An industry-wide video game workers union launched Wednesday in partnership with Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the American Federation of Musicians (AFM).
A direct-join union, United Videogame Workers-CWA Local 9433 was announced during the 2025 Game Developer Conference (GDC) in San Francisco.
The formation of the union comes on the heels of two years of heavy layoffs and contraction across the video game industry and as concerns rise about generative AI’s longterm impact on the sector.
Per the UVA-CWA’s mission statement, “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. 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.”
UVW-CWA will include video game workers across the United States and Canada, as well as video game contractors, freelancers, indie developers, workers who are currently unemployed, and workers who are already organizing their workplaces, according to the new union.
“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’s senior director of organizing Tom Smith said. “These workers are taking a bold stand, joining together to build power for the workers behind the games we all know and love.”
“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. “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.”
