截至周日下午6点，工会已经用完了所有代表各个谈判单位的彩色徽章（共计7000枚），因为不断有人前来向他们表示祝贺。尽管工会成员们早已收拾好行李离开了会场，但现场仍有人继续交谈、互相交换这些徽章。
By 6 p.m. Sunday, the union had already run out of the colorful pins representing each bargaining unit—all 7,000 of them—as people kept coming up to congratulate them. When members had already packed up, people were still on the convention floor, talking and trading the pins.
“人们向我们询问各种问题，比如‘我该如何加入工会？我能做些什么来提供帮助吗？’”保罗·考克斯（Paul Cox）说道。他当时是暴雪娱乐（Blizzard Entertainment）的一名高级设计师，这场活动发生在大约一周前，是暴雪娱乐在加利福尼亚州南部举办的年度游戏盛会——BlizzCon。活动吸引了数万名现场观众以及1250万的在线观众。
“Folks were asking us questions like ‘How do I get involved in unions? Is there anything I can do to help?’,” said Paul Cox, a senior designer on , recounting the excitement at BlizzCon, the video game developer Blizzard Entertainment’s annual Southern California gaming convention, which took place just over a week ago and drew tens of thousands of attendees, as well as 12.5 million online viewers.
自2024年以来，暴雪娱乐的员工们纷纷组建了工会：首先是纽约州奥尔巴尼（Albany）和德克萨斯州奥斯汀（Austin）的质量保证团队，随后是负责剧情开发、技术支持以及开发《魔兽世界》（World of Warcraft）等知名游戏的团队。
Since 2024, Blizzard Entertainment workers—first those working on quality assurance in Albany, New York, and Austin, Texas, then the team behind , unionized one after another, including staff working on story development, technology, and ultra-high-profile games like and .
最终，暴雪娱乐及其现任母公司微软（Microsoft）承认了这些工会的存在，并于2022年与“美国通信工人联合会”（Communications Workers of America）签署了劳动中立协议。
Blizzard—and Microsoft, now its owner—eventually recognized some 1,900 unionized workers, striking a 2022 labor neutrality agreement with the Communications Workers of America.
尽管暴雪的游戏非常受欢迎，而且像《魔兽世界》这样的重磅新作以及其他知名游戏发布时总是备受期待，但游戏开发者的工作环境却极其艰苦且缺乏稳定性。在游戏发布前的关键时期，他们常常需要每周工作100个小时；而一旦游戏上市，公司往往会大规模裁员。像《魔兽世界》这样的游戏能为游戏开发商及其母公司带来数十亿美元的收益，但参与游戏制作的团队却几乎无法从中分得任何好处——游戏行业的高管薪资往往是中层员工的数百倍。
Despite the extraordinary popularity of Blizzard’s games, and the anticipation with which landmark releases like —and high-profile games from other studios, like —are received, game developers work in a notoriously demanding and insecure sector, regularly putting in 100-hour work weeks in the crunch periods leading up to release only to face sweeping layoffs after games hit the market. Franchises like and can earn billions for the studios and parent companies behind them, but the teams who make the games are often painfully aware of how little trickles down to them—executive salaries in the gaming world can be several hundred times greater than those of the median staff member.
暴雪的员工也面临着严峻的就业形势。7月，微软从其Xbox部门裁掉了1600名员工。虽然这些裁员对暴雪娱乐公司的员工影响不大，但这只是疫情初期收入增长之后、由于多次大规模并购而导致的预算削减浪潮中的又一个例证。根据该公司7月的公告，本财年剩余时间内预计还将有1600名员工被裁掉，这很可能会对暴雪产生进一步影响。周二，Xbox又裁掉了268名员工，这是Xbox首席执行官阿莎·夏尔玛（Asha Sharma）推行的“重组”计划的一部分。
Blizzard workers are among those having a rough ride. In July, Microsoft laid off 1,600 workers from its Xbox division. While these cuts didn’t have a major impact on workers at Blizzard Entertainment, it was yet another example of budget cuts amid the struggles that came with several massive mergers on the heels of revenue growth early in the Covid pandemic. 1,600 more staff are expected to be laid off throughout the rest of the fiscal year—cuts, according to the company’s July announcement, that would likely affect Blizzard. On Tuesday, Xbox laid off 268 staff as part of Xbox CEO Asha Sharma’s “reset” campaign.
目前已有1900名员工与暴雪签订了合同，这些合同为他们的就业安全、远程工作条件、工资增长以及在工作场所使用人工智能相关的问题提供了法律保障。在这样一个热衷于引入人工智能技术（往往以降低成本为目的）的行业中，这些问题显得尤为紧迫。
The 1,900 workers who have now ratified a contract with Blizzard won protections around job security, remote work, wage increases, and the right to continuously bargain over AI usage in the workplace, a point of serious urgency in an industry eager to incorporate the technology, often with an eye to cost-cutting.
对于许多员工来说，这样的合同至关重要。以艺电（Electronic Arts）为例：这家开发了《魔兽世界》等游戏系列的公司在过去三年里裁掉了超过1000名员工，并将人工智能视为加快开发进度的关键手段。上个月，沙特阿拉伯的公共投资基金以及贾里德·库什纳（Jared Kushner）旗下的Affinity Partners等投资机构完成了对艺电的收购，这既凸显了该行业对全球投资者的吸引力，也表明私募股权市场可能会对游戏行业施加更严格的压力。去年12月，六个欧洲视频游戏工会联合抗议人工智能技术的滥用、恶劣的工作环境以及大规模裁员现象。
Such contracts look vital to many workers in an industry where—in another recent example—Electronic Arts, the company behind game series like and , has eliminated more than a thousand positions over the past three years, touting AI as a path to quicken development timelines; Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and investment firms including Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners completed their acquisition of the company last month, highlighting both the value of the industry to global investors and the likelihood of a even more severe private equity squeeze. A coalition of six European video games unions collectively protested AI, toxic workplaces, and mass layoffs in December.
