Today, Magic: The Gathering fans are descending on Las Vegas for the first ‘MagicCon’ of the year, one of three major official fan celebrations for the game. And Magic itself is certainly in a great place: there’s plenty of big new sets to look forward to, and even a brand new card game from Magic‘s current head designer to try. Secrets of Strixhaven was just confirmed as having the biggest pre-release event since 2019, providing a balm to concerned players that even in the age of Universes Beyond crossovers, the demand for original Magic isn’t just there, but ascendant.
And yet Wizards of the Coast is very close to blowing that goodwill up.
Earlier this week, the development team behind Magic‘s online platform, Arena, announced its intent to form United Wizards of the Coast with the Communications Workers of America, with the supermajority of workers having already signed in support of a bargaining unit that would number over one hundred members of the Arena team across its various disciplines—which has become the first known labor organization effort of its kind to have come about at Wizards of the Coast.
“At Wizards, we’re organizing for a say in layoffs, accountability that runs up and down the chain, and a living wage that actually lets people build a life,” Damien Wilson, a senior software development engineer on Arena, said in a statement provided to press, citing that the union seeks to find protections at Wizards against sudden layoffs as well as ensuring guardrails that protect the right to remote work as well as a say on the use of generative AI in the workplace (Hasbro has repeatedly stated that Wizards will not use AI for either Magic or Dungeons & Dragons, although those restrictions seem to be primarily for front-facing items like illustrative art or product text). “This isn’t just something that affects Wizards of the Coast; it’s how most American workplaces are set up: investor profit above all, even if it hurts those behind the products we all know and love. Unions are the missing counterweight to protect our craft.”
The group requested voluntary recognition by Hasbro—which would allow the union to form without the intervention of the National Labor Relations Board—but also gave the company a deadline: if there was no voluntary recognition by May 1, the unit would go forward with its filing for an official election with the NLRB.
Hasbro and Wizards’ response thus far this week, with the deadline for voluntary recognition arriving today, has not been entirely promising. Midweek, Wizards of the Coast provided a statement to Kotaku acknowledging the receipt of the filing but declined to recognize the new union, instead stating that while it is “committed to fostering a workplace where every person feels heard, valued, and supported,” the company believes “we have a strong connection with everyone at Wizards of the Coast and that direct relationship with our employees is essential to how we work together to capture the imagination of our fans and players, inspiring a lifetime love of our games.”
While the statement was relatively indirect in its language, matters grew worse when the NLRB case filing for the unionization effort showed that Wizards had retained Fisher Phillips to oversee the case—a law firm that has garnered a reputation for advising companies on how to quash organizing efforts. The move has sparked a new wave of ire among skeptical Magic fans who were already supportive of the unionization efforts and perhaps for good reason: Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast don’t entirely have the best public reputation when it comes to labor rights, something that became messily public when it emerged in 2023 that Wizards of the Coast hired the Pinkertons, one of the most infamous anti-labor groups in American history, to send agents after a YouTuber who posted a video showing cards from the then-upcoming March of the Machines: The Aftermath set (which was, allegedly, not the first time the company had hired Pinkerton agents to pursue what it believed to be stolen Magic product).
But with the clock ticking on their deadline, United Wizards of the Coast is showing no signs of staying quiet—and with MagicCon Las Vegas about to begin, the group has asked Magic fans to make their voices heard at the event, and to showcase support for the union effort by wearing red on the second day of the convention.
“While WOTC and Hasbro will still have the option to voluntarily recognize us at any time before an NLRB election, we have already established we have a supermajority of employees committed to our cause,” the statement from United Wizards of the Coast reads in part. “Arena workers have shown that we want this, and recognizing our union is the best way to foster a workplace where every voice feels heard, valued, and supported.”
A letter created by United Wizards for supporters to sign has reached over 30,000 signatures as of writing, according to the group. Whether or not Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast are willing to make a long fight out of the road towards the union’s formal election remains to be seen, but as Wizards prepares to celebrate Magic and its community today, it does so under an auspicious shadow as its own workers fight to preserve what makes working on Magic great in the first place.
“We talk a lot about the things we want to see change or the bad things that we’re hoping to prevent. That part gets a lot of attention, and it should,” Rogue Kessler, a digital product manager on Arena and one of the United Wizards representatives, told Rascal this week. “So many of the things that make Wizards a wonderful place to work at have started to erode. What a lot of this effort is about is taking the things that are good and putting them in writing. Get the company to commit that these things won’t change next year, or next month, when a different boss is in charge. Let’s get these things in a contract so that we know that we can rely on them five years from now.”
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