Double Fine Employees File Petition to Unionize with CWA, Seeking Better Workplace Standards

Double Fine Productions, the Microsoft-owned studio behind Psychonauts and experimental titles like Keeper and Kiln, has filed a petition to unionize with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The petition, submitted on May 7, follows the same path as other Microsoft games division studios that have already unionized.

According to the petition, the unionization effort includes all 42 regular part-time and full-time employees at Double Fine. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) issued a statement on behalf of the workers:

"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. 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 workers’ rights to organize unions."

The CWA has continued organizing Microsoft workers despite recent layoffs and the expiration of neutrality agreements originally negotiated in 2022, prior to Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Juniper Dowell, a senior QA tester and union steward at Zenimax Bethesda Softworks, expressed hope for negotiating a new neutrality agreement in the near future during a discussion at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in March.

In 2025, the CWA also established a direct-join union, UVW-CWA, for laid-off or non-studio-affiliated game workers. The union now has over 550 members, according to Kaitlin “KB” Bonfiglio, a writer and designer who serves as its secretary. At GDC, the union proposed a Game Workers’ Bill of Rights, a set of protections aimed at becoming universal across studios.

Within Microsoft, the CWA has unionized thousands of workers across multiple Activision Blizzard and Zenimax studios. However, due to delays attributed to Microsoft, only a few have successfully ratified contracts thus far.