From Blizzard to Bethesda, game unions are sweeping the industry - here’s how the CWA helps make them happen

An interview with an organiser at the Communications Workers Of America

Image credit:Communications Workers Of America

“We have been sold this myth for a very long time that unions have to be for blue collar workers in an industrial setting in the early 1900s,” Autumn Mitchell tells me. “The very simple definition of a union is just you and your co-workers coming together and forming a collective body. You can do that anywhere.”

A QA tester with Zenimax currently on union leave, Mitchell joined the Communications Workers Of America (CWA) as a full-time organiser after she and her colleagues formed what was, at the time, the biggest union in videogames - ZeniMax Workers United . Now she helps the CWA do what they did for her and her colleagues at Zenimax: provide support, training, resources and guidance for workers in the videogame industry who have decided, for whatever reason, that they want to unionise.

In a single week back in July I’ve colloquially referred to since as “good food week”, we saw wall-to-wall (multi-disciplinary) unions formed at both Bethesda Game Studios and Blizzard . Covering the news for RPS, I found myself writing “with the help of the CWA” a lot without fully understanding exactly what that meant. I reached out to Mitchell, who was gracious enough to spend time explaining the process to me. My aim here, then, is to put together a bit of a chaser to Polygon’s excellent all-in-one explainer on games unions, covering exactly what a union working with CWA and CODE-CWA (Campaign to Organise Digital Employees) entails.

ZeniMax Workers United celebrate their first day of bargaining. |Image credit:ZeniMax Workers United

“In the case of video game workers in particular, the choice to form a union with the help of the CWA is just based in their experience. That was certainly the case for us,” Mitchell says. Once she and her colleagues had discussed unionising and felt they were ready to take the next steps, they put in an inquiry with the CWA , which went to the CODE CWA’s organiser Emma Kinema. Now, doing that organising is Mitchell’s role. So what exactly does it entail?

“From an organiser standpoint, you’re asking folks about their workplace. You want to get to know a little bit about them, but it’s also important to understand the issues impacting them. Why is it that they want a union? It could be ‘I want a union because I’m actually really happy with how things are, and I don’t want those things to change’. It could be: ‘I’m really not happy with how things are, and I really want them to change’. It could be a combination.”

“You try to get a landscape of the workplace. From an organising standpoint, you’re trying to understand the culture that you’re dealing with - the organisational structure. Like, who’s who’s boss is really important to know. Which teams integrate with which teams and work with them more or less frequently? Which teams are maybe siloed from each other?”

Mitchell gives her own QA department at Zenimax as an example. “We have a handful of basically embedded testers, meaning they work very specifically with Bethesda Game Studio. And there’s really only a dozen of them, so all of the rest of the QA that we have is either working with Zenimax Online Studios ID or publishing QA.” It was a unique scenario, says Mitchell, since different people were reporting to different bosses. Understanding this sort of thing is crucial. “It could change the shape of what a union looks like.”

241 staffers for Bethesda Game Studios formed a wall-to-wall union this July. |Image credit:Bethesda Softworks

Also crucial, until a union eventually goes public, is confidentiality - another area where CWA organisers like Mitchell provide guidance. “You don’t necessarily want to tip off folks who might be coworkers, who are anti-union, who might scare or deflate the excitement of the idea of forming a union. You want people to be able to be educated and supported and feeling really confident in the process, before somebody comes in and potentially scares them away from doing the work to make it possible.”

Part of the importance of having conversations with your co-workers on a one-on-one basis, says Mitchell, is building trust. It’s one of the reasons the CWA advise against the use of mass messaging platforms like Discord. “I grew up in the era of chat rooms, and I don’t ever remember feeling very well supported in a chat room. It’s about building strength between you, knocking down those virtual barriers and rebuilding community.”

“It’s about building strength between you, knocking down those virtual barriers and rebuilding community.”

“You don’t want to be a co-worker, going up to other co-workers and being like: ‘Hi, would you like to form a union’. What you want to do is to get to know your coworkers again. You want to rebuild the community at work. You want to figure out what kinds of issues move them if they’ve been having problems at work. You want to be taking notes on that and trying to get creative in how a union can solve those problems.”

To help prospective unions take the next steps in channelling this energy into action, the CWA offers two online classes. “It teaches you the fundamentals of your rights. It’s basically taking three days of training and pushing it into four hours. It teaches you the stages of how you get to a successful union - the types of campaign organising there are for unions, and then also how to talk about all this stuff.”

Throughout all this, that confidentiality remains crucial. “We’re working against some pretty massive corporations,” says Mitchell. “The imbalance of power is very obvious. So you try to organise in secret so that people can’t be totally derailed from exercising their rights before they even have a chance to understand those rights.”

