Double Fine Productions Files to Unionize - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 12 May 2026 / 1,883 Views
Xbox first-party studio Double Fine Productions has filed to unionize with support rom the Communications Workers of America (CWA).
The petition weas filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on May 7 and requests voluntary recognition from Microsoft. The union will include all "regular part-time and full-time employees," which totals to 42.
"On May 7, the workers at Microsoft studio Double Fine Productions announced their decision to form a union with CWA to preserve and extend the studio’s commitments to creative excellence, diversity and inclusion, and worker quality of life," reads a statement from the CWA sent to Aftermath.
"In tandem with requesting voluntary recognition from the company, workers have also filed an election petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to secure union representation. We appreciate that Microsoft has taken a neutral approach and agreed not to interfere in any way with worker’s rights to organize unions."
Double Fine Productions are the developers for the recently released Kiln and Keeper, as well as Psychonauts, Brutal Legend, and more.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
More Articles
Their last 2 games have steam peaks lower than Concord, so if I was them I'd probably be keeping my head down and hoping no-one notices me 😅
Are the games looking to light up the gaming industry or more to prop up GP's first party lineup?
Keeper has 43k players on TrueAchievements. Other games released in 2025 like Split Fiction or Monster Hunter Wilds have like 50k there so I wouldn't say "nobody played it". It's not huge but it's made by a very small team and 43k on True Achievements obviously means many more have played it so it's really not THAT few who have played (and many of them enjoyed) it.
It's a great game, but it looks like very few people paid actual money for it. Short games like this get absolutely killed by gamepass.
To be fair, those are basically single A games, those rarely light up the sales charts. When Microsoft acquired Double Fine they had 50 devs, all working at once on AA Psychonauts 2 which had been crowdfunded before the acquisition. Microsoft staffed them up a bit and they are now at 100 employees on LinkedIn. After the whole studio at once worked on Pyschonauts 2 together, which was successful, they decided to split up again and go back to having multiple smaller single A games in development at once which was always Double Fine's modus operandi between big games (it's how they kept up multiple releases per year for most of their existence before Microsoft bought them), one team on Keeper, one on Kiln, and another on a 3rd as yet unannounced game.
After doing the 3 smaller games, Tim Schafer had suggested in an interview a few years back that they plan to get the whole studio back together for one big game, possibly Brutal Legend 2. So assuming they don't end up shuttered, they should in theory be like 100 devs working on Brutal Legend 2 in a few years.
Imagine comparing the two. Concord was a $500m disaster, Kiln and Keeper are low budget games designed for GamePass.
Whats real sad with your comparison is Kiln and Keeper are still active to play.
Oh, it’s $500m now? The fake budget keeps going up.
The peak size of the studio working in Concord was 150 employees btw. Only slightly more than Double Fine.
It was always claimed $500m from the very start. Also Double Fine has 42 employees, thats 1 third of the team size conpared to concords.
Double fine has 105 employees.
Concord had an official budget of $50m according to publicly available investor material from ProbablyMonsters. The idea that it went hundreds of millions over budget is obviously nonsense, but people love these kinds fake stories with extreme headlines. The studio was 150 people at absolute peak. That’s like $15m a year running cost, and that’s at absolute peak. If you believe the game cost $500m then I’ve got some snake oil to sell you, bro.
Double Fine current employee status is 42 staff and the games are all low budget AA games hence their retail prices around $29.99.
Concord is still mentioned to cost approx $400m and was taken from the shelf making the game one of the biggest flops of recent years.
The comparison of Double Fines output and Concord is ridiculous.
There is 97 employees of double fine on LinkedIn and the official headcount from 2025 is 105. Don’t believe everything you read. Just like believing concord cost $400m when it officially had a budget of $50m. Use your brain and think, double check sources. The internet is filled with misinformation being repeated for cheap clicks.
Google literally states 42 employees as of 2026.
And comparing AA games to a AAA game is also Apples to oranges.
What makes you think Concord only cost $50m? Google also says the total cost was around $400m.
Also Double Fine games are still purchasable and playable. There isnt a comparison between the 2.
Congrats! This movement is finally starting to gain a little momentum.
I love DF...
But the last thing a tiny studio should do is paint a target on their backs...
If unionizing paints a target on your back from your employer's point of view then it just proves that unionizing was the damn right thing to do where you work.
I don't disagree
But it almost always does paint a target on your back
