TheRetroArcade
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Joined: Feb 2026
Lawyers for studio and ousted devs lock heads in opening court submissions
Back in October 2025, GTA 6 developers Rockstar fired a group of 34, mostly UK-based employees on a charge of "gross misconduct", alleging that they had risked the leaking of confidential information while posting on a Discord server set up by union organisers. The ousted UK workers and their representatives have since taken Rockstar to court, accusing the company of getting rid of them to stop their union gaining enough members to win official recognition under UK law.
This week, both parties filed opening submissions at an employment tribunal in Glasgow, which Rockstar parent company Take-Two Interactive have emailed to RPS and Game Developer, among others. Taken together, the filings amount to over 100 pages of claims and counterclaims, with thousands of pages of evidence to be discussed in the coming weeks. Amongst other things, the docs give us more sense of events leading up to the dismissals, including the revelation that Rockstar had a mole or "whistleblower" passing them information on the people using the Discord server.
According to the court filing from the ousted workers, Rockstar employees affiliated with the IWGB Game Workers union set up what would become known as the Rockstar Game Workers Union Discord Server in 2022. Prior to this, the lawyers claim, there was "no official workplace channel through which concerns could be discussed independently of management." By the time of the October 2025 dismissals, the server had around 340 members.
Rockstar management did not have direct access to the server prior to October 2025, but the former workers and their legal team allege that "from at least February 2024, [Rockstar HR director] Charlie Kinloch had been receiving information from a junior employee on trade union activity inside the Server". They claim that "over 21 months, at least 26 meetings or communications took place between Mr Kinloch and [the junior employee] concerning the Server, roughly half of them initiated by Mr Kinloch himself".
The "mole" is said to have "supplied screenshots and recordings, reported union meetings, training sessions and union membership numbers, and identified individual union activists". On 7th October 2025, they allegedly informed Kinlock that the union were 12 members away from the statutory threshold for recognition - 10% of the workforce - with the union eventually reaching this milestone on 18th October. Kinloch was informed of this on 20th October, the fired workers claim. At some point in this period, they say, Rockstar management got hold of logins for the server, with Rockstar's vice president of information security Abid Ansari eventually signing in to download "the contents of the Announcements and General channels". Rockstar began firing members of the Discord at the end of the month.
Rockstar's own court submission chimes with some of this. The company's lawyers mention three "whistleblowers" on the Discord who reported security concerns, including one member who had been leaking info to Rockstar management "for over two and a half years". Rockstar's lawyers say that between 13th and 16th October, a member of the server supplied Rockstar bosses with login details; prior to this, they claim, Rockstar were "largely in the dark" about events on the server, save for "occasional glimpses" care of their primary "whistleblower".
The court filings offer wildly contrasting views about the security of the union Discord server itself. The unionised workers argue that the server was "invite-only, access-restricted and subject to verification through Rockstar’s own internal Slack platform", explaining that people with an invite link were placed in a waiting room till they had been approved by mods, who could verify them using Rockstar's own Slack channels before granting "substantive access". They point out that "no confidential information is known to have leaked from the Server into the public ...Read more: Full article on www.rockpapershotgun.com
What do you think about this?
Back in October 2025, GTA 6 developers Rockstar fired a group of 34, mostly UK-based employees on a charge of "gross misconduct", alleging that they had risked the leaking of confidential information while posting on a Discord server set up by union organisers. The ousted UK workers and their representatives have since taken Rockstar to court, accusing the company of getting rid of them to stop their union gaining enough members to win official recognition under UK law.
This week, both parties filed opening submissions at an employment tribunal in Glasgow, which Rockstar parent company Take-Two Interactive have emailed to RPS and Game Developer, among others. Taken together, the filings amount to over 100 pages of claims and counterclaims, with thousands of pages of evidence to be discussed in the coming weeks. Amongst other things, the docs give us more sense of events leading up to the dismissals, including the revelation that Rockstar had a mole or "whistleblower" passing them information on the people using the Discord server.
According to the court filing from the ousted workers, Rockstar employees affiliated with the IWGB Game Workers union set up what would become known as the Rockstar Game Workers Union Discord Server in 2022. Prior to this, the lawyers claim, there was "no official workplace channel through which concerns could be discussed independently of management." By the time of the October 2025 dismissals, the server had around 340 members.
Rockstar management did not have direct access to the server prior to October 2025, but the former workers and their legal team allege that "from at least February 2024, [Rockstar HR director] Charlie Kinloch had been receiving information from a junior employee on trade union activity inside the Server". They claim that "over 21 months, at least 26 meetings or communications took place between Mr Kinloch and [the junior employee] concerning the Server, roughly half of them initiated by Mr Kinloch himself".
The "mole" is said to have "supplied screenshots and recordings, reported union meetings, training sessions and union membership numbers, and identified individual union activists". On 7th October 2025, they allegedly informed Kinlock that the union were 12 members away from the statutory threshold for recognition - 10% of the workforce - with the union eventually reaching this milestone on 18th October. Kinloch was informed of this on 20th October, the fired workers claim. At some point in this period, they say, Rockstar management got hold of logins for the server, with Rockstar's vice president of information security Abid Ansari eventually signing in to download "the contents of the Announcements and General channels". Rockstar began firing members of the Discord at the end of the month.
Rockstar's own court submission chimes with some of this. The company's lawyers mention three "whistleblowers" on the Discord who reported security concerns, including one member who had been leaking info to Rockstar management "for over two and a half years". Rockstar's lawyers say that between 13th and 16th October, a member of the server supplied Rockstar bosses with login details; prior to this, they claim, Rockstar were "largely in the dark" about events on the server, save for "occasional glimpses" care of their primary "whistleblower".
The court filings offer wildly contrasting views about the security of the union Discord server itself. The unionised workers argue that the server was "invite-only, access-restricted and subject to verification through Rockstar’s own internal Slack platform", explaining that people with an invite link were placed in a waiting room till they had been approved by mods, who could verify them using Rockstar's own Slack channels before granting "substantive access". They point out that "no confidential information is known to have leaked from the Server into the public ...Read more: Full article on www.rockpapershotgun.com
What do you think about this?