Flying Wild Hog, Owned By Embracer Group, Has Unionized

Development studio Flying Wild Hog has unionized, marking the latest unionization effort in a very rough time for gaming industry workers. The Polish studio, owned by Embracer Group, has seen its parent company shed nearly 1,400 jobs and more planned in a reorganization process.

The announcement was posted today to the company’s LinkedIn page, and says that the team has unionized under the Polish Gamedev Workers Union and Inicjatywa Pracownicza. This is the third studio that has unionized under this organization, and the first at Embracer Group. The others are CD Projekt Red and 11 Bit Studios. CD Projekt Red officially recognized the union after its workers decided to opt for collective representation. Flying Wild Hog has been behind games like the Shadow Warrior franchise and Hard Reset and had a publishing deal with Jagex.

“Today the workers of Flying Wild Hog revealed the union within the studio.

This makes Flying Wild Hog the third studio officially unionized under the Polish Gamedev Workers Union and Inicjatywa Pracownicza umbrella, with their employees gaining access to union representation and a chance to actively shape their workplace. This is also the first studio under Embracer that we work in.”

While there have been several significant unionization efforts over the past several years, with Raven Studios’ QA team at Activision Blizzard (now Microsoft, which has taken a neutral stance on unionization and reiterated they are letting employees decide), ZeniMax (also Microsoft-owned), and several others going this route. Still, the unionization efforts come at a time when the industry has seen massive layoffs across gaming and tech companies. 

In 2024 alone, all six weeks of it, there have already been at least 6,400 layoffs announced (as Kotaku continues to monitor and list). Embracer Group’s restructuring plan is expected to continue, which makes Flying Wild Hog’s position here notable.

The company saw a lucrative deal fall through and has been laying off