Magic: The Gathering Arena Team Unionizes At Wizards of the Coast

https://aftermath.site/magic-the-gathering-arena-team-unionizes-at-wizards-of-the-coast/

A group of workers at Magic: The Gathering Arena maker Wizards of the Coast is asking management to voluntarily recognize the union.

By Nicole Carpenter

Published: April 27, 2026, 11:37 am Last updated: April 28, 2026, 3:39 pm

Magic: The Gathering Arena workers at developer Wizards of the Coast are unionizing, the group, called United Wizards of the Coast, announced Monday. The union is under Communications Workers of America, and covers more than 100 workers at the company. Workers told Aftermath that union efforts have been underway for a few months to a year in different phases, but recent changes at the company sparked the latest push, including return to office mandates and questions around AI.

United Wizards of the Coast notified the company Monday morning and is filing a petition for a vote with the National Labor Relations Board. Game designers, artists, producers, engineers, and others who work on Magic: The Gathering Arena are included in the union.

"Over time, communication [with management] has broken down a bit," digital product manager Rogue Kessler told Aftermath. "We've started to get defensive attitudes from leadership, much more 'it's our way or the highway.' That's what pushed a lot of us into union organizing, because we don't have another viable mechanism for redress."

United Wizards of the Coast is looking to address protections around layoffs, remote work, and generative AI, as well as sustainable workloads and policies around crunch, career progression, and the removal of a policy that allows Hasbro (which owns Wizards of the Coast) ownership of creative materials made by employees of the company—even what's done outside work hours. Both Kessler and Valentine Powell, a senior software engineer and organizing committee member, cited generative AI and return to office mandates as important issues.

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