As always whenever they meet.
I'm so bummed the Yankees won and so happy Boston lost.
James Austin
@jamestaustin.com
456 followers 963 following 475 posts
Staff Writer for Wirecutter, covering hobbies and games. Let's talk about dice and meeples!
![[Cueball is standing in front of a desk, which a man sits behind. The man is presumably an insurance agent, and is handing Cueball a paper.]
Insurance agent: Here's a page explaining the terms of your new fire insurance policy.
[Zoom in on Cueball as he reads the paper.]
[Cueball starts to ask the insurance agent a question when he hands Cueball yet another paper.]
Cueball: Hey, what if I-
Insurance agent: And here's a page explaining that the "cool hack" you just thought of is called "insurance fraud". We already know about it and it's a crime.
Cueball: Oh. Right. How did-
Insurance agent: I see a lot of programmers here.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ikya57jqz3vougb7bnrqqfaa/bafkreigntaqtkdp2cs4i3wk6s6cxqtbc5bkswz6lqeiw2adqyue4h3hwi4)
![“We really started mobilizing as one Blizzard unit in [the] last couple of months, and I think that really helped put the pressure on,” Paul Cox, senior game designer on World of Warcraft, told Aftermath.
"I feel like the company dragged its feet and did a lot of posturing and wasting time until the very, very last moment."
Prior to spring of this year, the WoW team, which unionized in 2024, had gotten the lion's share of bargaining time. Other units found themselves stuck in the mud. Higher-ups were effectively stalling the whole process—unfortunately nothing new for unionized workers under Microsoft’s umbrella.
"For this whole year of bargaining on the Diablo side—and I imagine on the rest of the units as well—we received so few [bargaining] dates, but we kind of had the understanding that whatever WoW was able to win would at least influence and set the floor for the rest of our units,” Diablo senior environment artist Mahreen Fatima told Aftermath. “We adopted this messaging about how WoW's wins are our wins, so we should be out there mobilizing with them. But truly, I feel like the company dragged its feet and did a lot of posturing and wasting time until the very, very last moment this last month to finally be able to say, 'OK, yes, we are willing to extend this contract to everyone.' We really did not have any indication that we could get this done until last month."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:5gdejlhcswjbzraadoltdpps/bafkreih6u6gzajbd63dovnmlnc43z5g6i35d3n735rrdkopipyjopkl72e)
