GTA 6 developer Rockstar claims the over 30 employees who were fired last Thursday, Oct. 30, were leaking confidential information to parties outside the company. The company denied all claims that it was a union-busting move.
“Last week, we took action against a small number of individuals who were found to be distributing and discussing confidential information in a public forum, a violation of our company policies,” a Rockstar spokesperson told Bloomberg, adding how this action was “in no way related to people’s right to join a union.”
This statement led to union protests on the morning of Nov. 6 in front of the Rockstar North headquarters in the U.K. Workers are demanding the employees previously fired are reinstated as asking for support from bystanders, calling Rockstar’s actions “the most ruthless and blatant example of illegal union busting in the history of the games industry.”
The union said the employees who were fired were part of a private trade union chat group on Discord, and the president of the union said Rockstar is “afraid of hard-working staff privately discussing exercising their rights for a fairer workplace and a collective voice.”
Rockstar saying “confidential information” was leaked “in a public forum” likely means that these workers were sharing details about their workplace at Rockstar on the union’s Discord channel, not that they were leaking game information on online forums like Reddit or 4chan. Up until the time of writing, no new GTA 6 leaks came out anywhere at least since Oct. 30, when the employees were let go.
The GTA 6 players on Reddit are mostly supporting the affected developers.
“Here’s the PR damage control for union busting,” a Redditor wrote. “Was this ‘company secret’ 100 hour work weeks?,” another player added, ironically. “Doing this s*** to people who create the games is never good!,” a third one commented.
GTA Base interviewed a spokesperson for the IWGB union, who is supporting Rockstar’s workers. “The IWGB is currently pursuing all legal avenues to demand workers are reinstated and grant them interim relief, and will continue protest at Rockstar and Take Two until workers are back in their jobs,” the spokesperson said. “Workers only communicated in private and legally protected trade union channels and did not leak any information publicly. Where are the leaks?”
