sure does raise some questions about whether cutting experienced developers who understand Western markets might have long-term consequences for the game’s success.

The message from developers is clear: they want stability, fair compensation, and protection from the industry’s *****-and-bust cycles. As Boyd noted:

Our industry is at such a turning point. I really think with the announcement of our union on Overwatch…I know that will light some fires.

Those fires are already burning, and they’re spreading faster than many publishers anticipated. The days of treating game developers as expendable resources may finally—and hopefully—be coming to an end.

What do you think? Should more studios follow Blizzard’s lead and unionize? Or is there another solution to the industry’s job security problem? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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#Reason #Overwatch #Devs #Unionized #Applies #Marvel #Rivals

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