Rockstar faces final employment tribunal over 31 fired GTA 6 workers this week
The final employment tribunal hearing between Rockstar and 31 fired GTA 6 developers begins September 10 and runs until October 16. The IWGB union says the workers were unlawfully dismissed and blacklisted for union activity; Rockstar maintains they breached confidentiality agreements. The workers seek reinstatement or compensation.
A legal battle reaches its final stage
Two weeks after the Netflix premiere of "An Extended Look", and a little over two months before Grand Theft Auto VI's release, Rockstar Games is back in a courtroom — or rather, an employment tribunal. This week, the final hearing begins in the dispute between the studio and 31 former Rockstar North employees who were dismissed in October 2025 while working on GTA 6. The case, brought by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB), opens on Thursday, September 10 at Glasgow Employment Tribunal and is scheduled to run until October 16 (Eurogamer, IWGB).
What the union alleges
The IWGB claims the workers were unlawfully fired for their union activity and then blacklisted — a practice in which information about workers involved in a union is compiled to facilitate discrimination. The union also argues the dismissals were unlawful in their process: employees were refused a disciplinary process and any right of appeal. Rockstar has consistently said the firings were for gross misconduct, pointing to messages exchanged in a private IWGB Discord channel that it claims breached confidentiality agreements. The employees say they were discussing salaries and HR issues — exactly the sort of conversations a union channel exists to host (Eurogamer).
A long road to this hearing
Rockstar tried to have the blacklisting allegations thrown out earlier this year. The tribunal rejected that application, meaning the studio must now answer the claims in full at this final hearing (IWGB). The dismissal itself was abrupt: workers at the office were called into meetings, told they were being fired with immediate effect and escorted from the building. Those working remotely learned of their fate in phone calls lasting around two minutes before being locked out of their accounts. One of the dismissed workers, Will Mesilane, had to return to Australia after Rockstar withdrew his work visa and reported him to the Home Office, without giving him a chance to appeal (IWGB).
The firings did not go unnoticed outside the studio. Protests were held outside the offices of Rockstar's parent company Take-Two in London, Paris and New York, the matter was raised in Prime Minister's Questions, and the then Prime Minister Keir Starmer said: "Every worker has the right to join a trade union and we're determined to strengthen workers' rights and ensure they don't face unfair consequences for being part of a union" (Eurogamer).
What the workers want
The 31 former employees are seeking reinstatement or, failing that, compensation, as well as a formal finding from the tribunal that their dismissals were unfair (Eurogamer). They are not asking fans to boycott GTA VI; instead, they are asking supporters to contribute to a legal fund that is covering the considerable costs of bringing the case. Former employee Jason Lewis, an IWGB member, said: "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" (Eurogamer). IWGB president Alex Marshall put it more bluntly: "We believe Rockstar has tried to get away with Grand Theft Employment Rights" (Eurogamer).
The bigger picture
The case sits alongside ongoing negotiations between Rockstar and the IWGB over formal union recognition. If an agreement is reached, Rockstar would become the biggest recognised unionised game studio in the UK. The dispute also gave birth to the Rockstar Game Workers Union, which continues to grow and has made further allegations against the company around crunch, the weaponisation of bonus payments and gender-based pay inequality (Eurogamer).
What happens next
The hearing runs from September 10 to October 16, concluding just weeks before GTA 6 launches on November 19. Whatever the outcome, it will be decided in the full glare of the biggest release in entertainment history — and it could set a precedent for how the games industry treats workers who organise.
