On October 30 and 31, 2025, Rockstar Games fired 34 employees across studios in Edinburgh, Dundee, Lincoln, and Toronto. Every one was a member of a private Discord server maintained by the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain. Rockstar’s stated reason: gross misconduct for distributing confidential information in a public forum.
IWGB president Alex Marshall: “Rockstar has just carried out one of the most blatant and ruthless acts of union busting in the history of the games industry. This flagrant contempt for the law and for the lives of the workers who bring in their billions is an insult to their fans and the global industry.”
Take-Two Interactive’s head of global communications Alan Lewis responded: “Our culture is focused on teamwork, excellence, and kindness. Rockstar Games terminated a small number of individuals for gross misconduct, and for no other reason.”
The company with a culture of teamwork, excellence, and kindness fired 34 people via phone calls, with no documentation provided of what they had individually done wrong. Fired developer Mark Neill told journalists he was terminated in a phone call with no evidence presented against him.
The IWGB’s counter to the confidentiality allegation was specific: the Discord server was private, accessible only to union members and organizers. It contained discussion of working conditions, pay transparency, crunch hours, and the internal Slack rule changes that had eliminated most personal channels from Rockstar’s internal communications. The union said no confidential game information about GTA 6 was shared there. Over 220 Rockstar employees signed a letter demanding immediate reinstatement of their colleagues.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called it “deeply concerning” at Prime Minister’s Questions in December. “Every worker has a right to join a trade union,” he said. MP Chris Murray pledged to investigate.
The case went to the Glasgow Employment Tribunal in January 2026. Barrister John Hendy KC, a veteran labor rights lawyer who came out of retirement specifically for this case, argued the gross misconduct allegation was a smokescreen for targeted union suppression. Rockstar’s own legal team submitted the allegedly confidential information as evidence during the hearing. The judge noted Rockstar “made no effort to redact it despite repeated reminders that it would now be publicly available.” The information Rockstar fired 34 people for leaking entered the public record through Rockstar’s own lawyers.
The tribunal denied the workers’ request for interim pay. The full employment case continues.
The remaining Rockstar UK workforce did not stop organizing. They formed the Rockstar Games Workers’ Union, recruited just over 10 percent of the UK workforce, and hit one of the statutory benchmarks required to apply for formal union recognition under British law. The firings accelerated the effort rather than killing it.
GTA 6 pre-orders open June 25 and the game ships November 19. It will almost certainly become the highest-grossing entertainment product in history. It was made by a workforce that watched 34 colleagues fired for organizing a private Discord, whose lawyers then entered that “confidential” information into public court records, and whose parent company told the press the terminations were about kindness.
Dan Houser wrote the franchise’s soul across a decade and left in 2020. The company that replaced his creative direction has spent eight months arguing union-busting in British courts while finishing the most anticipated game ever made.
Wow! I can't believe (who am I kidding? I totally believe it) that Rockstar Games fired people for organizing a union. I'm surprised that Games houses haven't done it already. They work some of the strangest and grueling hours I've ever heard of.