Update: The IWGB Game Workers union has issued a statement claiming Rockstar's statement "is littered with falsehoods and disinformation."
"Once again, [Rockstar] have chosen to mischaracterize workers speaking about their working conditions in a private forum as 'leaking information'," the union said on Bluesky.
"It is hard to understand this statement as anything but a desperate attempt to deflect from the global scrutiny they have come under over the last month. From the UK Prime Minister in the House of Commons, to the game developers across the world erupting in protest—all eyes are on Rockstar and their lawless attack on the people who make them their billions."
Rockstar told PC Gamer the Discord channel at the center of the controversy had hundreds of users present, including a game journalist, an employee of a competing developer, and many who could not be identified. Employees in the Discord channel who expressed support for the union were not terminated, Rockstar added.
IWGB communications officer Jake Thomas denied the presence of game journalists in the Discord, although he told IGN that one union official in the channel had previously written "a couple of articles for a paper, but is a game worker and union rep and was in the group in that capacity."
We are not backing down. Our response to @rockstargames.com's latest statement.
— @gameworkers.co.uk (@gameworkers.co.uk.bsky.social) 2025-12-12T20:30:00.084Z
It's been a very slow roll since the firings were first revealed. Rockstar denied allegations that it fired the employees because they were attempting to form a union at the studio, saying initially that they were let go for "gross misconduct," which it later elaborated to mean they had been "distributing and discussing confidential information in a public forum."
That denial didn't hold water with the fired employees and the Independent Workers' of Great Britain (IWGB) union, which filed legal action against Rockstar in November. November also saw the matter brought up in UK Parliament, as Edinburgh West MP Christine Jardine asked for a meeting with the relevant government minister "to discuss what steps could be taken to support the workforce?"
The pressure on Rockstar went up significantly yesterday when the matter was raised in Parliament again, this time during Prime Minister's Questions, leading UK PM Keir Starmer to call it "a deeply concerning case." Starmer also promised that government ministers would look into the matter, which I have to imagine is a headache Rockstar is not especially interested in having. Somewhat shockingly, the MP who raised the matter, Chris Murray, said that even after a meeting with Rockstar to discuss the situation, he was not "informed on exactly what these 31 people had done to warrant their immediate dismissal."
Which brings us to today's statement, containing just a smidgen more information than we had previously, but enough to make it interesting. "Rockstar Games took action against a small group of individuals, across the UK and internationally, who distributed and discussed confidential information (including specific game features from upcoming and unannounced titles) in a public forum, in breach of company policy and their legal obligations," a Rockstar rep said. "Claims that these dismissals were linked to union membership or activities are entirely false and misleading."
Rockstar has previously claimed the fired employees were leaking confidential information but I think it was widely assumed that those leaks, which for the record remain unproven, related entirely to Grand Theft Auto 6. The claim that they were also spilling the beans on, I don't know, a new Midnight Club or Table Tennis 2 could be seen as a much bigger bag of beans: We don't know when GTA 6 is coming to PC but we do know it's coming, and we can make some fairly some assumptions about what sort of game it will be.
But something brand new from Rockstar? Yeah, that is interesting—and it may get more interesting for Rockstar watchers in the future if this mess does end up in court, where claims and defenses will have to be proven.
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