North America’s first video game union has formed at Vodeo Games

At Beast BreakerVodeo Games has unionized to create the first North American videogame studio union. Vodeo’s management recognized the union voluntarily, and it includes full-time employees as well as contracted workers.

Vodeo was created in the year 2000. Threes creator Asher Vollmer, with the studio’s first game, Beast BreakerThe September release of ‘The Last Stand’ was announced. It plans to release only one game per year. It describes its games as cozy-crunchy: “They are small, intimate games that you can curl up with and completely lose yourself in. At the same time, they are games full of complex, interlocking systems that can take years to fully master.” Beast Breaker, for its part, is a ball-bouncing, turn-based strategy game that’s been compared to Peggle.

With its employees of approximately 13 and contract workers scattered across the United States, this company can be found entirely in remote locations. The union, called Vodeo Workers United, represents all eligible employees — more than half of whom are independent contractors.

“We were really inspired by what a lot of our colleagues were doing in the game industry and the tech industry and beyond — Voltage Organized Workers, United Paizo Workers … there was a lot going on,” Vodeo designer Carolyn Jong told Polygon. “It felt like a natural next step for us to be talking about, ‘Hey, maybe we should be unionizing,’ and help set a positive precedent for the digital games industry as well.”

Vodeo Workers Unite won’t have to forcibly vote on a National Labor Relations Board election if Vodeo management has accepted voluntary recognition. The group will soon begin contract negotiations to ensure a fair, equitable workplace, and to lock in benefits they already have and love — like a four-day work week.

Image: Vodeo Games

Vodeo Workers United has become the North America’s first video game studio union. Its staff follows in the footsteps of other game industry workers who’ve made history for workers rights. Voltage Organized Workers are one of these workers. Choose Your Romance with LovestruckDevelopers went on a 21 day strike in 2020 and won no official recognition by United Paizo Workers and Cards Against Humanity Workers United. This union made history when it became the first to offer tabletop gaming unions.

The video game industry has seen increased momentum towards unionization, with video game studios abroad — like Paradox Interactive workers in Sweden and Nexon workers in South Korea — forming workers’ groups. Over the last few years, North American union and collective bargaining efforts have increased as studios confronted allegations of misconduct in work and unjust conditions.

Chris Floyd, the game director said Vodeo employees were determined to create fair conditions at their studios where they are happy to work and also to set an example to other workers interested in joining unionization.

“We’re looking at the wider industry, and all of us were aware of how necessary these kinds of steps are for our industry,” Floyd told Polygon. “Looking around, that’s just really obvious.”

CODE-CWA campaign lead Emma Kinema told Polygon that union organizing and workers’ rights are not goals that are at odds with loving your work and wanting to make amazing video games, or being proud of your studio. Vodeo is an example. “They’re not organizing because there’s some big scary boss, like Bobby Kotick or someone,” Kinema said. “They’re organizing because they care so much about the work they do, and they want more of a say over how it’s done — the conditions in which they work to actually make those games that they care about.”

Myriame Lachapelle, a Vodeo producer, continued: “We’re here to say, ‘Hey, it can be done.’ It’s often said that the digital game industry is special — that unions are good for other industries, like film, that it wouldn’t work for games, especially smaller indie teams. […] But everyone deserves a union, like three or 10 or 200 or thousands of people.”

Image: CODE-CWA

Vodeo Workers United teamed up with Communications Workers of America (CODECWA), a group which supports organizations in the gaming and technology industry. (Some Vodeo development staff are members of Montreal’s Game Workers Unite. As a group, the CWA represents over 700,000. Public and private workers in education, technology and media. CODE-CWA has been involved in the unionization of workers across the gaming industry. This includes Activision Blizzard where some QA workers remain on strike after being laid off at Raven Software. A group of Activision Blizzard workers, called ABK Workers’ Alliance, announced a union push in December. Since then, more than $300,000.000 has been raised to support striking workers. Workers are still asking Activision Blizzard to ensure its workplace is safe for workers, following allegations — and multiple lawsuits — of a sexist workplace detrimental to women and minorities.

“We’ve been in a phase the past several years of groundwork building, laying the educational and narrative work around why folks should organize, and why game workers are just like anyone else,” Kinema from CODE-CWA told Polygon. “All workers deserve a union.”

She continued: “We’re starting to see a qualitative shift into a new phase of that, where you see workers en masse, whether it’s thousands of workers at Ubisoft or Activision Blizzard, or, again, the workers of Paizo and Vodeo organizing a union. We’re seeing a shift where it’s moving from talking about this thing — pushing for this thing — and actually seeing the thing come alive and weaving worker organization out of thin air.”