Simply two months after voting to authorize a strike motion over stalled negotiations with Microsoft, ZeniMax Employees United-CWA has introduced a tentative contract settlement that features “substantial across-the-board wage will increase” together with new minimal salaries for workers, protections towards arbitrary dismissal, grievance procedures, and a brand new coverage for sport credit “that clearly acknowledges the QA employees’ contributions to the videogames they assist create.”
“QA employees from throughout the nation proceed to steer the cost for industry-wide change,” senior QA tester and ZeniMax Employees United-CWA bargaining committee member Web page Branson stated within the announcement. “Going toe-to-toe with one of many largest firms on the planet isn’t a small feat. This can be a monumental victory for all present videogame employees and for people who come after.”
ZeniMax Employees United was fashioned in January 2023 and negotiations for a primary contract started shortly thereafter, however made restricted headway over the next two years. In April 2025, members voted to authorize union management to name for a strike if negotiations continued to tug on with no progress.
“If Microsoft and ZeniMax proceed to show on the bargaining desk that they are unwilling to pay us honest wages for the worth our labor offers to our video games, we’ll be exhibiting them simply how precious our labor is,” ZeniMax Employees United-CWA Native 6215 member and senior QA tester Zachary Armstrong stated on the time.
Microsoft, nevertheless, stated “substantial progress” had been remodeled the course of the negotiations, including that it had offered a “honest” proposal to the union that “if accepted it might end in rapid compensation will increase, much more sturdy advantages and is in alignment to the corporate’s hybrid mannequin of three days in workplace.”
This is not the top of the method: “Contract rationalization conferences” for the union’s greater than 300 members will happen over the following few weeks, and a ratification vote is predicted to be concluded by June 20. Assuming the union votes in favor (and I believe that is a reasonably secure assumption), this would be the first sport {industry} contract of its variety within the US, however it absolutely will not be the final.
The push for unionization at sport studios in North America has picked up important steam over the previous yr: 600 Activision QA staff voted to unionize in March 2024, whereas Bethesda Sport Studios builders fashioned a “wall to wall” union together with artists, designers, and programmers in July 2024, as did Blizzard’s 500-person World of Warcraft crew. Earlier this yr practically 200 Overwatch builders launched a union of their very own, the Overwatch Gamemakers Guild. Sport builders additionally launched the primary industry-wide union in North America in March 2025, open to anybody within the North American sport {industry} “regardless of studio and present job standing.”
