Ubisoft Halifax Workers Vote to Unionize, Joining Industry Wave

by Darren Holt • 4 min read
Ubisoft Halifax Workers Vote to Unionize, Joining Industry Wave - Professional coverage

According to Wccftech, 74% of the Ubisoft Halifax team voted in favor of a wall-to-wall union, officially joining CWA Canada Local 30111. The move, announced on December 18, 2025, adds 60 staff from roles including producers, programmers, designers, and artists to the union. This follows a similar vote just days earlier on December 12, where 165 developers at id Software also joined the CWA. The unionization wave in 2025 has also seen 450 Diablo developers and nearly 200 Overwatch 2 developers at Blizzard vote to unionize. The Ubisoft Halifax team stated their goal is to partner with management to ensure the studio remains a “beacon of equity, excellence, and innovation” amid industry-wide instability.

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Uncertainty is the Catalyst

Here’s the thing: the union’s mission statement nails the current mood. They’re not framing this as a hostile takeover, but as a necessary stabilization effort. And you can see why. The article points to three separate rounds of layoffs at Ubisoft this year alone, hitting studios working on major titles like Star Wars Outlaws. Then there’s Microsoft, which has had massive cuts in its gaming division—so many that rumors about shuttering Xbox entirely are circulating. When even the biggest players feel shaky, it’s no wonder workers at individual studios are looking for a seat at the table and some job security. Basically, creativity doesn’t thrive on a bed of anxiety about the next all-hands meeting.

A Broader Canadian Push

This isn’t just about one studio in Nova Scotia. CWA Canada is actively pushing on multiple fronts. They’re calling on the Competition Bureau to scrutinize EA’s recent buyout deal, arguing for protections for Canadian developers. Even more pointedly, they organized a protest at Rockstar Toronto over the firing of 34 workers across the UK and Toronto in October. Rockstar claims it was for leaking confidential info, but the CWA and the fired workers say it was pure union-busting, that discussions were about working conditions in a private server. It’s a messy “he said, she said,” but it highlights the tense climate. When a company as powerful as Rockstar is accused of this, it probably makes other developers think, “Yeah, maybe we need a contract.”

What Happens Next

So the vote is done. Now the real work begins: negotiating that first collective agreement. As CWA Canada president Carmel Smyth said, “Now let’s get to work.” This is where the rubber meets the road. They’ll be bargaining for the things mentioned—job security, fair compensation, maybe better crunch policies. The recent deal for the ZeniMax QA workers, which took two years to negotiate with Microsoft, shows this isn’t a quick process. But the sheer momentum from Ubisoft Halifax, id Software, and the Blizzard teams creates a powerful precedent. It’s harder for any one company to drag its feet or push back aggressively when the trend is so clearly moving in one direction across the entire continent.

The New Normal?

Look, we’re past the point of asking if game development will unionize. It’s happening. The question now is how fast and in what form. Wall-to-wall unions, like at Ubisoft Halifax and id, seem to be gaining favor over department-specific ones. And with the CWA’s aggressive organizing, as shown with the initial filing back in July 2024, this is a structured, sustained campaign. For an industry built on digital worlds, the most significant real-world change in decades is unfolding in its studios. It’s a direct response to the boom-and-bust cycles, the mergers, and the layoffs. The workers are basically building their own in-game save point, and they don’t want management to have the only controller.

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