Rockstar and the Impartial Employees’ Union of Nice Britain have set out their arguments at an ongoing employment tribunal anticipated to run till October 16.
The GTA developer sacked 34 Rockstar staff final yr, citing gross misconduct and a leak of confidential information. The claimants, nevertheless, declare they had been dismissed due to their union actions.
In response to legal filings obtained by Game Developer, the claimants allege Rockstar had a mole contained in the union’s Discord server from as early as February 2024, feeding info again to HR supervisor and co-studio operations director, Charlie Kinloch.
They allege that the mole flagged a pointy rise in union recruitment in October 2025, shortly earlier than membership crossed the ten% threshold wanted for UK statutory recognition. The firings got here weeks later.
The claimants insist that they had been dismissed with no advance warning and escorted from the constructing with out particular allegations. They are saying union server membership dropped sharply within the days that adopted.
Rockstar disputes this account, nevertheless, claiming that it has needed to change into more and more protecting of confidential info given past leaks that noticed unfinished GTA 6 improvement footage posted on-line.
The corporate argues that its video games’ design must be as protected as any carefully guarded company formulation, evaluating its strategy to Apple or Coca-Cola. It describes the union’s Discord server as three “rooms” of accelerating dimension and openness, the most important of which had roughly 350 members by October 2025, most of whom had been nameless. Rockstar claims that inside that area, the fired staff gave outsiders – together with former staff, “opponents,” and a journalist – entry to delicate inside info.
The studio additionally factors to hostile feedback made about managers and the corporate inside the server, and says the 34 dismissals got here right down to what it calls an “irretrievable breakdown in belief and confidence,” moderately than union organizing, and confused that three of these dismissed in Canada weren’t union members.
For the complete historical past of the dispute, see our timeline of events.