UK-Based Rockstar Games North Workers Formally Announce Union (aftermath.site) 30
Rockstar Games has a 2,000-employee studio in Scotland called Rockstar North. And Thursday its workers announced they'd formed a union, reports the gaming news site Aftermath:
The union [part of the wider Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB) union] includes workers from Rockstar Games offices in Leeds, London, Edinburgh, Dundee, and Lincoln, the Rockstar Games Workers Union said in a YouTube video published on Thursday... Last year, Rockstar Games employees told Aftermath that the company's insistence on return-to-office policies was a problem for many workers.
Rockstar Games, for its part, claimed the policies were related to productivity and security concerns... The video posted Thursday outlines what happened over the past several months, starting with the firing of more than 30 Rockstar Games employees in October 2025 for what the company said was "discussing confidential information in a public forum," a Rockstar Games spokesperson said in a statement to Bloomberg in November. The union disagreed: It said at the time that the workers were gathered in a private Discord server with employees and union organizers — the beginnings of the union announced Thursday. The IWGB is working to fight the firings in court.
Workers and outside union supporters gathered globally after the employees were fired, in front of Rockstar Games' offices, to protest what the union called union busting by Rockstar Games... "We believe the [firings] were unlawful and retaliatory — connected to the workers' collective activity of organizing at Rockstar," IWGB Game Workers Union co-founder Austin Kelmore told Aftermath at the time. "This action by Rockstar came shortly after reaching 10 percent of eligible workers at Rockstar in the union...." [10% is the threshhold for legal recognition by the U.K. government.] The workers have received support from government officials; in December, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the firings of the unionizing workers "a deeply concerning case."
Rockstar Games, for its part, claimed the policies were related to productivity and security concerns... The video posted Thursday outlines what happened over the past several months, starting with the firing of more than 30 Rockstar Games employees in October 2025 for what the company said was "discussing confidential information in a public forum," a Rockstar Games spokesperson said in a statement to Bloomberg in November. The union disagreed: It said at the time that the workers were gathered in a private Discord server with employees and union organizers — the beginnings of the union announced Thursday. The IWGB is working to fight the firings in court.
Workers and outside union supporters gathered globally after the employees were fired, in front of Rockstar Games' offices, to protest what the union called union busting by Rockstar Games... "We believe the [firings] were unlawful and retaliatory — connected to the workers' collective activity of organizing at Rockstar," IWGB Game Workers Union co-founder Austin Kelmore told Aftermath at the time. "This action by Rockstar came shortly after reaching 10 percent of eligible workers at Rockstar in the union...." [10% is the threshhold for legal recognition by the U.K. government.] The workers have received support from government officials; in December, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the firings of the unionizing workers "a deeply concerning case."
IWGB helped me. (Score:5, Interesting)
Just chiming in - I went through a year long ideal , also in the games industry i worked for the company in the UK that make a well known space exploration and trading game. Id been there nearly 11 yrs. Covid and lockdowns provided a stock surge 10x the current price. When the bubble broke they had a management reshuffle - and shed over 200 people. Similar problems with the return to work policy also. I can only assume that since id been there so long the payout would have been quite sizeable - thats when they tried to sideline me and bully me out - I fought them with IWGB for over a year, there were discrimination issues due to my disablity which they were exploiting. IWGB helped me get a settlement, i could have got more but the year long fight burned me out (im still in burnout) and i couldnt stick it any longer to take it to a tribunal. Just wanna say - even if your company doesnt officially recognise unions , you are still legally protected and if you find yourself in an unfair situation its well worth having them by your side - you are entitled to have them represent you in any meetings and there isnt much your employer can do about it.
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I wouldnt say it was "Sorted Out" - I had to sell my home - it was that or end up bankrupt and homeless - and still unable to work due to the burnout it caused. The house sale was traumatic in itself and i had to borrow off family until it the sale completed. The positive i suppose was that we had enough to just about clear the mortgage and move to a cheaper home in Wales. Though - it has no kitchen and needs a lot of work doing to be properly liveable. An amazing view though and no mortgage or rent to pay.
It always puzzled me... (Score:2)
... why unions aren't much more common among technology workers. Especially given what you hear about the videogame industry in particular, with that mad 'crunch time' culture in which workers are ruthlessly, well, crunched. I'd always ask, well, what does your union say about it? And what do you know, there isn't one, how about that.
Nice to hear of some progress being made, then. I suppose the risk with this for the rest of us is that GTA 6 might be late to release, but, uh, at this point I think we're ove
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Gamers are a fickle bunch and speaking as someone from inside the industry there are still some that can be very mouthy and entitled when they dont get what they want. Larger companies with public IPO also have the press to deal with - bad news affects share price. There are certain dates throughout the year eg : christmas , easter and other public holidays where new updates and releases are expected. Things cant go out the door buggy, and if they do the punters get upset and the press report it. If feature
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They shouldn't be kept apart because of poor management planning.
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It probably don't help that the shareholders and gamers have complete opposite views on what they want, and when the company is large enough you end up being forced by the shareholders to do games you know that will not be enjoyed, just because buzzwords.
Re: It always puzzled me... (Score:2)
Re: It always puzzled me... (Score:2)
A modern version of GTA London would be the absolute dream. Been long enough now, you could set it in the nineties and have the same retro value to it!
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So you have a combination of a period of time that has long past when we genuinely didn't need unions and t
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In the US, it was Reagan that started an all-out war on unions, with overwhelming anti-union propaganda*. I'm sure some of huge corporate money did similar in the UK, though with stronger unions there, and less corporate control of the regulators.
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Forgot my footnote: remember that NewsCorp - that owns US Faux Noise - Murdoch, was created in Australia in 1915 *explicitly* to push anti-union propaganda at the miners.
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Moscow's getting pretty deranged lately.
Love all the "democracy" (Score:1)
[10% is the threshhold for legal recognition by the U.K. government.]
10% is enough to get what you want? Whelp, seems fair, as long as you are on the correct, boffin-approved side, lol!
irony (Score:2)
Ant this isn't anti-union, it is just that the union employees won't have a lot of leverage. Striking will just speed the AI replacement part along.
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It won't.
Making games isn't actually that easy? I've been doing it for 25 years, and making a game that's good that people enjoy requires, in no small part, that you yourself enjoy playing games, and that you understand what fun is.
It's not just the designers that make games fun, either, even if they're responsible for a lot of the mechanics. Every breakdown of job responsibilities I've ever seen (which we use come review time) has something in it about how you understand game mechanics and your ability to
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That's a good insight - we're essentially talking about art. There's no real indication that AI can do the actually creative part. But I wonder if a union can either? Art is about allowing inspiration to hit somebody like lightning and allow it to rise to the top. