GTA 6 firings: Rockstar cites 'Wall Street bank' security

Glasgow Employment Tribunal began hearing the case of 34 Rockstar Games staff on September 10, 2026, over dismissals handed down in October 2025: 31 at Rockstar North and 3 at Rockstar Toronto. Originally listed to end on October 16, 2026, the case will now run into November, according to Eurogamer. In the opening note it filed, obtained by IGN and picked up by GameSpot on September 11, 2026, the studio defends its internal discipline by what that discipline protects: Grand Theft Auto VI.

Rockstar Games claims “the security posture of a Wall Street bank” for itself. The note goes on:

The standards and expectations regarding information security and privacy are exponentially beyond that of most employers.

The note spells out what that means day to day. Every visitor signs a non-disclosure agreement, contractors are escorted around the premises, and personal laptops, tablets and phones are blocked from studio systems. The internal social media guidelines reach as far as a photograph of a workstation: even innocuous pictures of an employee’s desk, the document says, could unacceptably reveal confidential information. The privacy film fitted to office windows after drones flew past them comes from the same text, alongside the five investigators and one director who track leaks full time.

The two sides have given opposing accounts of the dismissals since October 2025. The Independent Workers of Great Britain argues the 34 were targeted for union activity. On October 31, 2025, Take-Two spokesman Alan Lewis answered that they went “for gross misconduct, and no other reason”. At the tribunal, Rockstar Games says the claimants shared confidential GTA 6 information in a Discord channel. Judge Frances Eccles had already turned down the union’s application for interim relief on January 12, 2026, writing that the tribunal could not conclude union membership was the principal reason for the dismissals.

On October 9, 2026, Charlie Kinloch, HR manager and co-studio operations director at Rockstar Lincoln, was cross-examined on behalf of several dismissed developers, Eurogamer reports. An anonymous employee had been forwarding him Discord discussions on union organising, leaflet distribution and workplace complaints. Kinloch said he had “little interest” in the union talk itself, and that disparagement and misinformation about Rockstar was his priority. Asked why messages first flagged in early 2024 led to dismissals 18 months later, he pointed to the game’s release:

I viewed those messages with the scrutiny Rockstar Games was under in the run up to GTA6, which was unprecedented.

In his account, disparaging comments made public at that point could have caused the studio financial harm. Cross-examination of Rockstar Games’ witnesses resumes in the week of October 12, 2026, when former employees dismissed in the cuts are due to attend.

The same document describes a recent episode: a hacking group “attempted to blackmail the Respondent” in the last few weeks, and the note leaves it there.

The timetable changed on October 14, 2026. Closing submissions, where lawyers for Rockstar Games and the union put their final arguments before a verdict, have been pushed back into November, Eurogamer reports, partly at the request of Rockstar’s lawyers, who want more time to cross-examine some of the dismissed employees. Two hearing dates have been added on November 17 and 18, 2026, the last of them one day before the November 19, 2026 release. Earlier versions of this article gave October 16, 2026 as the closing date.