Last week, Rockstar fired between thirty and forty GTA developers across its offices in Canada and the United Kingdom, triggering accusations by the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain (IWGB) that the game studio sought to prevent their attempt to unionize. The IWGB claimed that all those developers were working to that end, and vowed to defend their rights through 'every legal claim possible'.
Initially, Rockstar Games only stated that they had been fired due to a rather generic 'gross misconduct'. Now, though, Bloomberg has received a more detailed statement from a company spokesperson. The GTA and Red Dead Redemption developer claims these employees were 'found to be distributing and discussing confidential information in a public forum', in violation of Rockstar's policies. As such, the terminations had nothing to do with union busting, according to the spokesperson.
Needless to say, the IWGB isn't much convinced. Its president, Alex Marshall, replied with the following statement:
Rockstar is afraid of hard-working staff privately discussing exercising their rights for a fairer workplace and a collective voice. Management are showing they don’t care about delays to GTA VI, and that they’re prioritizing union-busting by targeting the very people who make the game.
Currently, the IWGB is protesting outside Take-Two House, 30 Cleveland Street, London, in solidarity with the fired workers.
There are indeed multiple public forums dedicated to the Grand Theft Auto series, chiefly GTAForums, which is often a source of leaks. However, it doesn't seem like any significant leak was shared there or elsewhere recently. Still, Rockstar Games has taken a deadly serious approach to security following the big Grand Theft Auto VI leak that occurred on September 18, 2022. A couple of months later, Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick said the leak would not affect the development of the game, but Rockstar (and Take-Two) aren't taking any chances now that the finish line is finally in sight.
Originally targeting a Fall 2025 launch window, the most hyped game of all time is now set to launch on May 26, 2026 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S and X. Of course, a delay could still happen, as shown by Rockstar's track record. Hopefully that won't be needed, especially as it would further delay the PC version (though, according to the CEO of Corsair Gaming, PC gamers might not have to wait as long as with previous franchise entries).
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