Rockstar taped up office windows after drones started filming employees at work
Rockstar Games published its opening note ahead of the employment tribunal hearing in Glasgow, where the fate of 31 dismissed employees is being decided.
In the document, the studio detailed the security measures surrounding GTA 6 development, including privacy films on office windows that it had to install after drones were used to try to photograph workspaces through the glass.
The hearing began yesterday and runs until October 16, wrapping up a month before the game launches. The complaint was filed by the Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB) union, which claims the workers were blacklisted and fired for union activity without any disciplinary process or right of appeal.
Rockstar flatly denies this version of events. According to the studio, the dismissals followed a leak of information about GTA 6 features on Discord, and the company says it wasn't aware at the time that these individuals were involved with a union. In total, 34 people lost their jobs – 31 in the UK and three in Canada – sparking protests outside Rockstar North offices in Edinburgh and Take-Two headquarters in London.
The Discord discussions that led to the firings, according to the company, touched on gameplay mechanics, overall development progress, launch timelines, and internal IT security protocols. Rockstar argues that a leak of these messages would have been major industry news and could have hit Take-Two stock. There's precedent here: when GTA 6 was officially delayed to November 19, 2026, the publisher market value dropped $3.75 billion in a single day.
The studio compared protecting its work to corporate secrets on the level of Apple or Coca-Cola, stating it maintains security standards comparable to a Wall Street investment bank.
Rockstar Games, from its opening note to the tribunal:
Guarding the secrets of the unique gameplay and design are akin to Apple protecting the iPhone or Coke protecting its formula. The standards and expectations regarding information security and privacy are exponentially beyond that of most employers.
The document lists specific restrictions placed on staff:
All visitors to offices must sign non-disclosure agreements, and contractors on site are escorted by security
Remote work is severely restricted, and flash drives or any external storage devices are banned
Photography at work is strictly forbidden, and personal laptops, tablets, and phones cannot connect to studio systems
Staff are ordered not to disclose confidential information even to family members
Internal social media guidelines go so far as to state that an innocuous photo of an employee's own desk could be considered unacceptable, since it might reveal confidential data. A full-time team of five investigators and a director monitors for leaks.
Rockstar also pointed to regular attacks on its infrastructure and online harassment of staff. Employees face phishing and social engineering attempts aimed at stealing passwords and login credentials. Some of these attacks have succeeded – phishing gave a hacker access to an employee computer in 2022, leading to dozens of videos of unfinished GTA 6 development footage being pulled from internal Slack channels.
The history of leaks stretches back years. An employee in the US was fired in November 2023, a worker in Lincoln who passed confidential game information to a third party was dismissed in April 2025, and an employee in India was let go in November 2025. Last month, gameplay footage leaked online ahead of the official Netflix reveal, and a hacking group attempted to blackmail the studio in the CyberLeek incident. Rockstar estimates that the fallout from that breach cost its parent company $2 billion in market value within a few days.
The studio also described the level of attention it gets from fans – people have tracked how often employees go out for coffee, pizza deliveries to the offices, and even traffic near its buildings, all in an attempt to guess the release date. In 2025, two innocuous tweets from developers spawned a mistaken theory that a new trailer would drop on December 27.
Alongside the legal battle, Rockstar and the IWGB are negotiating formal union recognition. The union is pushing for greater pay transparency, protection from post-release layoffs, an end to crunch, and better flexible working arrangements. If an agreement is reached, the studio would become the largest recognized unionized game studio in the UK, and workers hope to secure recognition before GTA 6 launches.
The dismissed workers are seeking reinstatement or, failing that, compensation, along with a tribunal finding that their dismissals were unfair.
