Rockstar goes before a Glasgow tribunal on September 10 over the 31 fired GTA 6 workers, and the hearing ends 34 days before launch

On September 10 the Glasgow Employment Tribunal opens the full hearing into the October 2025 dismissal of 31 Rockstar employees in the UK, and it is scheduled to run until October 16. The dates were confirmed on September 7 by the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain, which represents the workers, and carried the same day by AFP, the Glasgow Times and City AM. Rockstar, in a statement to AFP, said the people "were dismissed for gross misconduct following the sharing of confidential company information, not because of alleged trade union membership or activity" and added: "We reject the claims and will defend them vigorously before the tribunal."

What the tribunal will decide. The union's case is that the workers were singled out for organising, that the studio compiled and used lists of names to discriminate against them, which UK law treats as blacklisting, and that the way they were let go was itself unlawful: no disciplinary process and, in the union's words, no "right of appeal". Its account of the day, repeated in this week's coverage, is that office staff were called into meetings, dismissed on the spot and walked out of the building, while remote staff got phone calls of about two minutes before their accounts were locked. Rockstar's version has not changed since October: the messages were posted in a private union Discord server and breached confidentiality agreements. Three more people were dismissed in Canada at the same time; they are not part of the Glasgow case.

How the case got here. In January, after a two-day hearing, Employment Judge Frances Eccles refused interim relief, the emergency order that would have kept the workers on the payroll and their visas alive until trial. She wrote that the tribunal "was unable to conclude that it appears likely that the tribunal will find that the principal reason for the claimants' dismissal was their membership of the IWGB", while also noting that the Discord server had about 350 members, that some of those fired had posted very little there, and that nobody had a disciplinary hearing before being dismissed. Rockstar then said: "We regret that we were put in a position where dismissals were necessary, but we stand by our course of action as supported by the outcome of this hearing." In June the tribunal rejected Rockstar's attempt to strike the blacklisting claims out of the case, so everything the union filed goes to trial. In between, the union filed for recognition on June 30 and held its first formal meeting with management on July 22, which we covered at the time.

One small correction to our own record. The June ruling and our July note gave the trial as September 10 to October 15. The union's statement this week and the AFP report say October 16. We are using the newer date.

What it means for the game: nothing on the calendar. November 19 stands, and a labour case in Scotland does not touch the build. What changes is the noise. The hearing is public, the union has said since June that "the world will get to see for itself the evidence as to what happened last October", and the last of the five weeks lands 34 days before release, in the middle of the final marketing push. Jason Lewis, one of the 31, put it this way: "We lost our jobs, our income, our community and the chance to see the game through to release after spending years helping to build it." IWGB president Alex Marshall went for the pun: "We believe Rockstar has tried to get away with Grand Theft Employment Rights." No date for a judgment has been announced.