You probably heard the big news about Grand Theft Auto 6 last week: Rockstar’s open-world crime drama has been delayed until November of next year. However, that wasn’t the only major GTA 6-related bomb that dropped. The studio also fired a few dozen workers for “gross misconduct,” including what Rockstar claims was the public leaking of company secrets. Now, the affected developers are organizing with in-person protests, and preparing for a possible legal battle if Rockstar doesn’t reinstate their jobs.
All of these developers were part of a growing attempt to unionize within the company’s UK branch where reportedly just over 10 percent of the studio’s workforce had been recruited, which would qualify the Rockstar workers there for “statutory recognition,” requiring the company to recognize the union.
Despite what the developers and IWGB Game Workers Union are calling an attempt at union-busting, the dozens of employees affected still want to go back to Rockstar to finish their work on GTA 6, and depending on how the company responds, it could lead to a lengthy legal battle. The workers have been picketing outside Rockstar and publisher Take-Two’s offices, with footage from the demonstrations showing they aren’t backing down from the fight.
YouTube channel People Make Games was on the ground at one of the picket lines and interviewed some of the affected workers about the questionable circumstances regarding their termination, the culture of fear that current employees feel after these firings, and the underlying desire to reunite with their colleagues to bring Grand Theft Auto 6 over the finish line after years of work.
“What happens next is up to Rockstar,” IWGB organizer Fred Carter told People Make Games last week. “We’ve just submitted our legal claim. The ball is in their court to respond. We hope they’ll resolve this with us amicably. This is—in the end, this is egregious, and to be honest, shocking. I have never seen a thing like this, not just in the game sector, but in UK trade union organizing in the last 20 years. This is the moment where they can make that right. These are workers who just want to go back to work, to work on a game that they love. If they don’t, they’ve seen what they have to contend with.”
Rockstar’s official stance on the issue is that the developers were “distributing and discussing confidential information in a public forum,” and that these firings were “in no way related to people’s right to join a union or engage in union activities.” The only place GTA 6 developers say they were discussing anything about the company was on a private Discord server where members of the union spoke about working conditions at the GTA company and organized union-based activities. Rockstar declined to comment when People Make Games asked if this server was the “public forum” the company referred to, but according to IWGB president Alex Marshall, the conversations should have been protected by British Trade Union legislation.
“It looks like they’re essentially trying to decapitate the union when they see it’s gathering momentum, when they see it’s kind of passing this 10-percent threshold, when they can see it’s picking up,” Marshall told People Make Games. “And instead of actually thinking, ‘Oh, our workers are unionizing. Clearly, there’s something we should engage with,’ they’ve just tried to steamroll it, and completely gut the company of a union so they can continue with the behaviors that we’ve seen have been deeply problematic and toxic, and were the exact reason why workers started unionizing. I think what Rockstar has done is just proven, out in the open, what the workers were actually trying to counter behind closed doors.”
In addition to the ongoing protests, the firings could also be a huge hit to the morale of people at Rockstar still working on GTA 6. One anonymous former employee told Aftermath that losing people in the game’s final development year could have catastrophic consequences for the team, but knowing that many people still in the company are on their side has been heartening.
“It’s heartwarming to see so many of our colleagues supporting us and holding management to account,” they told Aftermath. “It’s clear to everyone close to this situation that this is a blatant, unapologetic act of vicious union busting. Rockstar employs so many talented game developers, all of whom are crucial to making the games we put out.”
The most raw account we’ve gotten of these events has come from an anonymous Rockstar employee on the GTA Forums website. The worker, whose identity the site’s moderators say they verified, described a very brief and dehumanizing firing process, one that didn’t offer any evidence or specifics of the supposed “gross misconduct.”
“Those of us who are lucky and remain for now work in fear,” they wrote last week. “Fearful when talking to each other at the tea prep, fearful that we’re next in line and are easily got rid of, too scared to go outside the studio and talk to (or even acknowledge) our colleagues outside protesting in fear of reprisals. Morale in the studio is at rock bottom.”
They continued,
When we should be excited about what’s to come over the next year, we are now totally deflated, and our trust and confidence in others is totally shot. Which is the truly heartbreaking part, as for us in the Union, all of our ambition was to make Rockstar a happier, fairer, safer, and more equitable place. That’s all. What has happened clearly shows that we care more about the well-being of our colleagues at Rockstar than the Company does. The union remains unbowed and is fighting to win the reinstatement of every dismissed member of staff at Rockstar through legal means and campaigning. This fight is critical; if Rockstar can get away with this, they will keep treating their workers with disdain, disrespect, and subjecting them to continued illegal treatment.
Whatever happens, GTA 6 has at least another year of development to go before it launches on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on November 19, 2026. According to industry insider Kiwi Talkz, the game is content complete and just needs additional polish to avoid a “Cyberpunk 2077” situation. Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson reports that the game’s latest delay could cost an estimated $60 million more in development costs.
But the fight to reinstate the fired developers goes beyond a single game. If Rockstar doesn’t reinstate them, IWGB Game Workers Union co-founder Austin Kelmore tells Aftermath the organization “intends to pursue every legal avenue available” to get these developers their jobs back. The larger ramifications this will have on Rockstar and its public perception won’t stop at the launch of GTA 6 next year.
