Over 30 employees at Rockstar Games were fired in October, not for leaking company secrets or information about Grand Theft Auto 6. Instead, they were fired for responding to an email.
Rockstar Games, the creators of Grand Theft Auto, fired more than 30 employees in the UK and Canada last October over allegations of “gross misconduct.”
Yet, these employees weren’t found stealing company secrets or leaking scenes from upcoming games.
Instead, the developers were axed from the company over internal company messages shared via a Discord server.
While Rockstar said that employees had been fired for “discussing confidential information in a public forum,” the forum was actually an invite-only server used only by Rockstar employees.
This server was used by employees and representatives of the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain (IWGB), where they talked about salary comparisons, bonuses, and changes to internal policies.
The YouTube channel, “People Make Games,” which launched the investigation, revealed that Rockstar was changing their internal Slack policies, which means that recreational or “miscellaneous” channels were to be deleted as they were seen as a “distraction.”
Rockstar employees took to the Discord channel to vent about this change, while also challenging the new rules being enforced.
“I can’t imagine what a dumpster fire this will be for morale,” said one Rockstar employee via the Discord server.
One Rockstar employee quoted the email saying that the change in policy will help “maintain clearer boundaries between work and personal life,” to which another employee responded, “Well, let me work my contracted hours.”
Rockstar was essentially policing employees' internal communications by making them unable to add certain things to their Slack status and stopping them from communicating about non-work-related topics, People Make Games seems to suggest.
However, what really kicked things off was when Rockstar sent the email about the change in Slack policy.
Rockstar employees are generally only allowed to access their work emails in the office, and the YouTuber’s source said that Rockstar had sent the email regarding the Slack policy change outside of working hours.
The remaining people in the office sent excerpts of this email into the Discord server for other employees to read while outside of the office.
While it hasn’t been officially confirmed by Rockstar, an investigation into the Discord server occurred in October, and by the end of the month, 34 people were fired for “gross misconduct,” People Make Games reports.
As a result of the firings, over 200 Rockstar employees wrote letters to management demanding that the roughly 30 employees have their roles reinstated.
However, nothing seems to be happening, despite protests outside of Rockstar’s offices.
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