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Rockstar HR Questioned Over Discord ‘Mole’ And Sudden Timing Of GTA 6 Dev Firings In Latest Labor Tribunal Hearing
A fight over allegations of union busting at Rockstar Games is currently underway at an employment tribunal in Glasgow, Scotland. The Grand Theft Auto 6 studio maintains that over 30 employees were fired last year for gross misconduct, including the leaking of sensitive information about the development of the upcoming game. The fired developers claim the Rockstar just wanted to prevent the UK trade group IWGB from getting a foothold at the company. The latest turn in the proceedings saw Rockstar Lincoln co-studio manager and HR director Charlie Kinloch questioned over one of the more surprising claims in the case: a junior employee who acted as a mole alleging spying on union activity in a separate Discord server.
Dueling sets of claims around this part of last fall’s firings were filed last month, and lawyers are now able to question witnesses related to the case about what happened. Among the claims is that someone under the alias “AB” was passing screenshots of union activity in the Discord server to Kinloch for over two years. This provided studio management with a shocking level of insight into what developers were saying when they thought no one was watching, remarks that would later be used to build a case for their firings. But Kinloch had access to this information for years. Why did it take until October of 2025 for Rockstar to act?
The fired developers contend that information was passed to Kinloch showing the group was just 12 members away–10 percent of the workforce–from the threshold needed to have a recognized union at Rockstar. But Kinloch contends that he never had any interest or knowledge of their union status, and was purely interested in limiting the risk to Rockstar from potential leaks. Here’s an excerpt from today’s questioning:
Lawyer: These comments, these posts on the Discord, which you knew about from March 2025 and June 2025 respectively, were not urgent concerns, which, sorry, they were not serious allegations, which urgently required further investigation to protect Rockstar’s interests, or you would have investigated them in March and June 2025?
Kinloch: It’s important for me to articulate the lens through which I viewed it, viewed these comments at that point, the point where we…in October…this was the point where the business was on the cusp, I later learned, of making a significant announcement about the development of our next project. And through that lens, discussions about working hours, and crunch, and matters to do with the way that the business worked, when viewed through that lens, were, to my mind, incredibly significant. Coupled with the fact that as we got to that point in the game’s development, media speculation, the public’s interest in the organization was at its absolute peak, where a single one of those comments, if it were to hit the public forum, would cause the company damage, would cause the company hurt, and would paint a picture of the next stages of GTA 6‘s development on the cusp of a major commercially sensitive announcement. That was the lens that I reviewed those comments through in October.
So what was the big announcement? Well, the unionizing developers were fired at the end of October. Just days later, Rockstar Games announced that GTA 6 would be delayed from May 2026 to November 2026. There was immediate speculation about whether there was any connection between the two events, and whether development delays were related to the desire among some developers to unionize. The lawyer representing the fired developers pushed Kinloch on the timing questing”
Lawyer: You say in your IR statement, paragraph 28, “Due to the urgent and serious threat to our business,” do you see that? “We had to act as quickly as possible.” Is 18 months as quickly as possible.”
Kinloch: If I can provide some broad explanation there…
Lawyer: If there’s something additional to what you said before about the situation of the business in October 2025 being different by all means.
K