Bethesda Games Studios Montreal Is the Latest Studio to Unionize
Bethesda Games Studios’ (BGS) Montreal location is the latest studio to form a union.
In a thread on X/Twitter, the account for the BGS Montreal union, called the One BGS MTL, revealed it filed for certification with the Quebec Labour Board today. The union intends to unionize with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) Canada.
“As a union, we will strive to make BGS a supportive workplace that fosters creativity and talent,” One BGS MTL X/Twitter account wrote in one post. “This will allow us to keep creating some of the best video games in the industry, both in the jobs and at the studio we all love.”
We, the developers of Bethesda Game Studios Montreal, are proud to announce that, today, we celebrate filing for certification with the Quebec Labour Board with the intention of unionizing with @cwacanada1 and joining the broader @CWAunion family.
— One BGS MTL (@OneBGS_MTL) June 26, 2024
Bethesda Game Studios, headquartered in Rockville, MD, announced it was opening an office in Montreal, Canada, in late 2015. As our sister site, GamesIndustry.biz, wrote at the time, the studio head for the Montreal location is Yves Lachance, who previously worked at Behaviour Interactive, another studio based in Montreal, best known for the asymmetrical horror game Dead by Daylight and previously collaborated with Bethesda Game Studios to develop Fallout Shelter before development was reassigned to BGS Montreal.
Bethesda Game Studios Montreal is not the only ZeniMax Media studio that has been unionized. In late 2022, roughly 300 quality assurance workers employed at ZeniMax announced it was forming a union with the CWA. BGS Montreal’s unionization announcement comes at a time where, in recent years, the video game industry, which previously had a lack of unions, is now seeing an increase in new unions being formed.
Additional unions that have formed over the last several years include Activision Quality Assurance United, the Allied Employees Guild Improving Sega (AEGIS), and most recently, Avalanche Studios, the developer behind the Just Cause franchise, announcing last April that it signed a collective bargaining agreement with its unionized workers.
In addition to unions forming in the gaming industry over the last few years, 2023 and 2024 have seen mass layoffs. The start of 2024 revealed that over 6,000 jobs were impacted in the first two months and continued to grow as the year progressed. This most infamously includes Bethesda Game Studios’ parent company, Microsoft, announcing last month that it shut down 3 Bethesda Softworks studios, including Redfall and Prey developer Arkane Austin and Hi-Fi Rush and The Evil Within developer Tango Gameworks.
Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
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