Near the end of October, Rockstar Games fired more than 30 employees across offices in the United Kingdom and Canada. At the time, Rockstar and its parent company, Take-Two Interactive, said that the employees had been terminated over “gross misconduct.” But now People Make Games has reported that these employees’ dismissal didn’t have anything to do with spilling secrets from Grand Theft Auto 6 or any other Rockstar projects.
According to People Make Games, the issue at hand arose over internal company messages that were shared on a Discord server used by staff members and representatives of the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain. However, the messages shared were about changes to Rockstar’s Slack policy, which eliminated channels where workers could chat about topics outside of the office.
The report notes that Rockstar has such tight security that employees can’t even check their email unless they’re physically in the office. One of the employees apparently posted the Slack changes to the Discord server at a time when most of the other devs hadn’t received any correspondence about it yet.
People Make Games’ source suggests that someone on the Discord server brought that message to the attention of Rockstar management. That allegedly sparked the internal investigation which led to the employees being dismissed from Rockstar.
Subsequently, IWGB accused Rockstar of union busting and filed a legal claim on behalf of the staff members who lost their jobs. Over 200 Rockstar employees signed a letter demanding that fired workers be reinstated. For now, there doesn’t appear to be any resolution in sight and the case may go to court in the United Kingdom to sort out the fate of Rockstar’s ex-developers.
