
A new report has detailed the alleged messages sent by former Rockstar Games employees who were fired last month for what the developer labelled as “gross misconduct”.
In late October 2025, 34 developers who worked at Rockstar Games were fired from the company.
The company claimed that these workers were fired for gross misconduct, alleging that they had been publicly leaking confidential information about Grand Theft Auto VI.
However, it was also claimed in a Bloomberg report that these employees had actually been fired for their attempts to form a union.
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An organiser from The Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) confirmed to Bloomberg that the fired employees were involved in union efforts at Rockstar, calling the firings “one of the most blatant and ruthless acts of union busting in the history of the games industry”.
Now, a new report from People Make Games—a YouTube channel devoted to telling stories about games with a particular focus on the people that make them—claims to have new details about the messages that employees were sending in the private Discord server they were a part of.
People Make Games’ source claims that these employees were comparing salaries and bonuses with each other. These types of conversations are protected under the UK Equality Act 2010, which allows workers to discuss these details with each other and trade union officials.
According to the report, discussions in this Discord server pertained to the apparent removal of certain miscellaneous channels in the company’s Slack workspace, including channels devoted to pets, music, and gaming.
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The company claimed that involvement in these channels resulted in distraction from work, and in some cases, unprofessional behaviour.
The decision to remove these channels proved to be unpopular with workers, with one employee calling it an “absolute dumpsterfire” for morale.
Several Internal Policy Changes Were Allegedly Made
Another claims that the purging of these channels may be due to the fact that workers would share news about industry layoffs here, with employees reacting to these messages with a seedling emoji to show solidarity.
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It’s claimed that Rockstar wanted to intentionally restrict this emoji use by closing the channel down. One employee interpreted this as Rockstar management becoming “tired of Palestine flags and seedlings”.
These changes to Slack policy were allegedly shared in an email to the company. However, the email was reportedly sent after 5PM when many workers had clocked off, and with employees only able to access their work emails while in the office, many were unable to read it at the time it was sent out.

This prompted the contents of the email to be shared in the Discord server, which some claim is the justification Rockstar used to fire the employees. People Make Games’ report claims that at least one message directly transcribed the email, and this may have breached company policy.
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The report also says that this caused one member of the Discord to approach Rockstar management in an effort to “express concerns about the discussions taking place,” which lead to an internal investigation made by the company. The employees were then fired at the end of October.
As of right now, Rockstar has not commented on the report by People Make Games. The IWGB enacted legal action against the developer earlier this month, demanding that the 34 fired employees get their jobs back.
A lawsuit over unfair dismissals has been threatened should the company not meet its demands.
Topics: Rockstar Games, GTA 6, GTA, Grand Theft Auto, Take-Two, GTA 5