Several American entertainment news websites reported on Tuesday that hundreds of former employees who participated in the development work of Overwatch 2 has formed a union and joined the large union of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) to demand that game developer Blizzard Entertainment improve employee benefits.

According to reports, there are currently unions composed of former design, manufacturing, technology, and art department employees from multiple companies who have joined and responded to the CWA union's calls.

It is estimated that the CWA union's activity has accumulated nearly 5,000 participants in Orange County, California.

Among the participants, the company that has most of the members which participated in this unions are mainly former employees of computer manufacturer giant Microsoft (2,600 people), and Microsoft has confirmed this.

It is estimated that there are nearly 200 former Blizzard employees participating in this union, not including former employees of its parent company Activision.

During the union, two Blizzard employees who participated in the event, Foster Elmendorf and Jess Castillo, were interviewed by reporters and said that they were participating in this mainly because they want to speak out against the company's repeated ignorance over their concerns towards poor working environment and the theft of AI copyrights, and were even being laid off due to unfair treatment.

Jess Castillo said: "The reason why I called on my colleagues to join this union and respond to this call is because I believe that in our company, we should not distinguish between you and me. We are all a team that has worked hard for the company, the industry, and this great work, and is determined to move towards the same direction of success."

"The purpose of this union is mainly to give the company an opportunity to talk to everyone so that everyone can build a better, more harmonious and more comfortable working environment, and enable Blizzard to be proud of having an enviable team behind Overwatch 2 that can lead the e-sports game development industry to achieve success."

In fact, as early as March 2023, the United Videogame Workers (UVGW) spontaneously organized a union with CWA because of dissatisfaction with harsh employee benefits. Once the event was held, it immediately attracted more than 500 people to participate.

Later, Microsoft, which had the largest number of participating members in CWA, signed an agreement on its official website a few months later promising to treat employees equally, which eased the demands somewhat. However, these demands have recently risen again as the company announced that it would lay off nearly thousands of employees (3%) worldwide.