Rockstar fired 34 developers back in October. While Rockstar claims these people were fired for āgross misconductā over allegedly sharing company secrets, the former employees claim the company was union-busting. Now, according to a new People Make Games report, the entire saga actually started after Rockstar started cracking down on developers communicating about non-work topics in the company Slack.
People Make Games posted a new video that includes alleged messages from the Rockstar union workersā private Discord server where members discussed conditions at the studio, but specifically not the status of projects like the recently delayed Grand Theft Auto 6. One former Rockstar employee claimed the only company information that was shared there were emails about updates to the companyās Slack guidelines following discussions in recently shut down channels.
In October, Rockstar reportedly made changes to the company’s Slack, which included removing several miscellaneous channels where employees discussed non-work topics like pets, hobbies, and games they were playing. The “Slack Purge,” as it was called, prompted discussions in an outside union channel on Discord. This was then followed by another change preventing people from using emojis in their Slack statuses, which workers theorized was to prevent people from using the Palestinian flag or the Sprout emoji used to symbolize Union support.Ā
These emails were sent outside of work hours, and Rockstar has systems set up so workers cannot access their work email outside of their office. As such, Union members sent these emails to the Discord so people outside of the office could see their contents, which led to one member of the Discord expressing their concerns to management about the discussions. PMG theorizes that Rockstar gained access to the Discord at this point and read the previous chat logs to make a case for firing 34 workers by the end of that month.
You can watch the full video below:
Rockstar limiting workers’ email access may have started this entire mess, but asĀ People Make GamesĀ explains, the company has been the subject of several high profile leaks over the years, including a massive data dump of unfinished Grand Theft Auto 6Ā assets and footage back in 2022. So it’s not entirely surprising that the studio has a lot of internal communications on lock and key to prevent leaks. That being said, as the IWGB Game Workers Union lays out in the video, discussing your working conditions is not the same as freely postingĀ Grand Theft Auto VIĀ footage on a Discord server, and should fall under protected union discussions.
In the weeks since Rockstar fired these workers, those affected have been holding protests outside both Rockstar and publisher Take Two’s London offices. Despite being fired, several members have expressed a desire to come back and finish working onĀ Grand Theft Auto 6, which is still a year away after its recent delay.
Update, 11/24/25, 10:43 a.m. EST: An IWGB representative has released a statement to Kotaku, claiming the Discord was only used for sharing the information laid out in theĀ PMG video, and that there were “strict policies” against sharing confidential updates on internal projects likeĀ Grand Theft Auto 6. The full statement reads as follows:
