Rockstar, Discord and the 34 Fired Union Members: What the Slack Purge Was Really About

Rockstar Games is once again at the centre of a labour storm, and this time the flashpoint is not a leaked Grand Theft Auto trailer or a crunch scandal, but a Discord server and a set of internal Slack policy changes. A new investigation from People Make Games (PMG) suggests that messages about a so-called ‘Slack purge’ shared in an employee-run, union-focused Discord are at the heart of Rockstar’s decision to fire 34 workers, most of them union members, for what the company describes as ‘gross misconduct’.

On 1 November, staff at Rockstar North in Edinburgh and Rockstar Toronto were told their employment was over.

The Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB), which represents a portion of Rockstar staff, almost immediately accused the studio of union busting, arguing that management had targeted some of the most vocal organisers. Five days later Rockstar pushed back, insisting the dismissals had nothing to do with union activity and everything to do with employees allegedly distributing and discussing confidential information ‘in a public forum’.

For weeks, that phrase hung over the story like a cloud. What exactly counted as this public forum, and what information had supposedly been leaked? An anonymous Rockstar employee tried to answer that question on GTAForums, claiming the company was pointing to a private Discord server set up in 2022 for IWGB members and other Rockstar staff to discuss working conditions. According to that account, managers were treating the server as if it were a public town square, and treating chat about internal policy as if it were trade secrets.

PMG’s new reporting appears to back up that whistleblower’s version of events and adds crucial detail. Citing a non-union Rockstar employee with knowledge of the moderation logs, the outlet reports that the posts in question were not about unreleased gameplay, GTA VI story beats, or proprietary tech. Instead, they were messages where staff shared and reacted to changes in Rockstar’s internal Slack policies, including the removal of miscellaneous channels that had been used for off-topic chat.

Those channel removals were quickly dubbed ‘the Slack purge’ by frustrated staff. For many employees, especially in a historically crunch-heavy industry, the informal spaces in company chat tools are part of how they decompress, swap advice and quietly compare notes on workloads and management. Losing that digital water cooler felt, to some, like yet another tightening of control. So they went to the Discord server specifically created as a safer space for workers to talk about workplace issues and, in some cases, union organising, and they talked about it there.

That Discord server, according to PMG’s source and union statements, was not an open community anyone could wander into. Access was limited to verified Rockstar employees and IWGB members, and its stated purpose was to host conversations about working conditions. In other words, it was effectively an online union hall. Under UK labour law, discussing working conditions and sharing information relevant to those conditions is generally considered protected activity. From the union’s perspective, employees posting screenshots or summaries of updated Slack rules in that space were doing precisely what the law is supposed to safeguard.

Rockstar and its parent company Take-Two appear to be taking a very different view. Because Discord is external to the company and not part of its official communications stack, management is reportedly arguing that any mention of internal policies there amounts to distributing confidential information in a public forum. Even if the server was invite-only, lawyers could try to argue that employees lost the protection of internal confidentiality the moment they stepped off the company network and into a third-party platform.

Whether that argument sticks is now a matter for legal bodies rather than YouTube comments. The IWGB has lodged two claims against Rockstar, and labour lawyers will likely be picking over the fine print of both confidentiality clauses and digital-era definitions of a ‘public forum’. Do invite-only online spaces deserve to be treated differently from genuinely open social media feeds? How far can a company reach when it comes to policing what workers say in their own time, on their own devices, about their own working conditions?

Inside Rockstar, the backlash has already been significant. Over 200 employees reportedly signed a letter to management supporting their fired colleagues and calling for their reinstatement, a remarkable show of solidarity in an industry where people often keep their heads down and focus on staying employed. Demonstrations have taken place outside Rockstar offices in Edinburgh, London and Paris, with placards calling the sackings a blatant attack on organising and warning that the case could create a chilling precedent for the whole games sector.

Online, the reaction has been predictably split. Plenty of players and industry watchers have praised the union for pushing back and have criticised Rockstar for what they see as a heavy-handed attempt to silence dissent just as hype around GTA VI is peaking. Others have been openly hostile to the idea of game dev unions at all, repeating an old stereotype that unionised workers are just looking for an excuse to do less. You can already see the sentiment in comment threads: people claiming, sometimes in blunt terms, that ‘union people are lazy’ or that the fired staff brought it on themselves by taking internal issues to an outside platform.

Those talking points are familiar far beyond games. Supporters of unions argue that organised labour is one of the only tools workers have to counterbalance the power of giant corporations, particularly when projects are as huge and as secretive as a modern Grand Theft Auto. Critics, meanwhile, worry that collective bargaining will slow production, increase costs, or protect poor performers. The Rockstar case has become a lightning rod for that broader argument, with both sides pointing to the same set of facts and drawing very different conclusions about fairness, loyalty and responsibility.

Whatever your stance on unions, the details highlighted by PMG raise uncomfortable questions about how companies handle digital communication. If a locked, identity-verified Discord server used by employees to talk about their jobs can be redefined as a public forum, then the boundary between protected workplace discussion and fireable offence looks extremely fragile. Many studios now rely on Slack, Teams and similar tools, and many workers rely on side channels, group chats and community servers to share experiences that might not feel safe to voice in company spaces.

For Rockstar’s management, the bet seems to be that a strict interpretation of confidentiality will hold up in court and send a broader message about leaks and control. For the IWGB and the fired workers, the goal is the opposite: to show that talking about policy changes and workspace culture in a union context is precisely the sort of activity that should not cost anyone their livelihood. If judges side with the company, other employers may feel emboldened to treat almost any external discussion of internal policy as misconduct. If the workers prevail, it could push studios to rethink how they write NDAs, how they design internal chat policies and how far they are willing to go to keep criticism out of sight.

One thing is certain: this is not just about GTA VI spoilers or one Discord server. It is about who gets to define what counts as confidential, what counts as public and where the line should be drawn when workers talk to each other about the conditions under which the games we play are made. The outcome will echo well beyond Rockstar’s offices, and every studio trying to manage the messy intersection of Slack, Discord, unions and the next big blockbuster should be paying attention.