Double Fine Employees File Petition to Unionize with Communications Workers of America

Double Fine, an Xbox studio, filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board on May 7 to form a union with the Communications Workers of America. The proposed union would include all 42 regular part-time and full-time employees at the studio.

Workers are asking Microsoft for voluntary recognition of the union in addition to filing an election petition with the NLRB to secure union representation.

Microsoft has taken a neutral approach and agreed not to interfere in any way with workers' rights to organize unions, the Communications Workers of America said. The filing continues a wave of union activity across Microsoft gaming studios.

More than 500 World of Warcraft workers within Blizzard formed a union with the CWA in 2024. The Overwatch team formed a wall-to-wall union with nearly 200 developers almost a year after the 2024 WoW union. The quality assurance employees of ZeniMax Studios ratified their union agreement with Microsoft in 2025.

ZeniMax Studios is best known for its work on The Elder Scrolls Online. More than 450 Diablo developers at Blizzard voted to unionize with the CWA in August 2025. Double Fine became part of Microsoft in 2019.

The studio released Psychonauts almost two decades before it became part of Microsoft. Double Fine is the first-party Xbox game developer behind Psychonauts and remains an Xbox studio. Under Xbox Game Studios, Double Fine released Psychonauts 2.

It also released Keeper, an adventure game featuring a sentient lighthouse. The studio released the multiplayer pottery game Kiln under the Xbox Game Studios banner. Engadget reported that workers for the Xbox studio are forming a union.

The studio has followed in the footsteps of other Microsoft-owned developer groups that have unionized in the past. The latest effort at Double Fine marks another step in organizing efforts that now span multiple studios and job functions at the company.