Grand Theft Auto 6 is just over six months away, but there’s something brewing at the game’s developer, Rockstar Games. The studio fired between 30 and 40 staff members from offices in the United Kingdom and Canada earlier this week. The terminated employees were reportedly attempting to unionize when they were let go.
Bloomberg broke the story, and added that all of the fired employees were part of a private trade union chat group on Discord. According to a spokesperson for the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain, the group was a mix of members who had already joined the union and others who were trying to organize a union at Rockstar.
“Rockstar has just carried out one of the most blatant and ruthless acts of union busting in the history of the games industry,” said IWGB president Alex Marshall in a 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.”
A spokesperson from Rockstar’s parent company, Take-Two Interactive, said that it supported Rockstar’s decision and alleged that the employees were terminated “for gross misconduct, and for no other reason.”
This seems like the kind of dispute that may ultimately be settled inside of a courtroom, depending on what the British and Canadian courts have to say about it. This may take a long time for this to play out.
Rockstar Games recently shared a job listing which predicted that GTA 6 will have the biggest launch in video game history. That seems very likely considering that Grand Theft Auto 5 passed 215 million in sales earlier this year, and GTA Online continues to be a cash cow for the company.
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick also noted that he isn’t worried about AI competing with GTA, and he’s been pretty consistent in his assessment of the technology.
GTA 6 will hit PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on May 26, 2026.
