Rockstar: firings in Edinburgh, legal fight looms
The IWGB union says more than 30 UK Rockstar staff were fired for trade union activity. Take-Two says it was gross misconduct and nothing else.
The UK's IWGB union says Rockstar Games fired more than 30 staff in Edinburgh on Thursday, October 30. The union claims the reason was trade union activity and calls the dismissals unlawful and retaliatory.
Take-Two's Alan Lewis tells a different story. He says Rockstar "terminated a small number of individuals for gross misconduct, and for no other reason". The company confirmed the firings to Bloomberg but gave no details about the incident.
Here is what the union claims:
- All the affected workers were members of the IWGB and of a private union Discord channel.
- Some of them worked on Rockstar-sponsored visas.
- Some have medical conditions and will lose their workplace healthcare access.
IWGB president Alex Marshall called it "the most blatant and ruthless act of union busting in the history of the games industry". The union says it will pursue every legal claim to get its members reinstated and to win interim relief.
The numbers differ between sources. The IWGB statement speaks of more than 30 people in the UK, while Game World Observer, citing Bloomberg, puts it at about 30-40 employees across the UK and Canada. None of the sources says what the alleged misconduct actually was, so for now it is one claim against another, with very little to check.
Game World Observer also points out that Grand Theft Auto VI is currently scheduled for May 26, 2026. Whether any of this touches development, we don't know, as the sources say nothing about it.
Not the kind of news we like to report. We will update this when more information arrives.
