Last month, around 30 to 40 employees across offices in the United Kingdom and Canada were fired by Rockstar who were also members of the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain, who had called out Rockstar’s actions as “the most ruthless act of union busting in the history of the games industry.” And despite Rockstar explaining that the workers were not fired cause they were part of a union but solely due to the fact that those employees were leaking sensitive company information, the workers themselves have denied this allegation completely.
But now, a new report has revealed the Discord messages which are likely the reasons why Rockstar chose to fire the employees, and according to People Make Games, the messages in question didn’t really leak any kind of sensitive information regarding Rockstar’s upcoming GTA 6 or any other project. Instead, those messages were about changes in Rockstar’s Slack policy, which restricts or even removes channels where employees can chat and interact among themselves regarding various topics outside of the office.
The report also says that Rockstar has a really tight security in their offices which prohibits workers from even checking their email unless they’re actually in the office by themselves. And it seems one of the workers had ended up posting the Slack changes to the Discord server even before most of the other employees had received any correspondence about those at that time. And it seems that particular message had led to Rockstar investigating the messages internally which resulted in the employees being dismissed from the studio.
Meanwhile, the fired members have also been joined by current employees for protests outside of the offices of both Rockstar and its parent company Take-Two Interactive recently with more dates for protests planned for their offices in London and Paris later this week. Moreover, the IWGB has filed formal legal claims against Rockstar which may lead to a future battle in court.
The current situation is definitely dicey and can actually stain Rockstar’s reputation as a company in more ways than one which wouldn’t be desirable for obvious reasons, especially at a time when the entire world is waiting for Rockstar Games’ upcoming Open World behemoth GTA 6 which is currently slated to launch for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on May 26, 2026.
