Developers at Hyper Light Drifter, Solar Ash and Possessor(s) studio Heart Machine are unionising. They’ve signed up with a local branch of the Communications Workers of America, in a “wall-to-wall unit [that] represents all frontline employees”. This comes in the wake of layoffs, and takes inspiration from larger unionisation drives at megacorps like Microsoft.

“Watching that momentum grow made me realize that if we love this work, we have to protect it, especially now,” CWA local 9003 member and gameplay tools engineer Steph Aligbe observes in a statement. “Our union is proud that our studio chose to voluntarily recognize our union and live up to its high-road labor values, and we look forward to working on a first contract that safeguards our workplace.”

According to an email statement, organisers presented studio management with a request for voluntary recognition in February, after a super-majority – that is, greater than 50% by a certain proportion – of workers indicated that they wanted the CWA to represent them.

Heart Machine have been in the wars of late. They cut staff in October last year, a few weeks before the launch of Possessor(s). Former community and PR developer Yiyi Zhang commented back then that “by the time Possessor(s) comes out on November 11, I don’t know if anyone who worked on the game will even be at the company anymore.”

Nonetheless, the game’s outgoing narrative director encouraged people to buy Possessor(s), pointing out that eligible staff would still get a slice of revenue from sales after leaving Heart Machine. And besides, we “make games because we want people to play them and have fun. IF no one does that… I really just wasted 3 damn years of my life.”

Heart Machine’s LinkedIn profile says they have “11-50” people on the books as of writing. Well done to all those developers for organising a union – I hope it stands you in good stead, the next time the axeman cometh.