Rockstar Games has released its opening note in the employment tribunal to determine the fate of the 31 GTA 6 developers it fired last year, and in doing so has revealed the extreme lengths it goes to in order to prevent security breaches.
The hearing, which got underway yesterday at Glasgow Employment Tribunal, revolves around allegations made by the Independent Workers of Great Britain union (IWGB) — allegations Rockstar strongly denies. The IWGB claims the staff were unlawfully blacklisted and targeted for their union activities, and that the manner in which they were dismissed was also unlawful because it came without disciplinary process or right of appeal.
Rockstar has insisted it fired the staff because they leaked GTA 6 game features via Discord, not because they were trying to unionize. 34 members of staff at Rockstar were dismissed — 31 in the UK and three in Canada — sparking protests outside the office of Rockstar North in Edinburgh, Scotland, and parent company Take-Two in London.
Rockstar maintains that at the time of the dismissals it didn’t know that the people it fired were involved with a union. As for the Discord comments at the heart of this case, Rockstar says they had to do with GTA 6 features, overall progress and timelines to launch, as well as company IT security protocols. Rockstar believes that if the Discord comments had leaked they would have been big gaming news and might even have affected Take-Two’s share price. When Rockstar officially announced that GTA 6 would be delayed by six months to November 19, 2026, the market value of Take-Two plummeted $3.75 billion in a single day.
In its note, Rockstar goes into detail on the intense scrutiny it is under as developer of GTA 6 — predicted to be the biggest entertainment launch of all time — and how it works to prevent security breaches.
“Guarding the secrets of the unique gameplay and design are akin to Apple protecting the iPhone or Coke protecting its formula,” Rockstar said, adding that it adopts “the security posture of a Wall Street bank.”
Rockstar’s secrecy is well-known within the industry, as are the security breaches it has faced in the past. Last month it suffered one of the most high-profile video game leaks in history when GTA 6 gameplay was published online ahead of the game’s Netflix gameplay reveal. But that was just the latest in a string of leaks that have affected GTA 6 over its decade-long development.
In April 2025, Rockstar dismissed an employee in Lincoln, UK, who it alleged disclosed confidential information about GTA 6 to a third party who then published the information to social media. Rockstar dismissed an employee in the U.S. in November 2023 and another in India in November 2025 for two separate acts of information leaking.
“The standards and expectations regarding information security and privacy are exponentially beyond that of most employers,” Rockstar continued in its opening note. It said all visitors to Rockstar’s offices must sign non-disclosure agreements, and any contractors working on site are escorted, while there, by security. Remote working for employees is severely restricted. Flash drives / USB keys and other external storage devices are banned. Photography at work is strictly forbidden. Employees’ personal laptops, tablets and phones are blocked from connecting to the Rockstar systems. Rockstar staff are ordered not to disclose confidential information even to family members.
“The Respondent’s [Rockstar’s] detailed Social Media Guidelines confirm that even innocuous pictures of an employee’s desk could unacceptably reveal confidential information,” Rockstar said. The company faces regular attacks on its security and systems, and was forced to put privacy films on its buildings after drones were used to try and photograph through office windows. Staff have been harassed online, Rockstar said. Rockstar employs a full-time team of five investigators and a director to monitor for and investigate potential data leaks. Its employees face phishing and social engineering attacks seeking to trick them into giving up passwords and login credentials.
“Some of those attacks have been successful,” Rockstar said, including a 2022 leak of dozens of videos of unfinished development footage of GTA 6. That was obtained through phishing, which gave a hacker access to an employee’s computer and from there, material shared on Rockstar’s own internal Slack communication channels.
“The history of leaks has made the Respondent hypervigilant to lock information down as tightly as possible,” Rockstar added. “Most recently, in the last few weeks, a hacking group attempted to blackmail the Respondent,” Rockstar said, referencing the CyberLeek breach. “If any more proof was needed that the Respondent’s sensitivity to security and confidentiality is justified, it is the wiping of $2 billion from the Respondent’s parent company’s share value within a few days as that recent hack became public.”
