Rockstar Devs Make Major Union Push Despite Lawsuit

Rockstar Games is currently navigating two entirely different battles with its own workforce at once, and both broke into the open within the space of two weeks. Today, workers submitted a formal request for voluntary recognition of the IWGB Game Workers Union.

Two weeks ago, an employment tribunal ruled against Rockstar in a separate legal fight over the dismissal of 31 union members last October. Taken together, this is one of the more significant moments in UK games industry labour history, arriving at the exact moment Rockstar needs the world's attention on GTA 6, not on how it treats its own staff.

The Union Recognition Bid

Workers at Rockstar's UK studios – spanning Edinburgh, Dundee, Lincoln, Leeds, and London – have submitted a request for voluntary union recognition. If Rockstar accepts, the studio becomes only the second UK games company with a recognized union, following IWGB members at ZA/UM achieving the same milestone in October 2025. Recognition would give workers formal channels for collective bargaining, alongside additional workplace protections for union representatives and members.

IWGB has been organizing at Rockstar since 2019, and the union now claims to represent a significant proportion of the workforce across every site. They point to concrete wins already achieved through that organizing – unprecedented average pay rises, and the first-ever financial incentives for crunch. The stated priorities going forward are pay transparency, stronger flexible working arrangements, and addressing excessive overtime.

Josh Walter, a senior QA tester at Rockstar's Lincoln site, framed the bid in terms that are hard to argue with on principle: "Rockstar leads the industry in the games we create. We believe it can also lead the industry in how it treats the people who make them."

Shanti Easton-Steel, a Production Co-ordinator at Rockstar North, struck a more pointed note, tying the recognition push directly to the colleagues who were dismissed last October: "the best way we can honour their contribution now is by succeeding in the fight they helped us to start." IWGB President Alex Marshall went further still, noting that GTA 6 has reportedly generated more than $3 billion in preorder sales, and that Rockstar "can easily afford to sit around the table" with the people who built the game that money is coming from.

The Tribunal Ruling Two Weeks Earlier

This recognition bid doesn't exist in isolation. On June 17th, an employment tribunal ruled against Rockstar in a separate, ongoing case tied to the same October dismissals. Rockstar had attempted to strike blacklisting allegations from the case entirely – blacklisting being the practice of compiling information on union activity to discriminate against workers – and the tribunal rejected that attempt outright.

Every one of the union's allegations relating to union-busting will now proceed to a full trial, scheduled to run from September 10th to October 15th this year. That puts the conclusion of the case just over a month before GTA 6's November 19th release.

Ellie Dunstan, one of the 31 workers dismissed last October, didn't hold back: "Rockstar thought they could control the narrative. They're wrong, and we look forward to proving it." She described being escorted out with no warning, and accused the company of refusing appeals and ignoring basic evidence requests in the months since.

Spring McParlin-Jones, Chair of the IWGB Game Workers Branch, was similarly direct, calling the ruling "a major blow to Rockstar's attempts to avoid scrutiny," and noting that the tribunal found genuine factual questions remain about how these specific 31 workers were identified and dismissed in the first place. The union is now actively fundraising for legal costs ahead of the September trial, framing it explicitly as a fight that extends beyond Rockstar to union rights across the games industry more broadly.

Why the Timing Matters

It would be one thing if either of these stories were happening in isolation. Together, they paint a picture of a workforce that didn't back down after losing 31 colleagues in a single day last October – it organized harder. The recognition request landing the same week GTA 6 preorders are dominating headlines is not a coincidence anyone needs to dig for. The union is explicitly using the game's commercial success as leverage in its public messaging, and given the $3 billion preorder figure being repeated by multiple union representatives, it's clearly working as a talking point.

Rockstar, for its part, has publicly maintained that it respects workers' trade union rights. Whether the studio accepts the voluntary recognition request is now the open question, and how it responds will land under considerably more scrutiny than it might have a year ago, given the tribunal has already ruled the blacklisting allegations deserve a full hearing. Rockstar has roughly five months between now and GTA 6's launch to figure out how it wants this story to read by November 19th. Right now, it isn't reading well.