500 World Of Warcraft developers formed a union the same week as Bethesda. |Image credit:Blizzard

Let’s say, says Mitchell, a prospective union is gearing up to go public - they’re on track for a 70% majority in three weeks time. It’s around this time the CODE-CWA would help them start the official process. “You’re telling them, okay, we’re going to go public. We’re going to go to the company and we’re going to ask to be voluntarily recognized as a union. If they don’t voluntarily recognize you as a union, we’re gonna go apply for certification with the National Labor Relations Board. At this stage, you’re sort of prepping for an anti-union campaign.”

Those anti-union campaigns can take different forms. “It’s honey and vinegar,” says Mitchell. “The honey is like ‘we’re a family. You don’t ever have to have a union to come and talk to me’. Really sad and sappy. Taking it very personally.”

The vinegar side, on the other hand, is warnings like “having a union means you’re going to lose all your individuality. You’re not going to be able to accomplish anything on your own anymore. Your wages are going to be impacted negatively. And it’s just lies - a whole bunch of horrific venomous lies. One day it’s pizza parties. The next day it’s ‘you’re all going to get laid off’. It’s like being in a toxic relationship.”

Another tactic, says Mitchell, can involve the company just giving workers raises. “Everyone goes ‘oh, so they are listening! Oh, okay. We don’t need a union. That can work!”

I have to ask, then, what Mitchell would say to someone in this situation - offered a very tangible wage increase in a time of extreme economic uncertainly and rising cost of living?

“I would tell them to take the wage increase and to keep organising. Because the reality is, the whole reason they would even give you the wage increase was because you got organised - so stay organised. You know, you haven’t even formed a union yet. You haven’t even certified. Imagine what you can accomplish as a union. It’s an indicator that they’re trying to take some control back.”

This kind of pushback isn’t always the case though - it’s possible for the CWA to bargain union neutrality in certain cases. “The Microsoft subsidiary campaigns are a great example,” says Mitchell, referencing the World Of Warcraft and Bethesda Game Studios campaigns mentioned above. “In those campaigns, we’re not facing anti-union rhetoric from the company.”

“We’re working against some pretty massive corporations. The imbalance of power is very obvious.”

It’s worth pointing out here that the CWA aren’t the only the option for workers. Since labour laws differ between countries, the CWA’s work only covers North America. Here in the UK, there’s organisations like the IGWB game workers , and Game Workers Unite offer support and guidance to workers across the globe, with multiple international chapters. Some unions might even choose to go independent. Mitchell mentioned the CWA’s experience earlier, so what does that mean in practical terms for a prospective union?

The CWA, says Mitchell, are historically made up of tech workers across the spectrum. Phone companies, cable companies, call center and customer service workers. “They’ve been watching and growing and enduring sort of the technological boom that you see in those industries, and watching how technology has impacted these sectors is such a huge boon for us. In games and tech, technology is obviously what’s impacting the work.”

Quality assurance workers at Black Ops 6 co-developers Raven Software formed a union in 2022. |Image credit:Activision

A good example, Mitchell says, is the monopolisation of cable in the US. “CWA had the experience of fighting back with the organised workers.” Similarly, they’ve watched the landscape go from cable to streaming, watched the internet flourish, and been the representative bodies of those workers. “This is such a huge piece of why CWA as an organisation so easily understand what’s going on in tech and games, because the parallels are so similar.”

“The monopolisation of the games industry. AI impacting jobs. Automation. The creation of new technology also impacts telecommunications workers, customer service workers. So the people the CWA represent, that they have been representing, typically for decades and decades, are going through literally the exact same issues that we’re going through. “

While it’s undoubtedly heartening whenever we get news of a studio unionising, it’s easy to feel distraught at the tide of less positive news coming out of the industry over the past few years. 2023 saw over 10,000 industry job losses, and that number sits over 12,000 for 2024 so far . I want the people who make the games I love to be happy, fulfilled, respected, and well compensated, so what can I - and we as players - do to help?

Also, says Mitchell, “unless you’re boycotting a company specifically for engaging in something unrelated to the way that they treat workers - if you’re trying to support workers, you need to also support the directive of workers. Not buying games can actually negatively impact the fact that they put all this work into these games. Unless they tell you not to buy the game, you should probably be buying the games."

“Every single campaign is going to be a little bit different, right? It’s made up of it’s a group of people, and every workplace has its own unique culture to some degree. But the fundamentals of organising a union aren’t necessarily different. The structure of what allows that to be successful might be different based on industry and might be different based on the type of campaign that you are trying to encourage.” But ultimately, says Mitchell, it’s about helping people come to the realisation that “Hey, actually, you don’t have to face this stuff alone. We are stronger together.”

