Four months after Rockstar Games fired dozens of union members, Rachel Crawford reflects on the workers’ struggles following the shocking dismissals.

In late October 2025, Rockstar Games, the company famous for the Grand Theft Auto series, fired over 30 employees in the UK and Canada. All were involved in private discussions about unionization. All of the fired workers in the UK were members of the Game Workers branch of the Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB) union, and most were on the elected organizing committee.

The IWGB Game Workers branch formed in 2018, at the beginning of an upswell of worker organizing across the global games industry. It has grown steadily in game development studios across the UK, and in October 2025 it secured its first recognition agreement at game developer ZA/UM. Rockstar Games has the highest number of Game Workers branch members of any games company in the UK, thanks to the efforts of our organizing committee. Last October, a few weeks before the firings, we crossed a significant milestone: over 10% of development staff were now members of the union.

When the firings took place we were shocked. Over the course of October 30th, each of us was invited into “catch up” meetings with HR, handed dismissal letters alleging gross misconduct, and escorted out of our respective offices by security. We were devastated, but angry and ready to fight to save our union and try to get our jobs back. As the day went on the IWGB’s legal team sprang into action to help us, contacting the company to discuss what had happened (they were, of course, ignored) and preparing both our internal appeals to Rockstar and our tribunal claims. Meanwhile we prepared a petition to be shared with Rockstar employees asking management to reverse the decision. We also began to do something the Game Workers branch had never done before: demonstrate outside a workplace.

Tentatively at first, we pitched up near the front doors of Rockstar North in Edinburgh, with a Game Workers banner, our petition, and some leaflets explaining the situation. At lunchtimes, and on some mornings, we stood and invited our colleagues to come talk to us. There had been very little internal communication about what had happened, so speculation, hearsay and confusion had stepped into the gap. At first most people were too anxious even to greet us, save for the most dedicated union members (including the single still-employed organizing committee member). But as the days went by more and more felt comfortable speaking to us and even standing with us. Soon it seemed like nobody believed the company’s line that our dismissals were fair and legitimate. 

One week on, to coincide with the submission of our internal appeals, we held our first ‘big’ lunchtime demonstration, inviting the public and other organizations to stand with us to protest the decision. A large crowd gathered, chants were made, speeches were delivered, and at the protest’s culmination a group of Rockstar union members marched into the building to deliver our petition to management. In spite of confusion and fear of retaliation over 200 Rockstar employees had signed it and we printed the same number of copies. I’m sad I didn’t get to see it being delivered myself, but the mental image of my comrades barging (politely) into a meeting and handing a stack of papers to the head of the company will bring me warm fuzzy feelings for years to come. 

November and December rolled on. We had more demonstrations (including at other Rockstar offices), fundraisers, meetings with MPs and MSPs, interviews with journalists, member organizing to build up a new committee, and much, much legal preparation to do. Then, at the beginning of January, our interim relief hearing loomed.

Interim relief is a special measure which an employment tribunal can grant following a preliminary hearing and prima facie reading of a case. If the judge decides that an automatic unfair dismissal claim is almost guaranteed to succeed and rules in favour of the claimants, the respondent (Rockstar) would be required either to reinstate us pre-emptively or at least pay our wages until the final hearing concludes. Representing us in the hearing was John Hendy, a KC who has fought for workers’ rights many times, who kindly stepped out of retirement for us. In spite of Hendy’s speeches, the evidence presented, and Rockstar’s weak defence, the absence of definitive “smoking gun” evidence in our favour at this early stage meant the judge did not have the confidence necessary to grant us interim relief.

To our minds, the evidence should have been definitive: the company had covertly infiltrated a private online discussion forum run by our union on our Discord server, monitored it for weeks while taking no action and then, without warning or following its own disciplinary processes, fired a handful of its participants on spurious charges of disparagement and sharing confidential information. The “disparagement” in question? Criticism of company policy changes around remote work and pay transparency. The “confidential information”? HR and department policies regarding employee sick days or vacations, and overtime. All things that workers would be perfectly within their rights to discuss in a union meeting, so why not in a private union chat?

The laws surrounding unions are behind the times and, while we can expect some improvement as the Employment Rights Act 2025 goes into effect, there is still work to do to make safer the digital organizing that is necessary and effective nowadays. 

Ultimately, however, legal protections are no substitute for the true worker power we are building towards long-term in the games industry. Had our union been larger, stronger, and ready when the dismissals fell, we have no doubt that robust strike action would have swiftly reversed Rockstar’s decision. That is the kind of strength we must build. It may take many years yet, during which the industry and world will change around us, but if we hold true to the vision we can make it reality.

There is now a new organizing committee at Rockstar Games as members of the union, which continues to grow, step up to become activists in order to pursue that vision.

As for us among the dismissed, we are seeking new employment while we await our substantive hearing later this year, where we believe we are likely to succeed. The games industry is in a poor state, which makes our hunt for jobs harder: negative market conditions, mismanagement and corporate greed have led to thousands of layoffs and studio closures worldwide. We are fortunate to have been able to raise a fighting fund, made up of donations from all over the world, which our most vulnerable members can dip into. We cannot overstate our gratitude for the support we have received.

Grand Theft Auto VI is set to release on November 19th 2026 and make billions of dollars for its investors within its first few months. The story of our union and the dismissals will shadow its marketing campaign, making one question unavoidable: who should benefit most from the labour and passion of workers in the games industry, the workers themselves, or the capitalists who exploit them?

You can support the fighting fund here.