Ubisoft Halifax Votes for Wall to Wall Union and Officially Joins CWA Canada

Unionization momentum across the global games industry continues to accelerate, and this time the movement reaches Canada’s east coast. Developers at Ubisoft Halifax have voted overwhelmingly in favor of forming a wall to wall union, with seventy four percent of staff supporting certification. The studio has now officially joined CWA Canada Local thirty zero one one one, adding roughly sixty workers to the growing union local that already represents developers at Bethesda Game Studios Montreal and members of the Montreal Gazette newsroom.

The result was announced through an official CWA Canada press release, confirming that the Halifax team successfully secured certification after filing earlier this year as part of a broader wave of labor organizing in the games sector. According to the union, the newly organized workforce spans a wide range of disciplines, including producers, programmers, designers, artists, researchers, and development testers.

In a public mission statement, the Ubisoft Halifax organizing committee emphasized that the decision was not adversarial in nature. The team described the union as a move made in partnership with Ubisoft, intended to protect the long term health of the studio while reinforcing equity, excellence, and innovation. The statement framed unionization as a response to instability across the industry rather than a reaction to local management.

“In an era marked by industry wide uncertainty, studio closures, layoffs, and increasing instability, we want to make clear our commitment to one another and to our craft,” the statement reads. “We believe that creativity flourishes when workers feel secure, supported, and empowered.”

Ubisoft Halifax joins a rapidly expanding list of unionized game studios in North America. Just last Friday, developers at id Software voted to unionize, adding one hundred sixty five workers to the Communications Workers of America. Earlier this year, the ZeniMax Workers Quality Assurance union finalized a labor agreement with Microsoft after more than two years of negotiations. Elsewhere, more than four hundred fifty Diablo developers and nearly two hundred developers from the Overwatch Two team at Blizzard have also voted in favor of unionization during twenty twenty five.

The Halifax team’s decision arrives amid heightened concern about job security throughout the industry. Even as Microsoft publicly denies plans to shutter the Xbox platform, the scale and frequency of layoffs across its gaming division have fueled widespread anxiety. Ubisoft itself has faced multiple rounds of layoffs this year. In January twenty twenty five, the company cut roles at Ubisoft Leamington in the United Kingdom, followed by workforce reductions at Trials developer Ubisoft RedLynx and later at Massive Entertainment, the studio behind The Division, Star Wars Outlaws, and Frontiers of Pandora.

With certification secured, Ubisoft Halifax will now begin negotiations toward its first collective agreement. CWA Canada president Carmel Smyth welcomed the result, stating that the next step is to negotiate a contract that properly reflects the skill and dedication of the Halifax workforce.

Beyond Ubisoft, CWA Canada has remained highly active across the country. The union has called on Competition Bureau Canada to closely review Electronic Arts acquisition activity from a labor and consumer protection standpoint, and it recently organized a protest outside Rockstar Toronto following the dismissal of thirty four workers across Canada and the United Kingdom.

Those dismissals have become a flashpoint in the broader labor conversation. Rockstar has denied accusations of union busting, stating that terminated workers were allegedly sharing confidential information about unannounced projects. Union representatives and affected employees dispute this claim, asserting that discussions were limited to working conditions and organizing efforts within a private Discord server restricted to staff and union representatives.

One former Rockstar Toronto employee described the situation as devastating, stating that the group’s intent was simply to talk about working conditions and advocate for a better workplace. Union representatives echoed this sentiment, arguing that discussing labor conditions is legally protected activity in both Canada and the United Kingdom.

As unionization spreads from studio to studio, the vote at Ubisoft Halifax underscores how developers across regions and disciplines are increasingly turning to collective bargaining as a way to navigate an industry defined by volatility, restructuring, and rapid change.

Do you see unionization becoming the standard for major game studios in North America, or will publishers push back harder as organizing continues to grow?