Video game workers across the U.S. and Canada are launching a new direct-join union in partnership with the Communications Workers of America and American Federation of Musicians.
The United Videogame Workers-CWA Local 9433, which will include contractors, freelancers, indie developers and workers who are currently unemployed or already organizing at their workplaces, was formally unveiled at the 2025 Game Developer Conference in San Francisco. In 2018, the conference was a launch pad for the creation of Game Workers Unite, an international grassroots organization dedicated to labor-organizing the industry.
The union’s formation coincides with the fifth anniversary of CODE-CWA, which has helped over 6,500 tech and video game workers organize to join the union since 2020.
The launch of UVW-CWA comes after the video game industry lost over 10,500 jobs in 2023 and an additional 14,600 jobs in 2024. Per GDC’s 2025 State of the Game Industry, over 10% of surveyed game developers reported being laid off in 2024. Over 30 studios have laid off their entire staff and were closed by their parent companies, including Microsoft and Sony Interactive Entertainment.
“The formation of United Video Game Workers-CWA is an exciting next step in our union’s work to help video game workers build power in their industry,” CWA president Claude Cummings Jr. said in a statement. “As video game studios have consolidated, the workers whose creativity, dedication and skill bring the games to life have become more an afterthought. They are subject to endless cycles of layoffs and rehiring as corporate executives pursue short-term profits at the expense of a sustainable future.”
“The creation of this union was not done in isolation; it’s a cumulative effort by the thousands of video game workers who have been fighting for years to redefine what it means to stand together and reclaim power in one of the largest and highest-grossing industries on the globe,” CWA senior director of organizing Tom Smith added. “These workers are taking a bold stand, joining together to build power for the workers behind the games we all know and love.”
A petition launched by the group is demanding sustainable growth instead of short-term boom and bust hiring cycles, advanced notice before layoffs, paid time off following layoffs, improved severance pay, extended health insurance coverage for laid off workers, recall rights that give those who are laid off priority when a company starts hiring again and worker control over decisions to use generative AI.
“Our mission is to take back our lives, our labor and our passion from those who treat us like replaceable cogs; to empower our fellow workers; to link up arms with the laid off, with the freelancer, with the disillusioned contractor, with the disenfranchised and the marginalized, with the workers laboring invisibly to keep this industry afloat,” UVW-CWA’s mission statement reads. “We are going to create a game industry that works for us, one that nourishes its talent and invests in its future, rather than constantly seeking short-term profits. We are the ones that make the games, so we must be the ones that set the terms of how we work.”
