Glasgow opens on 34 Rockstar firings. The studio's line is Discord

Glasgow Tribunals Centre opened public hearings on 10 September 2026 into whether Rockstar Games unlawfully fired 34 developers. Thirty-one UK staff left Rockstar North. Three Canadian colleagues went with them in October 2025. The hearing sits seventy days before the 19 November 2026 launch of Grand Theft Auto VI. The studio's bunker posture still traces to the 2022 intrusion, which we logged on the GTA 6 leak tracker. Rockstar ate the 2018 Red Dead Redemption 2 overtime fight behind closed doors. This one is five weeks in open court. People Make Games has the room.

IWGB calls it retaliation

The Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain represents the dismissed staff. Their case is union retaliation, not gross misconduct. They say managers compiled lists of organizers and marched people out with no warnings and no appeals. Decades of combined GTA work left the building in a day. Former developer Jason Lewis told the tribunal that people lost their livelihoods after years on the sandbox. Outside the building, fired employee Rachel Crawford described intimidation as a daily condition.

"The modern workplace runs on fear: fear of speaking out, fear of being punished, fear of being fired, losing your livelihood and even your home."

Rockstar's defense is Discord

Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive reject the retaliation claim. They restated to IGN that the terminations were gross misconduct after staff shared confidential details on Discord. Leadership says talk about internal Slack policies and unannounced gameplay mechanics broke non-disclosure agreements. After 2022's leaked footage, those boundaries got tighter, a line Marvelous Gamers has been tracking. It did not win a summary dismissal earlier this year. Scottish judges said five weeks of testimony has to test whether data security was the genuine motive or a pretext to halt organizing.

A new union, and a leak theory that does not hold

The case fed a second organizing push called the Rockstar Game Workers union, with grievances over mandatory crunch, pay gaps, and bonus distribution. Will Mac has been walking that list. Sych tried to pin the firings on story leaks. That link is unreliable. Player anger at how Take-Two treats the people building its biggest product is the live sentiment. GTA V radio already jokes about cruel companies. Walking developers out of Edinburgh is not a radio bit.

The Glasgow tribunal runs through mid-October 2026. Witnesses will sit with security logs and union lists while review builds move. Mid-October is one date. 19 November is the other.