Big Week For Unions At Blizzard As Hearthstone Team Also Votes 'Yes'
Source: Aftermath
Microsoft's neutrality agreement with CWA expired this week
By Nicole Carpenter
12:00 PM EDT on October 17, 2025
Blizzard Entertainment's Team 5—responsible for the development of Hearthstone—is unionizing. A group of around 100 workers voted yes to representation with the Communications Workers of America under CWA Local 9510. It's the third union to go public at Blizzard this week, following two new units composed of Blizzard Entertainment's Battle.net workers.
The Hearthstone union includes people from many different roles across the game's development, including artists, gameplay designers, and quality assurance testers. Microsoft has recognized the union after workers voted earlier this week; Microsoft and CWA's neutrality agreement, which was signed in 2022 ahead of Microsoft's $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard and prevented the company from interfering in union efforts, expired on Monday. Several unions formed under Activision Blizzard before the neutrality agreement was signed, but they faced what workers called union-busting—attempts to shut down union efforts. Since the signing, workers have voted to unionize across the company; there are at least seven separate union groups at Blizzard Entertainment alone.
Hearthstone workers made a big push to unionize their own department about three months ago, senior 2D artist Uriah Voth told Aftermath. The deadline for the neutrality agreement's expiration was a big motivator to get the union finalized, workers said.
"One important moment was learning about the neutrality agreement and its deadline, and seeing the union busting that is and has happened at other very large companies," senior game designer Dominic Calkosz said. "Being owned now by Microsoft has always been a looming question of, will things change? How will things change? How should we be prepared or react to those changes? Knowing there is a date where this powerful option of forming a union may become significantly more difficult was a wake up call to me that, alright, we should start moving now."
Read more: https://aftermath.site/hearthstone-union-blizzard