MTG Arena prepare Wizards of the Coast's latest unions for renewed resistance
UWOTC’s founding members claim anti-union sentiment within the RPG publisher never went away.
Workers within both the Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering teams at Wizards of the Coast announced their intent to unionize on October 6. The collected artists, designers, writers, and producers wait for management to voluntarily recognize the union by October 13, or otherwise force an election. Meanwhile, the successfully unionized team behind Magic Arena are busy preparing room for their peers within United Wizards of the Coast - CWA while also fighting for their first contract.
Producer Xib Vaine and senior software developer Valentine Powell, both active union members, told Rascal in an interview that Arena workers took a well earned rest after their victorious election in late June of this year. Now, they instruct the supermajority of card-carrying D&D and MTG makers on handling the same pain, propaganda, and obstruction from above.
Vaine said Hasbro and WotC’s anti-union talking points never really stopped, instead shifting to highlight potential benefits the company would like to give workers — if only the union wasn’t in the way. “They continue to say things like, because of the union, we can't do this thing where we would absolutely just give you fistfuls of money. But because there's a union, we can't. And we say, actually, no, you can ask the union, and they will probably say yes. You can give us fistfuls of money,” Vaine said. They mentioned a company email released shortly before the newest unions went public that announced a new benefit for all WotC staff, which was followed up by an apology correcting that status quo denied that benefit to unionized workers.
This morning, the D&D team and Magic's Studio X informed our leadership of our intent to unionize. We love the games we make and the work we do, and unionizing is how we protect that work. unitedwizardsofthecoast.com/news/dnd-stu...
— United Wizards of the Coast - CWA (@uwotc-official.bsky.social) October 6, 2026 at 5:43 PM
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Uninformed assumptions about the status quo, and outright misinformation, governing Arena’s team reportedly run rampant. While WotC is required by US labor laws to make no changes to the terms of employment — pay, working conditions and hours, etc. — while contract negotiations are underway, Powell said the union has been open to dialogue and education since day one. Fearmongering emails from above strain relationships with direct leads, but CWA contacts and the Local 7803 have provided vital assistance to union members in the form of pamphlets, training, hard won wisdom, and — most surprising to Arena workers — preemptively meeting the video game developers halfway.
Local 7803 represents unionized workers in telecommunications such as Verizon, AT&T, and CenturyLink, along with the Coal Creek and King County water districts. In preparation for UWOTC’s arrival, representatives reached out to ABK Workers Alliance, United Paizo Workers, and OneBGS to learn what made a union composed of game workers successful in the past. “By the time we talked to them, they were ready with a lot of answers to our questions about contracts and specific needs,” Powell said. “That really raised my heart up.”
Both Vaine and Powell were cagey about the potential for more WotC unions when Rascal spoke to them in June, but they confirmed that Arena’s workers had been chatting with members of Studio X (MTG), Duel Masters, and the D&D team (which includes D&D Beyond) for over two years. Why they couldn’t coordinate on launching union efforts came down to team size. Arena’s workers reached a supermajority consensus earlier and, rather than wait and risk losing sympathetic peers to intimidation or layoffs, forged ahead. “We didn’t want to blow up their spot. Until you go live as a union, you don't really have the protections that you do once you've announced,” Powell said.
Regardless, all three unions share the same professional concerns, reflected in the letter of demands published on UWOTC’s website: worry about top-down pushes to adopt generative AI, an aggressive return-to-office policy disrupting largely remote teams, and job security in an increasingly precarious game industry. Hasbro laying off nearly 2,000 workers across 2022 and 2023 has left teams traumatized and anxious. Most alarming to the public was a union demand of “full ownership of the work we create outside of the office.”
Now sometimes I see… ✨spirited✨ TTRPG discourse online. Here’s our chance for ACTION! Support @uwotc-official.bsky.social, SIGN & SHARE their petition! The MTG Arena team recently won a big victory forming their union and community support was a huge part of it! actionnetwork.org/forms/uwotcp...
— Erika Ishii (@erikaishii.bsky.social) October 7, 2026 at 10:16 PM
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Vaine explained that policies outlining company ownership of work created beyond the office isn’t so much a dragnet or vacuum for potential properties as it is a source of discipline. External projects can be brought up as reasons for performance improvement plans (PIPs), bad performance reviews, and even firing justifications. Whatever management’s intentions, Powell said it smothers teams’ creativity and leaves people trapped — too scared to work on games, art, or other works beyond their day job.
