A Deal Signed Hours Before a Deadline
King signed a collective bargaining agreement with two Swedish unions, Unionen and Engineers of Sweden, on September 24, 2026, hours before a strike scheduled for 5am the next morning. The deal takes effect April 1, 2027.
The timeline runs long. Talks opened in May 2025. They stalled for over a year before the unions filed a strike notice on September 15, 2026, covering roughly 100 organized employees among the roughly 550 to 650 staff across King's Stockholm and Malmo offices.
Camilla Frankelius, head of negotiations at Engineers of Sweden, called it "an important step for King, the gaming industry and for the Swedish model." Martin Wastfelt of Unionen said members had "stood firm" through "a long and challenging journey."
What the Agreement Actually Changes
The agreement does not stop King from cutting jobs. It stops King from doing it without warning.
Engineers of Sweden describes the core terms as the right to organize and the right to "receive information in good time when changes affecting the work are made," including reorganizations. Henrik Jonsson, a Unionen branch board member at King, said members had "fought for a collective bargaining agreement for a long time" and called the result something he was "incredibly proud of."
King had previously argued its existing benefits already exceeded what a collective agreement would provide, and treated that as reason enough to stay outside one. That position held for more than a year of negotiation, until a strike notice made it more expensive to hold than to sign.
Why King Was the Outlier, Not the Norm
Nine of every ten Swedish employees already work under a collective agreement. King's own staff, known internally as Kingsters, did not, despite the studio having operated in Stockholm since it launched Candy Crush Saga there.
What actually moved the workforce to organize was smaller than the eventual fight: a 2024 cut to a private doctor benefit. Employees formed a union club in response, and that club is what carried the case through 16 months of stalled talks to a signed deal.
Sweden's collective bargaining system runs on sector-wide norms, not individual company choice, which is precisely why a 20-year-old studio operating without one was the exception a strike notice was needed to correct.
Two Microsoft Studios, Two Different Weeks
The same week King signed, Microsoft's Xbox division was still absorbing the fallout of the 3,200 job cuts it announced by press release in July, a round that left Cambridge-based Ninja Theory facing closure after two separate ownership deals for the studio collapsed.
| Unit | Country | Mechanism (Sept 2026) | Before changing anything, the employer must |
|---|---|---|---|
| King (Candy Crush) | Sweden | Collective bargaining agreement, signed Sept 24 | Give advance notice and consult Unionen / Engineers of Sweden |
| Ninja Theory | United Kingdom (Xbox) | No CBA; restructuring announced by press release | Nothing beyond UK statutory redundancy rules |
| Activision Blizzard units | United States | CWA collective agreements | Give notice and honor agreed AI-use and layoff guardrails |
Nothing in Sweden's agreement would have saved Ninja Theory; different country, different law. But it draws the line precisely: the employer that can announce a studio's fate in a press release in one country now has to notify and consult before it changes anything in another.
What This Means If You Operate in Europe
A single global HR playbook does not survive contact with the Nordic labor model, and Sweden is not the outlier inside the EU for expecting consultation rather than announcement; works councils and equivalent bodies carry similar advance-notice duties across much of the bloc.
Budget the consultation period into any Nordic or EU restructuring timeline from the start, not as a delay discovered mid-process. "At-will" logic that works in the United States does not transfer, and treating a benefit cut as a routine cost-saving move, as King did in 2024, is what starts the clock on exactly this outcome.
Benjamin Parton, UNI's ICTS sector head, said the King agreement's effect "will be felt far beyond Sweden," calling it "further proof that games jobs can be good jobs." It is now a claim every other studio under the same parent company can be measured against.
Read next: Activision Is Absorbing Xbox's Original Studios | Xbox Just Metered the Perk It Called Unlimited
