Rockstar Games: trial for unfair dismissal opens in Glasgow

The video game publisher Rockstar Games, behind the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA VI), will appear from Thursday in Glasgow as part of a dispute over the dismissal of around thirty employees, the two parties in the case confirmed to AFP on Monday. According to the union bringing the case and Rockstar Games' lawyers, the trial before the Glasgow labor court will be held from September 10 to October 16, a few weeks before the launch on November 19 of the highly anticipated sixth opus of the GTA saga, which this subsidiary of the American giant Take-Two Interactive is developing in Edinburgh.

Accused by the company of having shared “confidential information”, 31 employees were fired in the United Kingdom in October 2025, sparking a wave of union and political recriminations and demonstrations in front of the group's premises. The IWGB (Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain) accuses Rockstar Games of having "targeted workers because of their union involvement" and of having "compiled and used lists of their names in order to discriminate against them - a practice known as blacklisting".

In a press release, the organization also claims that Rockstar “then denied them basic procedural guarantees by refusing to follow a disciplinary procedure or grant them a right of appeal”. According to the union, Rockstar Games - which did not respond directly to AFP - said the employees were fired for messages posted on a private union channel on Discord, in violation of their confidentiality agreements. “None of us imagined that talking among ourselves about our working conditions would disrupt our lives and propel us into the heart of a global media storm,” says Jason Lewis, a former employee, in a testimony shared by the IWGB, of which he is a member. “We lost our jobs, our income, our community, and the chance to see the game through to release after spending years building it. It was devastating,” he adds.

Nearly 13 years after the release of the previous installment, the second best-selling game in the history of the industry, GTA VI is on track to become the biggest launch of an entertainment product of all time. The game features a duo of “Bonnie and Clyde”-style protagonists in a universe inspired by Florida. At the end of August, Rockstar Games released a long preview, after leaks revealed previously unseen sequences of the title. Take-Two, parent company of the American studio, obtained from the American courts the right to demand data from Microsoft and Discord to try to identify its origin.