Neither union member could recall a case where Hasbro seized ownership of a staff member’s independent work, but they said lack of evidence isn’t confirmation it has never happened. Contract clauses similar to this are common within game development fields and other industries where creative and tech intermingle, and Powell hopes the unions are able to banish them from any future WotC employment agreement.“Nobody wants to get fired because they wanted to write a comic or book on the weekend,” Vaine said. “It also suppresses a lot of the really great games that could be made by people in their free time if they weren't so afraid,” Powell added. “There should be a path for people to be able to both make a living and be able to do these passion projects on the side. If you want more great games, support unions that are trying to allow game devs to be able to make stuff in their free time.”
UWOTC doesn’t see itself as a trailblazer clearing a path for their peers so much as collaborators with a few months’ headstart. Members are trading experience and guidance for fresh insight, which is energizing Arena’s team during contract negotiation — an arduous but necessary process of meetings with ownership that could last years. “We're giving them the benefit of our knowledge, and they're giving us the benefit of theirs. And it's making all of us stronger because that's what unions do,” Powell said.
The teams working on D&D and MTG were reportedly pulled into meetings the very same day they announced their intent to form a union, wherein leadership discussed the “truth” of unions — that they are frustrating entities that only cost workers money and erode good relationships with management. Vaine said a happy benefit of Arena going first is that everyone else seemed more inured to these early avoidance tactics, almost as if everyone had been inoculated against this particular strain of propaganda from employment law firm Fisher Phillips, which Hasbro continues to use. The process was scary and it sucked, Vaine said, but the Arena team survived. And so can these workers.
Rascal contacted Wizards of the Coast about its policies and how it plans to respond to the unions but did not receive a reply prior to publication.
I am thrilled and proud beyond measure to support the amazing workers who create and design the games I and my loved ones have spent a lifetime playing. I implore everybody to sign the petition and signal boost the campaign as far and wide as we can!
— Brennan Lee Mulligan (@brennanleemulligan.bsky.social) October 6, 2026 at 9:04 PM
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UWOTC has urged supporters to sign an open petition to Hasbro and WotC leadership asking the companies to voluntarily recognize the two new unions. Vaine and Powell said that public support, both through signing the letter and speaking out on social media, was a massive boon to their efforts. Beyond boosting everyone’s morale, the pair confirmed that leadership also reads those messages. “I won't go into specifics about the specific situation, but I can guarantee you that Hasbro is seeing public support,” Powell said. “I have witnessed firsthand them pointing out certain posts or acknowledging when the community has said things. I have been talked to about social media posts.”
One week before the newest unions went public, two public-facing staff members were laid off from WotC. Community manager LaTia Jaquise and social media manager Jordan Hopkins lost their job in what the latter characterized as a larger corporate restructure, which is often a euphemism for mass job cuts. When asked whether Vaine or Powell knew anything specific, or whether the union was aware of something larger, both couldn’t offer confirmation but said Hasbro historically blindsides workers with layoffs in this fashion.
“At WotC, oftentimes layoffs happen without anybody being told, and the only reason that we find out is because suddenly they're no longer available on [Microsoft] Teams the next time that we go to message them,” Powell said. “Nobody will have been told within the company and we have to discover it for ourselves. Our leads won't even know. This has been a pattern for years now. There was a time last year when about six weeks went by with four or five people laid off each. Nobody was told.
“This is a huge part of the reason that we are fighting for unionization,” they continued. “We are really tired of seeing people who are very important to our job and very important to our internal community, just suddenly disappearing with no acknowledgement, no warning, no information on why they were removed. It is exhausting to see this continue happening.”
UWOTC’s current members remain indebted to those who came before them and also hope a pair of further successes within the largest tabletop publisher convinces more game companies to unionize their workplaces. Powell said that, rather than a relic of the 1960s — something that coal miners and physical laborers used — “unionization is for everybody in the world who wants to be able to have a voice in their workplace, who wants to be able to have a say in how policies are made with a contract that won't be changed out from under them.”
Tabletop’s successful unions include UK-based publisher Rowan, Rook and Decard, trading card game companies Card Kingdom and TCGPlayer, and retail stores such as Noble Knight Games and three New York-based game cafes. Now, that wave may include the full workforce that generates billions of dollars every year for Hasbro, which has until October 13 to voluntarily recognize the unions. Find UWOTC’s letters of demands, and sign the open petition here.
