The people who make Dungeons & Dragons and tabletop Magic: The Gathering are unionizing. On Tuesday, October 6, the Dungeons & Dragons team, which covers both the tabletop game and D&D Beyond, and Studio X, home of tabletop Magic and Duel Masters, told Wizards of the Coast leadership they intend to form a union with the Communications Workers of America.
“We are stewards of our games who deserve to be treated with all the respect and dignity that entails,” the workers wrote in a statement on the United Wizards of the Coast site. They are asking the company to voluntarily recognize the union by October 13 and have launched a public petition asking fans to back them.
The new units will join United Wizards of the Coast, the union started by the developers of Magic: The Gathering Arena, who won their union election earlier this year. According to Kotaku, the expansion would bring nearly every Wizards of the Coast game under union representation, with Magic: The Gathering Online the notable exception.
The workers’ shared list of goals includes wages that reflect their work and clear career progression, job security “against mounting industry instability,” reliable healthcare, sustainable workloads with remote and hybrid options, protection “against the encroachment of AI,” and full ownership of work they create outside the office.
The D&D team spelled out some of those points in more detail. It wants strong layoff protections and a contract that preserves the studio’s current stance on generative AI. The team says Wizards of the Coast has so far resisted pressure from Hasbro to adopt LLMs and generative AI tools and kept AI out of its games, and it wants that locked in so the games “will always be made by people for people.” It also points to the company’s return-to-office policy, uneven crunch across teams, and a rule that lets Hasbro claim ownership of things employees make in their free time.
Recognition is not guaranteed. Kotaku notes that before the Arena vote, Wizards of the Coast leadership sent letters asking those developers to think carefully about whether they wanted a union. Wizards and Hasbro have not publicly responded to the new request. Wizards’ games keep reaching new places, too, including comics like Dark Horse’s upcoming Magic: The Gathering series Mage of Zhalfir.
