Rockstar Dismisses 34 Staff Amid Union-Busting Claims

This article covers an active labour dispute. The accounts given by Rockstar Games and by the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain (IWGB) are directly contradictory, and both are attributed below. Nothing in this article asserts that either party acted unlawfully - no tribunal has ruled on the matter at the time of writing. All claims are reported by press and by the parties themselves, not confirmed findings.

On October 30-31, 2025, Rockstar Games dismissed 34 employees - 31 in the United Kingdom and 3 in Canada, according to reporting cross-checked across PC Gamer, The Register, Novara Media and others. The UK dismissals affected staff associated with studios in Edinburgh, Dundee and Lincoln, alongside London and Leeds workers.

A central, agreed fact is that all 31 of the UK employees dismissed were members of the IWGB. The parties disagree sharply on what that means: Rockstar treats it as coincidental to alleged misconduct, while the union treats it as the point.

Rockstar's stated reason is gross misconduct. In the studio's account, the affected employees were "discussing confidential information in a public forum" - described as a Discord server - and the dismissals resulted from "employees leaking confidential information in a Discord channel."

Rockstar has maintained that the matter concerns confidentiality rather than union activity, and separately points to employee-retention figures it describes as above industry standard. As of this writing the studio has not published a detailed public account of what specific information it alleges was leaked.

The IWGB rejects the misconduct framing. In the union's account, the Discord server was private - restricted to union members and organisers - and its contents were discussion of working conditions, pay transparency, crunch hours, and internal workplace rule changes, not GTA VI game secrets. On that basis the IWGB characterises the dismissals as union-busting aimed at organisers ahead of the game's launch.

The union has signalled it intends to pursue the matter through the UK employment-tribunal system. Any escalation, including hearings and their outcomes, will be covered separately as it develops.

Beyond the individuals involved, the dispute is one of the most prominent labour stories in the games industry in years, landing weeks before Rockstar's most important release. It intersects with the broader conversation about crunch and organising at large studios.

It also sits close in time to Rockstar's second delay of GTA VI, announced in early November. Rockstar has not linked the two, and this wiki does not present the firings as a cause of the delay - the proximity is noted, the causation is not claimed.