Some good news for the day: indie developer behind the cult classic psychic platformer Psychonauts and more Double Fine are unionising. As spotted by Aftermath, a petition was filed by the Microsoft-owned studio to the National Labor Relations board on May 7th, and are doing so with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), following suit from a number of other developers owned by the tech giant.
“On May 7, the workers at Microsoft studio Double Fine Productions announced their decision to form a union with CWA to preserve and extend the studio’s commitments to creative excellence, diversity and inclusion, and worker quality of life,” CWA said to Aftermath in a statement.
“In tandem with requesting voluntary recognition from the company, workers have also filed an election petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to secure union representation. We appreciate that Microsoft has taken a neutral approach and agreed not to interfere in any way with worker’s rights to organize unions.” Also worth noting is that the union will include all “regular part-time and full-time employees,” for a total of 42 staff members.
Not that there’s ever a bad time to unionise, but it’s been particularly important in recent years given that Microsoft has laid off thousands of workers since 2023 alone. Along the way, World of Warcraft and other Blizzard devs, workers at Doom studio Id Software, Call of Duty QA staff, and Zenimax QA workers have all formed unions of their own by working with the CWA. Now it would just be nice if all of these studios weren’t owned by a company currently subject to a boycott.