GTA 6 developer Rockstar Games will today appear before an employment tribunal to face allegations from a union that it unlawfully fired 31 workers in October last year.
The hearing, which kicks off at Glasgow Employment Tribunal this morning, will air allegations made by the Independent Workers of Great Britain union (IWGB) — allegations Rockstar Games strongly denies. The IWGB will claim that the staff, who were all working on GTA 6, were unlawfully blacklisted and targeted for their union activities, and that the manner in which they were dismissed was also unlawful because, the union claims, it came without disciplinary process or right of appeal.
Rockstar has insisted the employees it fired were dismissed because they leaked GTA 6 game features in Discord, not because they were trying to unionize. 34 members of staff at Rockstar were dismissed — 31 in the UK and three in Canada — sparking protests outside the office of Rockstar North in Edinburgh, Scotland, and parent company Take-Two in London.
Rockstar North and Take-Two Office Protest Photos Nov 2025
In a new statement issued to IGN, a spokesperson for Rockstar Games insisted the studio was ready to defend itself from the claims. The statement is below:
“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.”
The hearing will run until October 16, a month before GTA 6 comes out. The workers want reinstatement or, failing that, compensation, as well as a finding from the tribunal that their dismissals were unfair. The IWGB alleges that on the day of the dismissals, employees were called into meetings, told they were being fired with immediate effect and escorted from the building. Workers who were not at the office allege they were informed during phone calls lasting around two minutes before being locked out of their work accounts. The IWGB also 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.
Jason Lewis, former Rockstar employee and IWGB Union member, commented: “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.
“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.”
Even More GTA 6 Screenshots from Rockstar Games
Rockstar Games insists there is no link to union activity, and that at the time of the dismissals it didn’t know that the people it fired were involved with a union. As for the Discord comments at the heart of this case, Rockstar says they had to do with GTA 6 features, overall progress and timelines to launch, as well as company IT security protocols. Rockstar believes that if the Discord comments had leaked they would have been big gaming news and might even have affected Take-Two’s share price. When Rockstar officially announced that GTA 6 would be delayed by six months to November 19, 2026, the market value of Take-Two plummeted $3.75 billion in a single day.
Rockstar has also pointed to its well-established zero tolerance approach to leaks, highlighting that it dismissed a Rockstar 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, and dismissed an employee in the U.S. in November 2023 and another in India in November 2025 for two separate acts of information leaking.
Rockstar’s rules around confidentiality are known to be much stronger than those at many other companies, and it insists every employee understands this. As is well documented, Rockstar is a very secretive company — indeed, Rhys Elliot, head of market analysis at Alinea Analytics, recently told IGN that the celebrated developer has a “near-pathological” approach to confidentiality. It maintains that the Discord channel where the comments in question 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, insisting the Discord channel was private.
GTA 6 Side Activities
Last month, the fired Rockstar 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. Meanwhile, negotiations are ongoing between Rockstar and the IWGB over formal union recognition, 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. Workers hope to secure recognition before the release of GTA 6.
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.
“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.”
Wesley Yin-Poole
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. He’s obsessed with fighting games, sports games and first-person shooters. His favourite game of all time is Street Fighter 2.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.