Rockstar Games, the maker of the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI, has reportedly fired between 30 and 40 people for being in a group chat focused on organizing a union. Now, Rockstar is being called out for union-busting tactics.
Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier reports that all of these workers were in a Discord chat that had connections to the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain. While a spokesperson for Take-Two, the overhead company that owns Rockstar, says that the firings were for “misconduct,” the president of the IWGB calls this “the most blatant and ruthless acts of union busting in the history of the games industry.” Be sure to check the original article for the full quotes.
Was Rockstar Union-Busting?
Unfortunately, as is the case with private chats, we have no idea what exactly was said in that chat, but this is not a good look for Rockstar at all. When a whole group of people who are trying to unionize are let go, just trying to wipe that away with such a blanket statement as “misconduct” makes you look rather bad.
Video game unions have been growing quite a bit compared to before the COVID pandemic, when they were essentially not a thing in the game industry. As time goes on, though, more teams are banding together to unionize against the overreaching control that various publishers and executives like to force on their workers. In recent years, multiple Activision and Bethesda studios have joined unions, with CD Projekt Red, Avalanche, and Sega also in the mix.
We are not aware of the full laws in the United Kingdom when it comes to unions but expect to hear more about this in the future. On first hearing, this seems to be a very gross case of Rockstar union-busting when they heard of this chat. A gross case of a corporation punching down on its workers. What comes next could be very interesting, especially as we get closer to the launch of GTA 6.
