Double Fine, the first-party Xbox game developer behind Psychonauts, is forming a union. As Aftermath reports, the studio has filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on May 7 to form a union with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) involving all 42 regular part-time and full-time employees.
CWA told the publication that the studio made the decision to organize to “preserve and extend [its] commitments to creative excellence, diversity and inclusion, and worker quality of life.” Workers are asking Microsoft for voluntary recognition, in addition to filing an election petition with the NLRB to secure union representation. “We appreciate that Microsoft has taken a neutral approach and agreed not to interfere in any way with worker’s rights to organize unions,” the labor union said.
The workers of Double Fine are following in the footsteps of other Microsoft-owned developer groups that have unionized in the past. More than 500 World of Warcraft workers within Blizzard formed a union with the CWA in 2024, while the Overwatch team formed a wall-to-wall union with nearly 200 developers almost a year later. The quality assurance employees of ZeniMax Studios, perhaps best known for its work on The Elder Scrolls Online, ratified their union agreement with Microsoft last year. And in August 2025, more than 450 Diablo developers at Blizzard have voted to unionize with the CWA, as well.
Double Fine became part of Microsoft in 2019, almost two decades are it released Psychonauts, a game about a young boy with psychic abilities. Under Xbox Game Studios, it released Psychonauts 2, Keeper, an adventure game featuring a sentient lighthouse, and multiplayer pottery game Kiln.
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