然而，达成这些协议的过程非常艰难——部分原因在于暴雪在谈判过程中多次更换了谈判代表。
But the two years it took to get to that point were difficult, in part because Blizzard changed its bargaining chair multiple times.
“那段时间感觉就像九年，甚至更久，我们几乎什么进展都没有取得，”科克斯（Cox）说道。其中一位谈判代表——克里斯塔尔·凯里（Crystal Carey）后来于1月被任命为特朗普政府的全国劳工关系委员会（NLRB）的首席法律顾问。
“It felt like nine months, maybe even a year, where we didn’t really get much done,” Cox said. One of those chairs, Crystal Carey, was later sworn in as President Trump’s NLRB general counsel in January.
各工会的积极分子通过在校内举行的集会和工会活动加大了他们的行动力度。暴雪公司负责故事创作与特许经营权开发的高级编辑艾莉森·维内托（Alison Veneto）表示：“有七个工会同时在进行谈判；共有七个谈判桌，我们都在努力争取谈判的具体日期。我们开始互相合作，共同参加彼此的集会。”
Mobilizers in each union ramped up their activity with on-campus rallies and union events. “There were seven units who were actively bargaining at the same time. There were seven different bargaining tables, and we were all trying to get bargaining dates,” said Alison Veneto, a senior editor in story and franchise development at Blizzard. “We all started to work together, show up at each other’s rallies.”
8月9日那一周，当时正在谈判的七个工会联合举行了所谓的“面对面的大型谈判会议”，整个谈判过程持续了五天，共计70个小时。
On the week of August 9, the seven unions bargaining at the time merged for what Veneto called an “in-person mega bargaining session” consisting of “70 hours of bargaining over five days.”
作为该游戏员工动员与组织委员会成员之一的资深环境美术师马赫琳·法蒂玛（Mahreen Fatima）将那周的谈判形容为“充满紧张情绪的时期”。
Mahreen Fatima, a senior environment artist on who has been part of mobilization and organizing committees of the game’s staff, described that week of negotiations as “emotionally charged.”
法蒂玛说：“在整个组建工会并谈判合同的过程中，我们始终意识到自己正在创造新的先例；因为后来加入的工会都可以借鉴我们的经验。”虽然工人们并不清楚为什么谈判进程会如此迅速推进，但法蒂玛、考克斯（Cox）和维内托认为，9月份即将举行的暴雪嘉年华（BlizzCon）可能是其中一个重要因素。这场活动为暴雪公司带来了正面的媒体报道；据称，暴雪是微软Xbox部门表现最出色的游戏开发工作室。
“Throughout the entire process of unionizing and bargaining for this contract, we’ve always stayed conscious of the fact that we are doing precedent-setting,” Fatima said. “Because the people who come after us, they’re just going to build off of this.” While workers don’t know for sure why bargaining moved so quickly in August, Fatima, Cox, and Veneto said they think the looming September date of BlizzCon was a factor. The event garnered positive coverage for the company, reportedly the top-performing studio at Microsoft’s Xbox division—rather than coverage of unions holding rallies outside the convention.
虽然暴雪的员工们并没有完全赢得所有诉求，但他们取得的最重要成果之一是获得了“影响谈判权”——即在合同有效期内（至少四年内），员工可以就人工智能技术的应用问题与公司进行协商。
The workers at Blizzard didn’t win everything they demanded, but among their most valuable victories was a guarantee of impact bargaining, allowing workers to bargain with the company on AI use as the technology evolves for the duration of the contract—at least four years.
“也许《星际争霸》（暴雪的另一个游戏系列）很快就会成立工会了，”法蒂玛说道，她对能够讨论潜在的新工会成员感到非常兴奋。“如果他们成立了工会，就可以加入我们的合同体系，不必再独自经历长达两年的谈判过程。”在暴雪嘉年华期间，考克斯表示与会者向工会成员询问了如何参与进来以及如何帮助其他员工。工会成员建议大家关注贝塞斯达（Bethesda）的员工情况——据报道，微软在7月份的大规模裁员中至少裁掉了62名贝塞斯达的员工；同时，Rockstar Games也正处于法律诉讼中：23名前员工指控自己因参与工会活动而在去年10月被解雇（Rockstar Games则声称这些员工是因为在网上公开讨论公司机密信息而被解雇的，并否认工会活动是导致他们被解雇的原因）。
“Maybe StarCraft [another Blizzard franchise] will be unionizing very soon,” said Fatima, with clear enthusiasm for being able to discuss potential new members. “If they unionize, they’ll get to join us in our contract. They don’t have to go through this two-year-long bargaining process by themselves.” During BlizzCon weekend, Cox said attendees asked union members how to get involved and help other workers. Members pointed people toward fellow workers at Bethesda, where at least 62 staff were reportedly cut during Microsoft’s July layoffs, and publishersRockstar Games, which is in an ongoing trial with 23 former workers who allege that they were fired last October in retaliation for engaging in union activity (Rockstar claims that the former employees were dismissed over publicly discussing confidential company information online, and denies that the union drive figured in).
“我们真心希望这种合同体系能够推广到整个视频游戏行业，也希望其他游戏公司能够借鉴暴雪的做法并效仿他们的做法，”韦内托（Veneto）说道。
“We would really like to see this contract extended throughout the video game industry and for other studios to look at what Blizzard has done and follow suit,” Veneto said.