NATIONAL
Wizards workers unite for a voice on the job
The STAND sat down with three of the workers fighting for a union at Puget Sound-based game developer Wizards of the Coast
RENTON, WA (May 18, 2026) — Every year, the Game Development Conference, now known as GDC Festival of Gaming, releases a State of the Game Industry report, surveying games workers on industry trends. Their 2026 edition reported a staggering statistic: one third of all games workers in the U.S. had been laid off at some point in the last two years.
“It’s an incredibly perilous time right now to be an individual worker in the games industry,” said Rogue Kessler, a digital product manager at Wizards of the Coast.
The astounding rate of layoffs helps explain another stat found in the report; 82% of U.S. based respondents support unionizing the industry. That’s certainly the view of a supermajority of workers at Wizards, who announced their intent to unionize at the end of April.
The workers make Magic The Gathering: Arena, a digital iteration of the iconic card game where players use their card decks to battle, casting spells and summoning magic creatures to defeat their opponents. First released in 2018, MTG: Arena is one of Wizards of the Coast’s most popular products. Workers have asked Wizards, a subsidiary of Hasbro, to voluntarily recognize United Wizards of the Coast-CWA. So far, the company has declined. Unless management changes course, workers will be doing some casting of their own on June 2, voting for their union in a National Labor Relations Board election.
Logo: courtesy UWOTC. Design: The STAND
Job security is a major reason workers are organizing, along with concerns over the company’s lack of a policy regarding AI use and unsustainable workloads, including periods of mandatory, unpaid overtime. There’s another working condition that inspired workers to organize; a “return to office” policy that’s been suddenly imposed on the Wizards workforce, many of whom were hired into fully remote jobs and live as far as 3,000 miles away from the Renton headquarters.
So what the company has termed “return to office” would more accurately be described as mandatory relocation. When hired, remote workers were assured that their jobs would stay remote, and their families made decisions based on that commitment from the company. Now, they’re facing a sudden, massive disruption to their lives.
“It’s not a return if you’ve never been there,” said Xib Vaine, a producer on MTG: Arena. “And suddenly it’s, ‘you can come into the office or you can voluntarily resign.'”
Some of the workers who make MTG: Arena live as far away as Baltimore, Boston, and New York.
“I am very concerned for my coworkers who are in that situation,” said Rogue. “And I’m also concerned for those of us who are local, if the worst should come to worst and those folks exit the company rather than relocate, we’re going to be down a huge amount of staff. And frankly, I don’t know how we deliver on the workload commitments that we currently have if we have that many vacancies at the same time.”
“If you decide that you don’t want to sell your house, you can’t upend your lives, you can’t drag your kids out of school, you can’t say sorry to your ailing parents that you have moved to take care of, then you don’t even get severance,” said Xib.
“It speaks to this broader our-way-or-the-highway attitude that we’ve been getting from leadership on all of our issues,” said Rogue. “We’ve been getting dismissed, sometimes very disrespectfully, and told ‘if you don’t like it, go look for a job somewhere else.'”
But the workers don’t want to leave their jobs. Sure, they could take their talents elsewhere. But they love what they do. They’re committed to Wizards’ long-term success.
“People want to make the best product that they can because they love it,” said Xib. “And in this moment in the industry, you can really feel that the folks at the top are exploiting that. They’re taking advantage of the fact that people love the work that they do.”
In an industry increasingly defined by churn-and-burn, workers’ love for MTG: Arena might be the thing that keeps a beloved game from being hallowed out by pursuit of maximum profits.
“When a company is incentivized to make money and the nearest goalpost for any executive is the next financial report, a lot of decisions end up being pretty shortsighted,” said Damien Wilson, who started working on computer infrastructure systems at Wizards last year after a career in tech companies. “Like what do we need to do to make next quarter look good?”
But workers are thinking more longterm.
“We’re very invested in the long-term health of the company,” said Damien. “Our ability to unionize in our minds helps us hold leadership accountable when they are making those short-term decisions we feel are harmful for the long-term health of the company. And it is something I personally think any investor or shareholder in Hasbro should care deeply about if they’re looking at that as a long-term staple investment.”
Workers announced their union drive to overwhelming support from MTG: Arena fans. The union’s public letter to management was signed by more than 32,000 supporters within a week of going public.
“We’ve always known, our player base is very passionate about the games we make,” said Rogue. “They care a lot. They care a lot about how it’s made. They care a lot about what the final product is, and they want the people who make the thing that they love to be treated well.”
But what’s been more surprising to the workers is how much support they’ve received from across the labor movement as well.
“One of the things that I was a little worried about is, we’re tech workers,” said Xib. “We’re not out there climbing hundred foot ladders.”
“Seeing the solidarity and seeing folks who are like, ‘I’m a Machinist who also plays Magic, so this is super exciting to me and I love my union,’ has been amazing,” Xib continued.
As workers gear up for their NLRB election, the company has brought in an anti-union law firm to try to sway support for the union, per UWOTC-CWA. But workers aren’t backing down.
“We’re standing on the shoulders of folks who have unionized before us,” said Xib. “We would not be able to do that without the groundwork that they laid. And I hope that we can be a shoulder that other tech workers or game workers can stand on to also unionize.”
Support Wizards workers by signing their letter urging management to voluntarily recognize the union.