Rockstar employee claims recent layoffs were deliberate union busting

Recent layoffs at Rockstar Games were “union busting and nothing else,” claimed a current employee in a Nov. 6, 2025, post on the GTA forums.

The status of the current employee and union member claimed by the person who posted the text was verified by the forum’s administration.

In the post, the Rockstar employee said that the company laid off a total of 34 people, 31 from the UK and three from the Canadian studios, including senior artists, animators, QA testers, designers, programmers and producers.

“I never saw any discussion/leaking of Rockstar projects in the Union Discord. The only discussion was around unionisation efforts and the working conditions at R. The Discord wasn’t public; it was a private Discord group that only contained R employees and the IWGB union officials. This was union busting and nothing else! Everyone fired was a union member; they were also predominantly from those who were on the union organising committees of each UK studio,” said the employee in their message.

According to the post, just one week before the layoffs happened, the union had reached around 200 members, taking the employees over the 10% threshold required to seek recognition and begin engaging in collective bargaining with the company. This would allow them to negotiate directly with management on key issues outlined as worsening crunch, inadequate pay and inflexible working arrangements.

“There were over 250 of us in that Union/Employee Discord group, including those 34 who got laid off. Those of us who are lucky and remain for now work in fear! Fearful when talking to each other at the tea prep, fearful that we’re next in line and easily got rid of, too scared to go outside the studio and talk to (or even acknowledge) our colleagues outside protesting in fear of reprisals. Morale in the studio is at rock bottom,” said the author of the post.

The post was published hours after the announcement of yet another delay of Grand Theft Auto VI, following live protests outside the UK offices of Rockstar’s parent company, Take-Two, which were sparked by the company’s accusations of laid-off employees leaking corporate secrets.