CD Projekt Red is best known for creating Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, today, their developers have formed a union. Hoping to inspire others in the Polish video game industry, the unionized developers formed to strive toward “improving their workplace/industry standards in a way that has legal power and amplifies their voices.” Although they have yet to hear a response, Polish Gamedev Workers Union founders Lev Ki and Pawel Myszka have submitted all the proper paperwork to the higher ups at CDPR, meaning they are aware of the union’s creation.
This union comes following a third round of layoffs within the past three months at CDPR. In May, 29 employees at The Molasses Flood, a small studio CDPR acquired in 2021, were laid off. The Molasses Flood was recently reported to be working on a new Witcher game, only known by its codename “Sirius.” In June, 30 employees working on the Witcher card game Gwent were let go as the spin-off wraps up production. Most recently, in July, another 100 CDPR employees, or about 9% of the entire company, were laid off. The final round was the one to inspire the unionization.
“This event created a tremendous amount of stress and insecurity, affecting our mental health and leading to the creation of this union in response. Having a union means having more security, transparency, better protection, and a stronger voice in times of crisis,” the union’s FAQ page states. “The above shows how employers tend to view their interests to be in conflict with those of their employees. While employees are the ones creating value in this arrangement, they lack any decision power in company-structure-related matters. That is why we need to organize to enter those situations on equal footing. We believe that the mass lay-offs are a danger to the gamedev industry and we believe that unionizing is a way for us to preserve the industry’s potential.”
The Polish Gamedev Workers Union is part of OZZ IP, a nationwide union for various Polish sectors and companies. As of right now though, the Polish Gamedev Workers Union is focused solely on CDPR employees. Still, they hope to gather more members during their “trial period,” the time where they do not have an official executive board in place, although they are legally recognized as a union. This period will end in mid-December, concluding with a large union meeting.
Alongside workers from Microsoft’s ZeniMax QA team and Sega of America unionizing in January and July of this year, the Polish Gamedev Workers Union continues the trend of unionizations within the video game industry.