While CEOs got dressed up for the Game Awards, 461 workers at Zenimax Online Studios unionised

Stealth launching a game during an awards ceremony is cool. But you know what’s cooler? Stealth launching a union. As many in the games industry settled in for an evening of advertisements and blockbuster backslapping, one group of US workers quietly succeeded in organising something of their own. Employees at Zenimax Online Studios launched their union with 461 members, as announced on social media site Bluesky last night.

The members include engineers, artists, web developers, and game designers. Most of these workers are based in Maryland, say the union, but others are spread across the states, in California, New York, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

“With a union, we are looking forward to collectively pushing for improvements to the workplace,” they say, “including job security, protections against AI, better pay and benefits – in an industry that we’re so deeply passionate about.”

That mention of “job security” is the obvious concern, given the grave number of layoffs in recent years, thousands of which have fallen upon Microsoft-owned studios. Zenimax Online Studios are the developers behind The Elder Scrolls Online, and are themselves owned by the Windows peddlers.

Microsoft has officially recognised the union, but you should know that a labour agreement following the big fat Activision Blizzard acquisition last year essentially means that they do this because they are required to do so. Which partly explains why Zenimax QA workers have also been able to recently unionise with perhaps more ease than a studio under another company.

The Zenimax Online union that arose last night has been formed under the Communication Workers of America, a parent union that has been organising workers across the states for some years now. Earlier this year that parent group also helped another band of Elder Scrolls developers at Bethesda Game Studios to form their own union too, consisting of 241 workers.

“We’re working against some pretty massive corporations,” a CWA organiser told Nic when he spoke to them recently about their organising campaign.“The imbalance of power is very obvious. So you try to organise in secret so that people can’t be totally derailed from exercising their rights before they even have a chance to understand those rights.”

I can think of no greater sneak attack than doing it as soon as Geoff Keighly gets up on stage. Nice work.