The Rockstar Game Workers Union has members in the developer’s UK offices.
Rockstar Games workers have announced the creation of the Rockstar Game Workers Union, the Grand Theft Auto developer’s first union. According to an explainer video released alongside the announcement, the new union represents workers in Edinburgh, London, Leeds, Lincoln and Dundee, covering all of Rockstar’s offices in the UK.
The new organization is a subsidiary of the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) and its members say they are focused on issues such as “pay transparency, working flexibility and ending the crisis”. More immediately, they are also responding to the conflict that has galvanized the union’s current support: the sudden firing of 31 union members in October 2026. At the time, the IWGB called the move “the most blatant and callous anti-union act in the history of the video game industry,” while Rockstar claimed the workers were fired for “gross misconduct” regarding sharing confidential information. If you take Rockstar at its word, it was just a coincidence that all of the laid-off workers were also members of a union organizing the Discord channel.
Following the firings, protests took place outside several Rockstar studios and the IWGB subsequently filed a lawsuit against the developer for what it considered to be wrongful termination of its employees. The sacked workers were refused interim compensation by a UK employment tribunal in January 2026, but the case has yet to be fully heard in court. Part of the reason the Rockstar Game Workers Union decided to make it public now is to help raise money for its legal defense.
The timing couldn’t be better. All eyes are currently on Rockstar Games and its owner 2K due to the highly anticipated launch of Grand Theft Auto VI in November. Unless the game is delayed again, some of that attention will also be on the Rockstar Game Workers Union.
