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Rockstar's alleged union busting has provoked protests and drawn skepticism from legislators.

In October, Grand Theft Auto 6 developer Rockstar Games fired over 30 employees without warning in multiple offices in the UK and Canada, all of whom were members of a private trade union Discord channel. In the months since, despite its parent company Take-Two Interactive's insistence that the studio terminated those employees "for gross misconduct, and for no other reason," Rockstar has offered little justification to indicate the firings were anything other than retaliation for attempted workplace organizing.

According to a statement given by the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain (IWGB) in response to the firings, the terminated employees were all either union members or pursuing worker organization at the studio.

"Rockstar has just carried out one of the most blatant and ruthless acts of union busting in the history of the games industry," IWGB president Alex Marshall said in the union's October statement. "This flagrant contempt for the law and for the lives of the workers who bring in their billions is an insult to their fans and the global industry."

Following the initial reporting, Rockstar elaborated on its claims against the fired workers, alleging that the terminated employees had been "distributing confidential information in a public forum" in violation of company policy. The IWGB has maintained that those accusations are a misrepresentation of legally-protected private conversations where the only non-Rockstar participants were union representatives. That same week, IWGB-organized protests began outside Take-Two's London offices.

In mid-November, the IWGB initiated formal legal action against Rockstar Games over the firings, saying that Rockstar refused to meet with union representatives and "resolve the matter through negotiation."

"We are confident that what we’ve seen here is plain and simple union busting, and we will mount a full legal defence with our expert group of caseworkers, legal officers and barristers," Marshall said in the announcement of the IWGB's lawsuit. "Employers like Rockstar would do well to understand that private spaces such as trade union Discord servers have protections, and that their company's contractual clauses do not supersede UK law."

Protests continued throughout November, spreading from London to Paris and Edinburgh, while over 200 Rockstar employees delivered letters to company management demanding

Source: PC Gamer