Rockstar says the employees it fired were leaking information, but it’s not going to escape union busting accusations that easily

Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar Games was accused of union busting last week after it fired a group of more than 30 employees who belonged to a Discord server related to labor organizing. Now the developer says the employees were fired for violating company policy by sharing confidential information in a public forum.

You might imagine a conspiracy to reveal secrets about the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6 to the press or public, but the Independent Workers of Great Britain union says the employees in question were just speaking with labor organizers in a private Discord group.

Rockstar and parent company Take-Two did not immediately explain the cause of the firings after the news broke last week, initially saying only that the employees were guilty of “gross misconduct.” In a statement sent to Bloomberg this week, the developer elaborated, saying that the workers had been “distributing and discussing confidential information in a public forum” and that the firings were “in no way related to people’s right to join a union or engage in union activities.”

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The IWGB, however, says that the only Rockstar outsiders the employees were speaking to were labor organizers. The union called the firings “one of the most blatant and ruthless acts of union busting in the history of the games industry” in a statement last week.

In a new statement, the IWGB told Bloomberg that Rockstar is “afraid of hard-working staff privately discussing exercising their rights for a fairer workplace and a collective voice.”

Rockstar has certainly dealt with a lot of leaks over the years, including a massive Grand Theft Auto 6 leak in 2022—but that particular incident involved an outside hacker gaining access to Rockstar’s systems, not employees disclosing information on Discord.

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