Better Video Games Are Possible With Better Lives for Developers, New Industry Union Says
In GDC 2025, workers announced a scope of industry unions, with open doors allowing game developers to join. this Joint video game workersOrganized under the United States’ communication workers, the aim is to enable the gaming industry workers to collectively promote the benefits and protection of the business scope.
UVW started with 100 members and as more and more workers joined, a total of 200 were reached on the first day. Currently, the union is committed to increasing its membership to achieve the ultimate goal of industry-wide contracts, just as members of the Actors Union SAG AFTRA cover all members.
According to UVW data announcement. But efforts to improve the quality of life of people making games can also affect the game itself, leaders say.
“In the long run, what does (UVW) mean to them? I think it means better games and better art,” said Kaitlin Bonfiglio, a narrative designer and union leader of UVW. “Players are workers, too, so I want to believe that all workers will support such a movement.”
“We entered the industry because we were passionate about it. There are other places where we can (where) we can make more money, but we love making games,” he said. “We are also the gamers in our hearts.”
In GDC 2025, video game developers and industry-wide unions join forces with video game workers. They are heading forward at the San Francisco Mostin Center Convention Center where GDC is located.
The gaming industry tries to work differently in union jobs at various companies including Microsoft Zenimax Online Studio In December, the process of changing conditions can be achieved by ensuring binding contracts. But it takes years to compete and win contracts, and the momentum could get stuck in an industry experiencing record layoffs and turnover.
Instead, Bonfiglio explains that UVW is a “direct join” type of union, not a type of union associated with a company. Tieing UVW to an industry rather than a single workplace can also ensure that the alliance (described by leaders Bonfilio and Ostrander as “sports”) is not affected when folded in a fancy workplace. “The union across the industry is building momentum and it becomes stronger than any boss can stop,” Ostrand said.
Joining UVW did not grant protection immediately, but it is indeed a stepping stone to worker organizations, solidarity and efforts to provide greater protection to the industry as a whole.
UVW leaders believe that it was when GDC established an industry union in 2025 because of the turmoil in the Trump administration after being fired by the president and restored by federal judges. NBC News Report. UVW replaced the stable labor arbitration committee, made it public.
“Now, what we’re seeing is an attack on the National Labor and Industrial Relations Commission, and if they’re going to change the rules of the game, then we need to change our own way of playing,” Ostrodland said.
UVW held a panel at the Mostin Center in San Francisco on Wednesday, keeping the timing with the GDC after going public with the union. During the panel discussion, other gaming industry workers expressed their concern for the industry and their hopes for the union. When Bonfiglio asked attendees who arrived in the room to raise a hand, almost everyone in every room would raise their hand if they knew someone in the gaming industry who was fired.
In GDC 2025, video game workers launched their new industry union, United Video Game Workers (UVW), and marched at the Mostin Center.
Afterwards, UVW leaders led members and group participants to chant protest slogans and gathered along the street towards Yerba Buena Gardens in the outdoor area of the developer. The second group ended the day, during which time, Tom Smith, senior director of the CWA organization, was interviewed by Bloomberg gaming industry reporter Jason Schreier.
Kings framed UVW to provide workers with the ability to reshape their industry, especially to resist layoffs and poor working conditions (such as Crunch (notoriously mandatory extended working hours).
“It feels frank, but I say with all the seriousness in the world: The game needs to equate the things of American humane society at the end of them to the things of American humane society.
Schreier The famous 1937 United Automobile Worker sat down In Flint, Michigan, it won concessions from its owner GM despite accounting for 2% of the workforce. Remembering the history of the labor movement from the sit-in civil rights movement to the workplace strike can enable game developers to improve their capabilities and remind game developers, such as workplace takeover, picketing, boycott, and solidarity that have won workers’ victories in the past.
“We have to become unruly in this way,” Smith said in response to the audience’s questions. “We don’t have a muscle to do this overnight, but the only way we can get to that muscle is that more people have the courage to do what they are doing (in the union).
