These Wisconsin video game workers were first to unionize at a major U.S. studio. Three years later, they have a contract.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Video game testers at Middleton-based Raven Software have ratified their first union contract, more than three years after making local and national headlines by launching the first union at a major U.S. studio. 

Ratified on Aug. 4, the contract gives employees a 10% raise while limiting mandatory overtime and preserving remote work options. 

The deal is the latest development in a saga involving some of the video game industry’s lowest-paid workers. It comes after Microsoft purchased Activision Blizzard, Raven Software’s parent company, leaving the roughly two dozen testers to negotiate with one of the world’s largest tech companies.

“I think we pretty much got everything we aimed for,” said Erin Hall, a seven-year veteran at Raven and one of two workers who negotiated the contract. As a quality assurance tester, she checks for bugs in the blockbuster Call of Duty franchise and works with developers to fix them.

An Activision Blizzard spokesperson declined to comment but directed Wisconsin Watch to a web page discussing Microsoft’s labor principles. 

Studios nationwide employ testers to play new video games and identify problems before release.

Raven’s testers make around $21 an hour, and they’re frequently required to work overtime in weeks-long “crunch time” stretches ahead of a game’s release. The volatile nature of their industry prompted the workers to organize. 

The testers walked off the job to protest layoffs of a dozen colleagues in December 2021. They announced the formation of a union the next month — the first at a AAA studio that makes high-budget games. The Game Workers Alliance represents the workers, organized with support from Communications Workers of America. 

Lessons from three years of negotiating

For Hall and fellow bargaining committee member Autumn Prazuch, contract negotiations required intensive lessons on bargaining and labor laws. Neither had joined a union before launching their own.

“We had no idea it would be this difficult, or that it would take three-and-a-half years, or that it’d be this stressful, that we would be giving up so many nights and weekends,” Hall said. “We felt like it was the right thing to do, and we did it, and we learned as we went.”

The process took about twice as long as a norm that has grown longer in recent years. Newly unionized workers between 2020 to 2023 spent an average of 17 months negotiating their first contract, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis.

The contract negotiations overlapped with a change of ownership: Microsoft’s $69 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard. In 2022, while waiting for regulators to approve the deal, Microsoft committed to remaining neutral on the workers’ unionization efforts. 

That was after Activision took steps organizers called union busting, including withholding raises granted to nonunion workers and reorganizing Raven’s staff in what the union argued was an attempt to dilute its support ahead of the election.

Prazuch said negotiating with leaders at Activision and Microsoft made her feel like “a little fish in a big pond.”

“You’re sitting across from tech billionaires, and this is a huge company … and we’re 19 people at Raven QA in Middleton, Wisconsin,” she said. 

But in that process, Prazuch discovered strengths she didn’t know she had. 

“I’ve learned that I have more determination than I initially thought, that my voice is louder than I thought it was,” Prazuch said. 

She also learned that the same focus that helps her identify glitches in games allowed her to flag subtle wording changes that would shift the terms of the deal. 

The deal they reached limits mandatory overtime to half the weeks in a quarter, and it gives testers the flexibility to choose their schedules when working overtime. Workers who currently work remotely can continue to do so under a contract that also promises 10% raises over the two-year contract period, with potential for additional raises. 

Hall said she’d encourage other workers to start unions — if they’re in it for the long haul. 

“I would not want to take it back for anything, but it was really hard work,” Hall said. “If people want to unionize at their workplace, just know it’s going to be really difficult, and you have to be committed to seeing it through to the end.”

More video game workers are unionizing

While Microsoft’s promise to not oppose employees’ union efforts contrasts with many other major companies, the process has still had moments of controversy. Communications Workers of America, for instance, criticized Microsoft this summer when it announced plans to lay off around 9,000 workers across the company. That included its gaming division, where it halted production of several games.

Raven’s quality assurance team escaped those layoffs, along with a previous round, Hall said. Having a contract doesn’t guarantee the testers won’t be laid off, but it requires the company to offer notice and bargain over severance and benefits.

Keith Fuller, a former Raven Software employee who is now a Madison-based workplace culture consultant, called collective bargaining “one of the few levers that game developers have” as video game companies tighten their belts and as the Trump administration redefines workers’ rights.

“The power imbalance that’s inherent in capitalism shows up very easily in game development,” Fuller said. “I think that this is something that will benefit workers across the industry.”

The organizing trend comes as state lawmakers are exploring ways to encourage video game companies to move to Wisconsin or expand their in-state operations.

In the years since Raven workers unionized, workers at some other major studios have followed their lead. Communications Workers of America says it now represents 2,000 video game workers at Microsoft. 

“When we started (our union campaign), we were kind of ambitiously hoping that there’d be anyone that would do this too, and now there’s so many,” Hall said. 

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.