A new report courtesy of People Make Games indicates that Rockstar Games’ firing of 34 of its employees in its union busting efforts came shortly after the studio made changes to its internal Slack policy. According to the report, which you can check out below, the policy changes for the studio’s Slack – a tool used for internal communication in larger companies – happened in October, and involved the removal of quite a few channels.
The removed channels, as noted by People Make Games, left many Rockstar Games employees with no official way to communicate with each other about subjects unrelated to their work. This policy change has been dubbed as “the Slack purge”, and ultimately resulted in the employees deciding to use a Discord server that had been created back in 2022. While the Discord was originally unused, the employees decided to repurpose it for being a place where union members could discuss the working conditions at Rockstar Games.
As the report notes, the fact that this Discord channel was only being used to discuss workplace conditions and other union-related subjects. This means that the studio’s insistence that the employees were fired due to their “gross misconduct” and “distributing and discussing confidential information in a public forum”.
The employees fired by Rockstar Games have spoken about the company’s actions as part of a few protests alongside the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB). In an interview earlier this month, one employee spoke about how Rockstar referring to the employees as having partaken in “gross misconduct” has affected even their future career prospects.
“If I have gross misconduct on my CV, on my resume for the rest of my life, that is a huge detriment to any future career prospects,” said that employee. “Something important to notice as well is you feel shame to be kicked out of work this way. Like, all of us still want to be here. We want our jobs, we want to finish what we were working on. And now the internal shame feel of having this gross misconduct with you forever, it’s hard to explain.”
Organisers from IWGB have also spoken out about Rockstar Games’ actions, referring to the firing of its employees as efforts at union busting. One organiser noted that the union wants more accountability from the leadership of the company, as well as a stricter adherence of the company to UK’s labour laws.
“It’s clear accountability for the way these dismissals have been handled, these very clear, unfair dismissals without procedure, without evidence,” said the organiser. “So clear accountability from the company, and a commitment to following employment law in the UK in the future,” are the IWGB’s plans moving forward.
“What happens next is up to Rockstar,” continued the organiser. “We’ve just submitted our legal claim. The ball is in their court to respond. We hope they’ll resolve this with us amicably, right? This is, in the end, egregious, and to be honest, shocking. I have never seen a thing like this, not just in the game sector, but in UK trade union organising in the last 20 years. This is the moment where Rockstar can make that right.”
