King Signs a Candy Crush Union Deal Delayed to 2027

King signed a union contract on September 24, 2026, hours before Candy Crush staff were due to strike at 5 a.m. Sveriges Ingenjörer and Unionen pulled their strike notices that evening. Coverage does not start until April 1, 2027, and the studio kept room to adapt the text.

The Microsoft-owned maker of Candy Crush Saga had spent the summer saying a collective agreement would spoil benefits it already paid. It then joined the standard Swedish IT deal, on a delay, after five unions put a dawn walkout on the calendar.

A Signature Hours Before the 5 a.m. Strike

Sveriges Ingenjörer said King signed a collective agreement with Unionen on Thursday, after talks that opened in May 2025. Both unions had filed strike notices on September 15. Unless mediators stopped the clock, work at the Stockholm and Malmö offices would have halted at 5 a.m. on Friday, September 25, with a ban on temps and new hires for the blocked jobs.

Camilla Frankelius, head of negotiations at Sveriges Ingenjörer, tied the late deal to the members who had pushed it.

This shows the power that comes from employees joining forces in their dedication for change and improvement. Without the fantastic engagement of our members at King, it would have been much more difficult to reach this agreement.

Camilla Frankelius, head of negotiations, Sveriges Ingenjörer

Martin Wästfelt, her counterpart at Unionen, called it a major victory for members who had refused to drop the demand. Henrik Jönsson, vice chair of the Unionen club inside King, said colleagues had kept going when the goal felt far away. The legal employer on the papers is Midasplayer AB, the Swedish company behind the Candy Crush studio.

Coverage Does Not Begin Until April 2027

Frankelius was precise about the product they bought. King will be covered by the TechSverige IT contract from April 1, 2027. Unionen’s own note says the deal between Unionen, Sveriges Ingenjörer, and King begins to apply on April 1, 2027, and that the company will fall under the IT agreement.

That date is not a rounding error. The current TechSverige IT period already runs from April 1, 2025 through March 31, 2027. King is due to join on the morning after that period dies, which means the remaining months of the live sector deal never touch the studio. Ulrika Höjgård, King’s chief operating officer, said the company signed “with an agreement for adaptions for King’s operations and circumstances,” and that talks to finish those changes run until April 1.

Leadership told staff the signature was meant to cut uncertainty, and that it would work with the unions before April to adjust the text so it fits the company. The strike is gone. The calendar, and the rewrite window, are not.

THE ROAD TO APRIL 2027

A delayed start is not unheard of when a studio first takes a Swedish sector deal. The difference here is the clock that produced it. The company signed on the last evening before a five-union stoppage, then parked the paper until the next sector period.

What King Staff Get Under the IT Deal

They did not win a custom King contract. They won accession to the TechSverige IT sector agreement, the same book used across Swedish IT employers and already signed by Unionen, Sveriges Ingenjörer, and Akavia. Frankelius said staff gain a better chance to shape their work, plus the right to organise and to get timely information when changes hit the job, including reorganisations.

Sveriges Ingenjörer is blunt about what that book is. A collective agreement is a floor, not a ceiling. An employer can keep extra perks. That undercuts the summer claim that signing would force King to wreck a richer benefits package. The studio could have kept the extras and still taken the floor.

WHAT THE IT CONTRACT SETS

• Hours: Ordinary working time may not top 40 hours a week averaged over four weeks, and the Working Hours Act is replaced by the contract’s own rules.
• Time off: The law already gives at least 25 vacation days; the sector deal adds one paid shorter-hours day a year from 2026, and many staff trade overtime pay for five extra vacation days.
• Sick and parental pay: The employer tops up sick pay so that, with the state, it reaches 90 percent of monthly pay from day 15, and parental top-ups run for set 30-day blocks after a year’s service.
• Notice: A worker who quits gives one to three months’ notice by length of service; the employer’s notice runs from one month up to a year, depending on age and time in the job.
• Voice: The deal sits on top of Swedish co-determination rules, which is the influence Jönsson said colleagues actually wanted.

TechSverige, the employers’ group, says the live IT deal covers about 1,000 IT and tech companies and 55,000 staff. King becomes another logo in that stack in 2027, not a special island with its own rulebook.

King Called the Contract Unnecessary in June

Todd Green, King’s president, wrote to staff in June 2026 that the company would not enter a collective agreement in Sweden “at this time.” He said the current benefits offering was better for employees, pointing to pension, long-term sick pay, private health insurance, and parental leave. He also said a contract would force changes to how those benefits were structured, which the company thought would land badly in Sweden, and that the current operating model was “the right fit for King, including our operations in Sweden.”

The public line later in the summer was the same. King said its terms were in line with, or better than, what a collective agreement would give, and that it still respected the Swedish labour model. Höjgård repeated that formula even after the strike notices landed, while saying the company wanted a respectful dialogue with local union reps.

By Thursday night the posture had moved. The strike was off. The contract was signed. The old argument about already-better benefits was not withdrawn so much as parked behind a start date and an adaptations clause.