“The Claimants were all aware of this culture, referencing it numerous times on their own Discord posts,” Rockstar said.
Rockstar’s note goes on to discuss the extreme levels of scrutiny it is subject to, pointing out the frequency of coffee shop trips by employees and pizza deliveries to the Rockstar offices have been monitored by fans, and traffic volumes by its workplaces were allegedly tracked in a bid to get an inside track on the GTA 6 release date.
It also noted how in 2025 two innocuous tweets from employees sparked a (mistaken) fan theory that a new GTA 6 trailer would be released on December 27, 2025 as a precursor to sales of the game itself. “The theory snowballed from the backwaters of the internet to industry and mainstream coverage around the globe,” Rockstar said.
The hearing runs until October 16, a month before GTA 6 comes out. The workers want reinstatement or, failing that, compensation, as well as a finding from the tribunal that their dismissals were unfair. The IWGB alleges that on the day of the dismissals, employees were called into meetings, told they were being fired with immediate effect and escorted from the building. Workers who were not at the office allege they were informed during phone calls lasting around two minutes before being locked out of their work accounts. The IWGB also alleges that one of the dismissed workers, Will Mesilane, had to leave the UK and return to Australia after Rockstar withdrew his work visa and reported him to the Home Office, without giving him a chance to appeal.
In a statement issued to IGN, a spokesperson for Rockstar Games insisted the studio was ready to defend itself from the claims. The statement is below:
“Rockstar Games’ position has been clear and consistent throughout. Individuals across the UK and Canada were dismissed for gross misconduct following the sharing of confidential company information, not because of alleged trade union membership or activity. We reject the claims and will defend them vigorously before the tribunal.”
Jason Lewis, former Rockstar employee and IWGB Union member, commented: “For almost a year, the truth about what happened to us has been buried by Rockstar and surrounded by speculation. Now we finally get the chance to put it on the record. None of us imagined that talking to each other about our working conditions would turn our lives upside down and catapult us into the centre of a global media storm. As the world prepares for the release of GTA 6, we are reliving the heartbreak of being thrown out of a project we poured so much of our lives into. We lost our jobs, our income, our community and the chance to see the game through to release after spending years helping to build it. It was devastating.
“We have fought tooth and nail to get to this point, not just to be able to win justice for ourselves, but to draw a line in the sand for any employer that thinks it can attack workers for unionising. It has been an emotional journey and it is not over yet, but we can now see the finish line, and justice at last feels within reach.”
Last month, the fired Rockstar workers told fans they shouldn’t boycott GTA 6 to protest on their behalf, but buy T-shirts launched to raise money towards their legal costs instead. Alex Marshall, president of the IWGB, said: “We believe Rockstar has tried to get away with Grand Theft Employment Rights. After a year of fighting to get answers, we hope this tribunal will finally back them into a corner and bring the truth to light. As the world gets its first proper look at GTA 6, this hearing will give people a chance to look behind the scenes at what happened to the workers who helped make it.
“That is why this hearing matters for every worker across the UK, whether their job is in entertainment, education or anywhere else. It is a moment to send a clear message to each of them: you have the right to join a union, that right is protected by law, and employers cannot punish you for exercising it.
“If Rockstar can get away with firing workers for organising, then every employer in Britain gets the message that they can do the same. We cannot let that happen.”
Meanwhile, negotiations are ongoing between Rockstar and the IWGB over formal union recognition, even amid this legal battle. The union wants greater pay transparency, protection from post-release layoffs, an end to “crunch,” and improved flexible working arrangements, it’s said. If an agreement is reached, Rockstar would become the biggest recognised unionised game studio in the UK. Workers hope to secure recognition before the release of GTA 6.
Photo by Lesley Martin / AFP via Getty Images.
Wesley Yin-Poole
Director, News
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
