The QA team at Blizzard Albany, who currently assist in QA testing forDiablo 4, won a historic vote to unionize on Friday. This marks the second union to form atActivision Blizzardin less than a year.Blizzard Albany, formerly known as Vicarious Visions, made its name with work on titles such asSpider-Man2: Enter Electro on thePlayStation, and more recently,Diablo II: Resurrected. In July of this year, Game Workers Alliance Albany created a brand-new account on Twitter, and shortly after, announced that its members were aiming to form a new union at Activision Blizzardthrough a series of tweets. Since this open statement, Activision Blizzard has taken steps to prevent the union’s formation, as well as unsuccessfully appealing to the National Labor Relations Board to stop another union from forming within its ranks. The workers have stood strong, however, and today celebrate a major milestone.RELATED:UK Regulatory Board Is Asking Public Opinion On Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard ProposalAs noted in a report byGameIndustry.biz, the votes came in with a resounding 14 to 0 in favor of unionization. Activision Blizzard attempted to thwart the vote by challenging three of the votes and disqualifying one. However, these votes were superfluous, having no bearing on the final decision. GWA Albany took to Twitter with a triumphant victory yell, as representatives from both sides began providing statements on the decision to different media outlets.

In a statement toKotaku, Activision Blizzard representative Joe Christinat gave a statement starting with “We are considering all options…,” before giving a spiel regarding the right to vote and fundamental fairness, which was almost word for word the same statement issued when the vote was brought up in July. This statement was immediately undercut by a Slack message sent to employees by another executive at Activision Blizzard, Lulu Meservey, who actively discouraged workers from trying to unionize through fear. The message can be read in fullvia a tweetfrom workers' rights activist Jessica Gonzalez. With promises ofnew details for Diablo 4coming ahead of the Game Awards, Blizzard is attempting to avoid publicly rocking any more boats.

As for the new union, the next steps are negotiating terms and making compromises with management, which should be a lot easier following the precedent set by Raven Software, who unionized at Activision Blizzard earlier this year. Microsoft is also in the process of getting approval for acquiring Activision Blizzard, withSerbian Regulators okayingit a few days ago, which may further affect these new unions should the acquisition go through.

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