Some of the evidence submitted by Rockstar to warrant the dismissal of 34 employees for gross misconduct has been revealed following a preliminary UK employment tribunal hearing.
The hearing, which saw the Glasgow Employment Tribunal reject a request for interim relief, included the “confidential information” allegedly distributed on a Discord server set up by the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB).
As reported by People Make Games, Rockstar’s barrister Andrew Burns did not want messages relating to this information read in court.
But as PMG noted, Rockstar did not apply for reporting restrictions on its submission of evidence, and so was able to make an appointment with the court to view it.
The “top secret” evidence referred to a conversation that included two fired employees about requesting time off.
One worker shared that a new policy had been implemented that “no more than five people could be off at a time.” Further on in the conversation, they said: “[Rockstar] mentioned a large session we did today being difficult to do, but that was 32 players. Not sure how that was difficult.”
The other employee criticised the new policy, stating: “Sounds like you have multiple studios of QA testers. Surely someone can manage to organise a 32-player session and let people have their time off.”
PMG said Rockstar was “gravely concerned to discover some of the claimants had been sharing highly confidential and commercially sensitive information relating to the content and features of an unannounced live service.
“They discussed the specific number of online players planned for this service, a material feature of this new title, which has not yet been revealed by Rockstar.”
The company’s evidence also included information that an employee was fired from one Discord message as proof of their gross misconduct, which saw them discuss there not being any crunch in Rockstar North’s QA department.
The message in full: “Nothing I’ve heard in North QA! Will keep you updated if anything changes.”
Rockstar’s head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe said in her witness statement that this message “included information about working patterns in [their] team” that could “indicate the stage of development of Grand Theft Auto 6 and could also undermine team collaboration.”
The evidence submitted also revealed the journalist that Rockstar claimed was “lurking” on the server, which was in reference to Scott Alsworth.
Alsworth is a game writer and narrative designer, who worked at Bohemia Interactive for more than a decade. He also founded the co-development studio Cerberus Creative.
He is an elected representative of the IWGB’s Game Workers branch, which is why he was invited to the Discord server.
Rockstar noted that between 2022 and 2025, Alsworth wrote six articles for the British newspaper The Morning Star for its gaming section, including an opinion piece on Grand Theft Auto following the delay of GTA 6.
The firm argued that because of his reporting, his involvement in the union Discord server was a “legitimate risk” to Rockstar.
