Rockstar UK staff to vote on union recognition during GTA VI launch week
The IWGB says Rockstar's UK developers will vote on recognising its union from November 12 to 26, a window that includes the November 19 launch of GTA VI.
Rockstar's UK-based developers will vote on whether to recognise the IWGB Rockstar Game Workers Union between November 12 and 26, according to a statement from the IWGB. The window includes GTA VI's November 19 release date, which puts the union question in the same news cycle as the launch. That is awkward timing for a studio still fighting over the dismissals. The statement was first reported by Aftermath and has since been picked up by IGN, GameSpot, GamesRadar+, PC Gamer and Eurogamer.
The vote covers Rockstar's UK staff, which includes Rockstar North in Edinburgh, one of the biggest UK studios and the lead developer on GTA VI. Eurogamer notes that if the vote passes, it would become the largest recognised union in the UK games industry.
According to the IWGB, recognition would give workers a say over pay and bonuses, overtime, redundancies, flexible working and generative AI policies. GameSpot also lists work-from-home arrangements. PC Gamer reports that the recognition terms were agreed by workers and management after months of negotiations, which it says have run since July.
Those talks ran alongside a bitter dispute. In October 2025 Rockstar fired 31 workers. The IWGB says they were unlawfully dismissed for trying to form a union, and calls it "the most brazen act of union busting the games industry has ever seen". Rockstar says the dismissals were for gross misconduct, namely leaking confidential GTA VI information in a Discord server, and has repeatedly denied union busting. The employment tribunal in Scotland, which we have covered since the hearing opened, ran longer than planned. Closing submissions are now set for November 17-18, in the middle of the vote.
Rockstar has not commented directly on the vote, PC Gamer notes. Head of Publishing Jennifer Kolbe did tell Bloomberg recently: "We go where the team goes. So if they want a union, they will have a union."
IWGB President Alex Marshall called the vote "just as historic as the game release" and said it is about workers having a say in how their day-to-day life is organised. Committee member Shanti Easton-Steel cited the gender pay gap, inconsistent overtime pay policies and job security after release as concerns, and called this "our moment".
GamesRadar+ points out that pre-loading begins a week before launch, so the vote opens just as the game becomes available to download.
