Thirty-one people who spent years building GTA 6 walked into Glasgow Employment Tribunal this morning to argue that Rockstar Games fired them for organising a union.
Rockstar says that’s wrong, and it isn’t planning to be gentle about saying so.
The statement Rockstar put its name to
In a new statement, a spokesperson for Rockstar Games said the studio is ready to fight the allegations: “Rockstar Games’ position has been clear and consistent throughout. Individuals across the UK and Canada were dismissed for gross misconduct following the sharing of confidential company information, not because of alleged trade union membership or activity. We reject the claims and will defend them vigorously before the tribunal.”
What the union alleges happened that day
The hearing airs allegations from the Independent Workers of Great Britain union, allegations Rockstar strongly denies. The IWGB will claim the staff, all of whom were working on GTA 6, were unlawfully blacklisted and targeted for their union activities. The union also claims the way they were dismissed was unlawful in itself, because it came without disciplinary process or right of appeal.
According to the IWGB, employees at the office were called into meetings, told they were being fired with immediate effect and escorted from the building. Staff who weren’t in that day allege they were informed during phone calls lasting around two minutes, then locked out of their work accounts.
One claim goes further than the rest. The IWGB alleges that one of the dismissed workers, Will Mesilane, had to leave the UK and return to Australia after Rockstar withdrew his work visa and reported him to the Home Office, without giving him a chance to appeal.
Rockstar’s version involves a Discord server
The company has insisted the employees it fired were dismissed because they leaked GTA 6 game features in Discord, not because they were trying to unionize. Rockstar says there’s no link to union activity, and that at the time of the dismissals it didn’t know the people it fired were involved with a union.
In total, 34 members of staff were dismissed, 31 in the UK and three in Canada. Protests followed outside the office of Rockstar North in Edinburgh, Scotland, and outside parent company Take-Two in London.
As for the Discord comments at the heart of the case, Rockstar says they had to do with GTA 6 features, overall progress and timelines to launch, as well as company IT security protocols. The company believes that if those comments had leaked they would have been big gaming news and might even have affected Take-Two’s share price.
That worry has a number attached to it. When Rockstar officially announced GTA 6 would be delayed by six months to November 19, 2026, Take-Two’s market value plummeted $3.75 billion in a single day.
A paper trail on leaks
Rockstar has also pointed to its well-established zero tolerance approach to leaks. It highlighted the dismissal of an employee in Lincoln, UK in April 2025, who it alleged disclosed confidential information about GTA 6 to a third party who published the information to social media. Two more firings are cited: an employee in the U.S. in November 2023 and another in India in November 2025, for two separate acts of information leaking.
Confidentiality rules at the studio are known to be much stronger than those at many other companies, and Rockstar insists every employee understands this. Rhys Elliot, head of market analysis at Alinea Analytics, recently described the developer’s approach to confidentiality as “near-pathological.”
Both sides describe the same channel differently
Rockstar maintains the Discord channel where the comments were posted was not private for employees only, but contained hundreds of people, including, Rockstar alleges, employees of rival game developers, a game industry journalist and other unidentifiable members. The IWGB denies this and insists the channel was private.
What the workers are asking for
Reinstatement, first. Failing that, compensation, plus a finding from the tribunal that their dismissals were unfair. The hearing will run until October 16, a month before GTA 6 comes out.
Jason Lewis, former Rockstar employee and IWGB union member, said: “For almost a year, the truth about what happened to us has been buried by Rockstar and surrounded by speculation. Now we finally get the chance to put it on the record. None of us imagined that talking to each other about our working conditions would turn our lives upside down and catapult us into the centre of a global media storm. As the world prepares for the release of GTA 6, we are reliving the heartbreak of being thrown out of a project we poured so much of our lives into. We lost our jobs, our income, our community and the chance to see the game through to release after spending years helping to build it. It was devastating.”
Lewis added: “We have fought tooth and nail to get to this point, not just to be able to win justice for ourselves, but to draw a line in the sand for any employer that thinks it can attack workers for unionising. It has been an emotional journey and it is not over yet, but we can now see the finish line, and justice at last feels within reach.”
Recognition talks are running in parallel
Negotiations between Rockstar and the IWGB over formal union recognition are ongoing, even amid this legal battle. The union wants greater pay transparency, protection from post-release layoffs, an end to “crunch,” and improved flexible working arrangements, it’s said. If an agreement is reached, Rockstar would become the biggest recognised unionised game studio in the UK, and the workers hope to secure recognition before GTA 6 arrives.
Last month, the fired workers told fans they shouldn’t boycott GTA 6 to protest on their behalf, but buy T-shirts launched to raise money towards their legal costs instead.
Alex Marshall, president of the IWGB, said: “We believe Rockstar has tried to get away with Grand Theft Employment Rights. After a year of fighting to get answers, we hope this tribunal will finally back them into a corner and bring the truth to light. As the world gets its first proper look at GTA 6, this hearing will give people a chance to look behind the scenes at what happened to the workers who helped make it.”
Marshall continued: “That is why this hearing matters for every worker across the UK, whether their job is in entertainment, education or anywhere else. It is a moment to send a clear message to each of them: you have the right to join a union, that right is protected by law, and employers cannot punish you for exercising it.”
“If Rockstar can get away with firing workers for organising, then every employer in Britain gets the message that they can do the same. We cannot let that happen.”
