It’s been rather interesting watching the situation over at Xbox these past few years. For a very long time now, and especially since 2020, the company has been doggedly undermining itself at every turn, though likely not realizing it. It did manage to make one popular decision recently, but it seems that it’s not just gamers who are wary of Xbox and Microsoft right now. Indeed, many studios under the Xbox umbrella are unionizing, with Double Fine being the latest to begin the process.

As reported by Aftermath, Double Fine has filed a petition to the National Labor Relations Board in a bid to unionize the studio. They are doing so in relation to the Communications Workers of America (CWA), and their union will include all full- and part-time employees at the studio, 42 people in total. Double Fine is actually one of several studios that’ve unionized under the CWA, joining (reportedly) thousands of workers within Microsoft, Activision Blizzard and Zenimax.

Speculation is that all of this is happening in response to the rash of layoffs by Microsoft over the past couple of years and the recent changes in leadership and strategy at Xbox. Neutrality agreements (granting workers the right to unionize, among other things) that were forged when Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard have also, apparently, lapsed, so there are concerns there as well.

I dunno about you all, but I’m very curious to see how this all plays out. I think Double Fine and studios like them unionizing is a good thing because, frankly, there’s entirely too little job security in professional game development. I mean, even if you make a hit like Hi-Fi Rush, you can still end up out on the street like the guys at Tango Gameworks. So yeah, it’s absolutely understandable that people want more security and protection.

Still, I wonder what Microsoft and Xbox’s response is going to be. The companies seem to have finally realized that gamers (their customers) don’t want to pay the kinds of prices they’ve been demanding and have declining interest in the kinds of games being pushed, so they might be inclined to go along with this in the interest of maintaining talent in order to produce games that players actually want.

On the other hand, though, these are still giant corporations that are primarily interested in “maximizing shareholder value” every quarter, and the best way to do that is to reduce headcount as much as possible. So, there’s every chance this could be used as an excuse to axe these studios instead. I guess we’ll see, yeah? Either way, I think Xbox is going to find itself in an uncomfortable situation.

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What’s your take on this? Do you think Xbox can still turn itself around and become a desirable brand again?

Imagefrom the Psychonauts 2 Steam page