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All 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints and where to get them

These areas have the highest chance of giving you Blueprints

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Looking for more Arc Raiders Blueprints? It’s a special day when you find a Blueprint, as they’re among the most valuable items in Arc Raiders. If you find a Blueprint that you haven’t already found, then you must make sure you hold onto it at all costs, because Blueprints are the key to one of the most important and powerful systems of meta-progression in the game.

This guide aims to be the very best guide on Blueprints you can find, starting with a primer on what exactly they are and how they work in Arc Raiders, before delving into exactly where to get Blueprints and the very best farming spots for you to take in your search.

We’ll also go over how to get Blueprints from other unlikely activities, such as destroying Surveyors and completing specific quests. And you’ll also find the full list of all 75 Blueprints in Arc Raiders on this page (including the newest Blueprints added with the Cold Snap update , such as the Deadline Blueprint and Firework Box Blueprint), giving you all the information you need to expand your own crafting repertoire.

In this guide:

• What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?
• Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes
• Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders Blueprints obtained from quests Blueprints obtained from Trials Best Blueprint farming locations

What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?

Blueprints in Arc Raiders are special items which, if you manage to extract with them, you can expend to permanently unlock a new crafting recipe in your Workshop. If you manage to extract from a raid with an Anvil Blueprint, for example, you can unlock the ability to craft your very own Anvil Pistol, as many times as you like (as long as you have the crafting materials).

To use a Blueprint, simply open your Inventory while in the lobby, then right-click on the Blueprint and click “Learn And Consume” . This will permanently unlock the recipe for that item in your Workshop. As of the Stella Montis update, there are allegedly 75 different Blueprints to unlock - although only 68 are confirmed to be in the game so far. You can see all the Blueprints you’ve found and unlocked by going to the Workshop menu, and hitting “R” to bring up the Blueprint screen.

It’s possible to find duplicates of past Blueprints you’ve already unlocked. If you find these, then you can either sell them, or - if you like to play with friends - you can take it into a match and gift it to your friend so they can unlock that recipe for themselves. Another option is to keep hold of them until the time comes to donate them to the Expedition.

Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes

Below is the full list of all the Blueprints that are currently available to find in Arc Raiders, and the crafting recipe required for each item:

Note: The missing Blueprints in this list likely have not actually been added to the game at the time of writing, because none of the playerbase has managed to find any of them. As they are added to the game, I will update this page with the most relevant information so you know exactly how to get all 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints.

Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders

Below is a list of all containers, modifiers, and events which maximise your chances of finding Blueprints:

• Certain quests reward you with specific Blueprints .
• Completing Trials has a high chance of offering Blueprints as rewards.
• Surveyors have a decent chance of dropping Blueprints on death.
• High loot value areas tend to have a greater chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Night Raids and Storms may increase rare Blueprint spawn chances in containers.
• Containers with higher numbers of items may have a higher tendency to spawn Blueprints. As a result, Blue Gate (which has many “large” containers containing multiple items) may give you a higher chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Raider containers (Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, Medical Bags, Grenade Tubes) have increased Blueprint drop rates. As a result, the Uncovered Caches event gives you a high chance of finding Blueprints.
• Security Lockers have a higher than average chance of containing Blueprints.
• Certain Blueprints only seem to spawn under specific circumstances: Tempest Blueprint only spawns during Night Raid events. Vulcano Blueprint only spawns during Hidden Bunker events. Jupiter and Equaliser Blueprints only spawn during Harvester events.

Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, and other raider-oriented container types have a good chance of offering Blueprints. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints have a very low chance of spawning in any container in Arc Raiders, around 1-2% on average. However, there is a higher chance of finding Blueprints in particular container types. Specifically, you can find more Blueprints in Raider containers and security lockers.

Beyond this, if you’re looking for Blueprints you should focus on regions of the map which are marked as having particularly high-value loot. Areas such as the Control Tower in Dam Battlegrounds, the Arrival and Departure Buildings in Spaceport, and Pilgrim’s Peak in Blue Gate all have a better-than-average chance of spawning Blueprints somewhere amongst all their containers. Night Raids and Electromagnetic Storm events also increase the drop chances of certain Blueprints .

In addition to these containers, you can often loot Blueprints from destroyed Surveyors - the largest of the rolling ball ARC. Surveyors are more commonly found on the later maps - Spaceport and Blue Gate - and if one spawns in your match, you’ll likely see it by the blue laser beam that it casts into the sky while “surveying”.

Surveyors are quite well-armoured and will very speedily run away from you once it notices you, but if you can take one down then make sure you loot all its parts for a chance of obtaining certain unusual Blueprints.

Blueprints obtained from quests

One way in which you can get Blueprints is by completing certain quests for the vendors in Speranza. Some quests will reward you with a specific item Blueprint upon completion, so as long as you work through all the quests in Arc Raiders, you are guaranteed those Blueprints.

