In America, the videogames industry, like the rest of the entertainment industry, has not had the best reputation concerning workers’ well-being. Especially in recent years, it seems like it’s every other week that yet another wave of layoffs sweeps a company, or a project is cancelled, or developers speak out about harrowing crunch conditions. Just last week, for example, Electronic Arts began a “realignment” campaign that fired many devs from their studios, even after the breakout success of Battlefield 6 last year. The gaming landscape is as diverse as ever nowadays for the consumer, with both AAA titles and indies hitting it big and offering amazing experiences, however for the people that make them, it’s not quite as peachy. At this year’s Game Developers Conference, hosted in San Francisco, the United Videogame Workers union has taken the initiative to demonstrate and advocate for a better working environment with a new Bill of Rights.

In the video featured in PC Gamer’s article about the subject, the union members can be seen filing down an escalator at GDC chanting “Videogames are corporate made,” “Join the part and the fight the boss,” “We will put your game on pause,” and “We’re workers united, we’ll never be defeated.” The UVW union was present at GDC in tandem with members of the more studio-specific ZeniMax and Blizzard unions to host an event discussing the current state of their labor organizing efforts. This year, according to PC Gamer, they’re pushing for an industry-standardized Bill of Rights that focuses on protections against AI, ICE, and labor-hour requirements. On the union’s website, they also list their advocacy for advance layoff notices, better severance packages, better insurance coverage, and recall rights, which would make it so that generally a studio’s first hiring list when looking for new employees would be previously fired workers.