Paizo Is The First Table Top Role Playing Game Company To Get a Union

Charlie Hall, Polygon

[Many are calling this month ‘Striketober‘ in honor of the many strikes breaking out across the country: John Deere (Midwest) Mercy Hospital (New York), Kellog’s (Michigan) to name a few. Those traditional industries are seeing a return to good old-fashioned strikes. In contrast, the role-playing game (rpg) industry workers at Paizo have scored a first: the first RPG game company to have their union recognized by management. It might be that the U.S. really is on the edge of a union power surge. If so, we’ll cover it here. — Progressive Hub]

Workers at Paizo, publisher of the Pathfinder and Starfinder tabletop role-playing games, have formed a union. United Paizo Workers (UPW) was created with the help of the Communication Workers of America (CWA), which has been working these last few years to organize labor in the video game industry. This represents a first for the tabletop role-playing sector, which is currently not served by organized labor in any major way.

“Paizo is one of the largest tabletop roleplaying publishers in the world, producing more than 10 hardcover books annually, along with numerous digital adventures and gaming accessories,” UPW said Thursday in a news release. “Paizo also runs some of the most successful living campaigns in tabletop gaming history, with regular players in more than 36 countries. However, despite this success, Paizo’s workers are underpaid for their labor, required to live in one of the most expensive cities in the United States, and subjected to untenable crunch conditions on a regular basis.”