Here is the full list of all Blueprints you can get from quest rewards:

• Trigger Nade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Sparks Fly”.
• Lure Grenade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Greasing Her Palms”.
• Burletta Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Industrial Espionage”.
• Hullcracker Blueprint (and Launcher Ammo Blueprint): Rewarded after completing “The Major’s Footlocker”.

Alas, that’s only 4 Blueprints out of a total of 75 to unlock, so for the vast majority you will need to find them yourself during a raid. If you’re intent on farming Blueprints, then it’s best to equip yourself with cheap gear in case you lose it, but don’t use a free loadout because then you won’t get a safe pocket to stash any new Blueprint you find. No pain in Arc Raiders is sharper than failing to extract with a new Blueprint you’ve been after for a dozen hours already.

One of the best ways to get Blueprints is by hitting three stars on all five Trials every week. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints obtained from Trials

One of the very best ways to get Blueprints is as rewards for completing Trials in Arc Raiders. Trials are unlocked from Level 15 onwards, and allow you to earn rewards by focusing on certain tasks over the course of several raids. For example, one Trial might task you with dealing damage to Hornets, while another might challenge you to loot Supply Drops.

Trials refresh on a weekly basis, with a new week bringing five new Trials. Each Trial can offer up to three rewards after passing certain score milestones, and it’s possible to receive very high level loot from these reward crates - including Blueprints. So if you want to unlock as many Blueprints as possible, you should make a point of completing as many Trials as possible each week.

Best Blueprint farming locations

The very best way to get Blueprints is to frequent specific areas of the maps which combine high-tier loot pools with the right types of containers to search. Here are my recommendations for where to find Blueprints on every map, so you can always keep the search going for new crafting recipes to unlock.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Dam Battlegrounds

The best places to farm Blueprints on Dam Battlegrounds are the Control Tower, Power Generation Complex, Ruby Residence, and Pale Apartments . The first two regions, despite only being marked on the map as mid-tier loot, contain a phenomenal number of containers to loot. The Control Tower can also contain a couple of high-tier Security Lockers - though of course, you’ll need to have unlocked the Security Breach skill at the end of the Survival tree.

There’s also a lot of reporting amongst the playerbase that the Residential areas in the top-left of the map - Pale Apartments and Ruby Residence - give you a comparatively strong chance of finding Blueprints. Considering their size, there’s a high density of containers to loot in both locations, and they also have the benefit of being fairly out of the way. So you’re more likely to have all the containers to yourself.

Buried City

The best Blueprint farming locations on Buried City are the Santa Maria Houses, Grandioso Apartments, Town Hall, and the various buildings of the New District . Grandioso Apartments has a lower number of containers than the rest, but a high chance of spawning weapon cases - which have good Blueprint drop rates. The others are high-tier loot areas, with plenty of lootable containers - including Security Lockers.

Spaceport

The best places to find Blueprints on Spaceport are the Arrival and Departure Buildings, as well as Control Tower A6 and the Launch Towers . All these areas are labelled as high-value loot regions, and many of them are also very handily connected to one another by the Spaceport wall, which you can use to quickly run from one area to the next. At the tops of most of these buildings you’ll find at least one Security Locker, so this is an excellent farming route for players looking to find Blueprints.

The downside to looting Blueprints on Spaceport is that all these areas are hotly contested, particularly in Duos and Squads. You’ll need to be very focused and fast in order to complete the full farming route.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blue Gate

Blue Gate tends to have a good chance of dropping Blueprints, potentially because it generally has a high number of containers which can hold lots of items; so there’s a higher chance of a Blueprint spawning in each container. In my experience, the best Blueprint farming spots on Blue Gate are Pilgrim’s Peak, Raider’s Refuge, the Ancient Fort, and the Underground Complex beneath the Warehouse .

All of these areas contain a wealth of containers to loot. Raider’s Refuge has less to loot, but the majority of the containers in and around the Refuge are raider containers, which have a high chance of containing Blueprints - particularly during major events.

Stella Montis

On the whole, Stella Montis seems to have a very low drop rate for Blueprints (though a high chance of dropping other high-tier loot). If you do want to try farming Blueprints on this map, the best places to find Blueprints in Stella Montis are Medical Research, Assembly Workshop, and the Business Center . These areas have the highest density of containers to loot on the map.

In addition to this, the Western Tunnel has a few different Security Lockers to loot, so while there’s very little to loot elsewhere in this area of the map, it’s worth hitting those Security Lockers if you spawn there at the start of a match.

That wraps up this primer on how to get all the Blueprints in Arc Raiders as quickly as possible. With the Expedition system constantly resetting a large number of players’ Blueprints, it’s more important than ever to have the most up-to-date information on where to find all these Blueprints.

While you’re here, be sure to check out our Arc Raiders best guns tier list , as well as our primers on the best skills to unlock and all the different Field Depot locations on every map.

ARC Raiders

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

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