We can confirm that the intended strike action at King in Sweden has been called off. We will continue to listen carefully to what our employees are telling us, including the desire for greater insight into and involvement in decisions that affect them. King respects the Swedish model and the important role of dialogue between employers, employees and trade unions. We have now signed a collective bargaining agreement which will take effect on April 1, 2027, with an agreement for adaptions for King’s operations and circumstances. From now on we will work together with the trade unions to finalize those adaptions for King and our Kingsters before April 1.

Ulrika Höjgård, chief operating officer, King

That is a yes with a calendar attached. The company gets a winter and a spring to argue that pieces of the IT book should sit differently on a games studio that also has people in Germany, Spain, and England.

The Doctor Benefit That Built a Union Club

The fight did not start with pay. In 2024, after Microsoft had taken over Activision Blizzard, King cut a popular private doctor benefit at the Stockholm office. Staff revived an internal union channel, and in October 2024 they voted through a Unionen club. Kajsa Sima Falck, an engineering manager who chairs that club, said members like King and want to keep building it, and that long-term security and real influence still require a collective agreement.

Jönsson, speaking while the strike clock was still running, put it in plainer words. King is a good workplace, he said, and many people already have decent terms. Influence was the point. He also said popular perks had been taken away in an arbitrary way, including that well-used doctor contact from the pandemic years, and that layoffs had been handled badly. Those cuts, not a pay gap, are what filled the club.

Swedish workers can join an occupational union at any time. The club was the extra step, a workplace body built to bargain a tighter deal. What they got in the end is not a King-only text. It is the sector IT book, with a delay, and a promise to keep talking about adaptations.

Five Unions Lined Up Behind One Demand

Sveriges Ingenjörer puts staff in the Swedish company at just around 550, with offices in Stockholm and Malmö, and says it has around 100 members there. Unionen has said that, together with the engineers, it organises around 80 percent of King staff in Sweden. Frankelius noted that almost nine of ten employees in Sweden already have basic security through a collective agreement. King had been an outlier in its own country, and in a games industry that has been catching up.

THE PRESSURE THAT ARRIVED IN SEPTEMBER

• The two bargainers: Unionen, Sweden’s largest private-sector white-collar union with more than 700,000 members, and Sveriges Ingenjörer, with about 188,000 engineers.
• The three in sympathy: Akademikerförbundet SSR, Naturvetarna, and DIK, whose stoppages were due on September 29 if the core fight was still live.
• The state clock: Medlingsinstitutet, the national mediation office, put mediators on the case after the September 15 notices.
• The overseas buffer: Jönsson said teams in Germany, Spain, and England would have kept the live game running, while work then in production would have slipped, and that the stoppage would have cost money.

Akademikerförbundet SSR said King had refused to receive the physical strike papers and was not following the usual labour-market rules. Union officials still had to hand the Stockholm notice over in person and get it signed. A company can dislike the ritual. In Sweden it does not get to skip it.

That density is why a long hold was always a thin bet. A studio that has already organised most of its Swedish floor cannot run a years-long standoff the way a plant with a smaller union share can. The cheaper exit was a signature, a start date in 2027, and a pile of adaptation meetings.

Adaptation Talks Now Carry the Rest of the Fight

Benjamin Parton, who leads the ICTS sector at UNI Global Union, said tech and games unions had been in Stockholm the week of the strike notices and that the result would be felt far beyond Sweden. Other Swedish studios have already moved toward the same kind of deal. King’s parent group has union fights of its own in the United States. The Swedish signature still leaves a local argument: what “adaptions for King’s operations” means once lawyers start marking up the IT book.

Wästfelt said King showed that the Swedish model works, even after hard talks and different starting points. Höjgård said the focus remains on finding the right way forward and that she looks forward to the discussions ahead. Both can be true at once. Staff got the principle they struck over, the right to be told when the floor moves. The company got six-plus months, and a written hook to reshape how that principle lands on a Candy Crush payroll.

Until April 1, 2027, the old benefits package still sits where Green left it. The new floor is on the calendar, not yet on the payslip. The meetings between now and then are the rest of the contract.

Frequently Asked Questions

When Does King’s Collective Agreement Take Effect?

It is due on April 1, 2027, which is the day after the current TechSverige IT period ends on March 31, 2027. Wage reviews under that sector deal are set for April 1 unless local parties agree another date, so King’s first real cycle will sit inside whatever IT deal the unions and TechSverige bargain next, not the 2025-2027 book.

Can King Keep Benefits Above the Union Contract?

Yes. Sveriges Ingenjörer describes a collective agreement as a floor, not a ceiling, and says employers may keep richer perks. Many IT staff already swap overtime pay for five extra vacation days, and that kind of local add-on can sit on top of the sector rules once King is covered.

What Is the TechSverige IT Agreement?

It is the private-sector IT and tech contract between the employers’ group TechSverige and Unionen, Sveriges Ingenjörer, and Akavia. King signed with the first two unions; Akavia is already a party to the same sector text. Ordinary hours, overtime, sick top-ups, parental top-ups, notice periods, and co-determination routines all live in that book rather than in a King-only deal.

Does the Deal Stop Layoffs at King?

No. It does not ban cuts. It does set notice periods, and the IT text includes order-of-dismissal rules in redundancy cases. Sveriges Ingenjörer also notes that the contract covers everyone at the employer, but that a worker still needs to be in the union to get bargaining help if they are being dismissed.