Microsoft and Bethesda employees unite in the latest in a spree of gaming unionizations

The push for unionization across the game industry continues, with a “supermajority” of about 300 game testers at Bethesda Softworks — makers of Starfield, the Elder Scrolls, and Fallout, among others — as well as id Software, Arcane, and other Zenimax studios, voting to unionize. Moreover, Microsoft voluntarily recognized the union shortly after the vote was confirmed by a third party, making yet another union a reality following the formation of the one at Raven Software last year.

This report comes courtesy of Axios and is corroborated by PBS, which says that with the number of votes tallied, the Bethesda union is now the largest in the industry. Microsoft acquired Bethesda as a part of their purchase of Zenimax Media for $7.5 billion in 2021 — one of the largest video game acquisitions at the time. That price was later vastly eclipsed by the Windows and PC maker’s later purchase of Activision Blizzard for a massive $68.7 billion, which remains in limbo following a lawsuit by the FTC in the US.

Game testers are vital to developing any upcoming title, regardless of size. Bug fixes, optimizations, and other final touches before launch, as well as post-launch updates — all of it has to go through extensive quality assurance, and without a testing staff, that QA falls to other developers whose time is necessary on other parts of the game.

Sadly, this vital job is historically treated as one of the bottom rungs of game development, with low pay, long hours, and blame for issues that manage to make it into the final release. Job security is also notoriously low, even in an industry where employee churn is common.

With a union in place, members of Bethesda’s testing staff who joined have significantly more power to negotiate for higher wages, better treatment, more reasonable hours, and better quality of life with even the highest levels of management. While nothing is guaranteed, testers’ ability to fight for fairness at their job is a massive step in the right direction and one commonplace in other industries. Hopefully, more companies of all sizes will allow their workers the collective bargaining power they deserve.