The Daily Populous Tuesday February 3rd, 2026 evening edition
Authored by gamedeveloper.com and submitted by FootballAndFries

The vast majority of game developers plying their trade in the United States are in favor of unionization.

That's according to data from the 2026 State of the Game Industry (SOTI) survey, which found that 82 percent of respondents situated in the U.S. support the unionization of game industry workers.

The latest SOTI report—an annual survey conducted by GDC Festival of Gaming based on responses from over 2,300 industry professionals—found that only 5 percent of developers in the U.S. were outright opposed to unionization.

Meanwhile, 13 percent of respondents were unsure whether they support unionization.

Support for unionization was higher among workers earning less than $200,000 per year and those who had been laid off sometimes in the past two years. People under the age of 45 also expressed more support than their older counterparts.

By contrast, respondents in leadership roles (company owners and executives) weren't quite as convinced. Although 58 percent said they support unionization, 18 percent said they were opposed, and 24 percent were unsure about the prospect of collective organization.

Related:Ubisoft union representatives call for resignation of CEO Yves Guillemot

While support for unionization was generally widespread, only 12 percent of respondents said they are currently part of a union.

That figure includes members of both industry-wide unions such as UVW-CWA (10 percent) and company unions (2 percent). That number might soon change, however, with 62 percent of respondents explaining they are interested in joining a union.

Game Developer and GDC Festival of Gaming are sibling companies under Informa Festivals.

Chromatinfish on February 3rd, 2026 at 06:22 UTC »

Overall I've always been disappointed at how nonexistent organized labor is for tech/software jobs like game devs and such. The sheer amount of layoffs, poor treatment/crunch time, long hours and such from what I've heard have made it a really poor work environment in general.

My guess is that it's due to the amount of leverage employers have currently in the tech space due to the economic downturn and monopolization of the tech industry. From my experience tech is one of the worst place when it comes to "crabs in a bucket" mentality where everybody is trying to one-up each other and everybody touts around working at big tech like Google like an achievement to dunk on others. It's given companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc., a huge amount of leverage by simply pitting everyone against each other in a big rat race. There's always a surplus of starry eyed grads trying to get into big tech who will gladly take the place of anyone trying to unionize for better hours and less crunch time.

KaiMolan on February 3rd, 2026 at 05:56 UTC »

Do it. I also support employee-owned businesses for those brave enough to take the risk.

Chrono_Convoy on February 3rd, 2026 at 05:54 UTC »

Go for it dudes & ladies

Don’t let the industry break you