GTA 6 developer Rockstar is facing legal action after dismissing 31 employees last week, which the Independent Workers of Great Britain union has gone on to call “plain and simple union busting”.
Last week, while Rockstar Games was delaying the release of GTA 6 yet again, a second story broke about the company revealing it had laid off 31 of its staff.
The developer would share that they had fired staffers without warning for “gross misconduct”, which they would later accuse the workers of sharing confidential info outside the company.
Well, now the Independent Workers of Great Britain, of which some of the fired staff were members, have launched legal action against Rockstar Games, claiming that it was an unfair termination of employees, writing “that we amount to victimisation and collective dismissal linked to trade union activity”.
The move follows after the union had attempted to “resolve the matter through negotiation“, however, the developer’s legal team refused to meet with them. So, they’re getting the courts involved.
“Accordingly, we have now issued formal legal claims against Rockstar on behalf of the Claimants. Our members allege that Rockstar’s conduct constitutes trade union victimisation and blacklisting.”
The IWGB would go a step further to call the firings “the most brazen act of union busting the games industry has ever seen”.
Rockstar’s parent company, Take-Two, would refute the claim, reiterating that the employees were fired for “distributing and discussing confidential information in a public forum.” The IWGB would argue that this was not the case, and the members were only speaking to labour organisers.
“We are confident that what we’ve seen here is plain and simple union busting, and we will mount a full legal defence with our expert group of caseworkers, legal officers and barristers,” IWGB president Alex Marshall said in today’s announcement. “Employers like Rockstar would do well to understand that private spaces such as trade union Discord servers have protections, and that their company’s contractual clauses do not supersede UK law.”
Earlier today, Christine Jardine, Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Edinburgh West, brought the issue to a session in the UK’s House of Commons.
In a social post, Jardine noted: “Video game giant Rockstar has sacked more than 30 workers across the UK, including my constituents working at their Edinburgh office. I urged Ministers to support workers who have lost their jobs, and stop this from happening again.”
GTA 6 is expected to now release on November 19, 2026. Last week, Take-Two CEO, Strauss Zelnick, eased shareholders’ concerns by announcing that GTA 5 had now sold over 220 million units, which amounts to 5 million copies sold every month.
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