Rockstar Reportedly Used The Discussion of Slack Policy Changes in a Discord Server to Fire 34 Union Members

A new report from People Make Games, the investigative journalists and documentarians who have recently been doing boots-on-the-ground coverage of Rockstar's firing of 34 union members and accusations of union busting, seems to have discovered the messages behind Rockstar's claim that the fired employees were discussing confidential information in a public forum.

To quickly catch you up if you've not been following this story, on November 1, Rockstar was accused of union-busting when it fired 34 employees between Rockstar North and its Rockstar Toronto offices. Five days later, Rockstar followed up by denying it was union-busting, claiming that the employees were fired for "gross misconduct," and cited that misconduct to be "distributing and discussing confidential information in a public forum."

As the IWGB held its ground, continuing to claim that Rockstar was union-busting, an anonymous employee took to GTAForums to fire back at their company's claims. They alleged that this was nothing more than union-busting and said that Rockstar was trying to claim that a Discord server that only included Rockstar employees and IWGB members was a 'public forum' and pin the discussion of company policy changes as confidential information that was publicly shared.

The IWGB followed up with two legal claims against Rockstar, over 200 Rockstar employees signed a letter to management in support of the fired employees, and protests have taken place outside of the Rockstar offices in Edinburgh, London, and Paris, calling for the reinstatement of the fired employees.

Now, People Make Games' latest report seems to not only corroborate what the anonymous employee shared on GTAForums, but also provides a more specific account of the messages that are likely the ones Take-Two and Rockstar are using as the reason for the firings.

According to information shared with People Make Games by a Rockstar employee who is not a union member, the messages that the company is likely calling "gross misconduct" and the "distributing and discussing confidential information in a public forum" are employees sharing changes to the company's internal Slack policies in the aforementioned union-focused, employee-only Discord server.

The Slack policy changes reportedly came in October, which included the removal of miscellaneous channels, meaning that employees now had no place within the company's internal communications to discuss any non-work-related topics. Discussing what was dubbed "The Slack Purge" in a Discord server that had been around since 2022, with the intention of it being a place for union members to discuss working conditions, is the exact kind of thing that, in the eyes of the IWGB, is protected under UK law.

These weren't employees sharing the latest information about Grand Theft Auto VI in a public Discord server that anyone can join. It was employees talking about their working conditions in a private Discord server that was set up for employees to talk about their working conditions, and is only accessible to IWGB members and Rockstar employees who had verified their identity.

Now, because Discord is not the company's chosen internal communication platform, and because the policies were discussed and shared in the server, it could potentially hold up in court that the employees were sharing company information in a 'public forum.' That'll be for a judge to decide, depending on how far this case goes. Still, it's clear that this wasn't a case of the company cracking down on leaks as we move closer to GTA VI's launch.

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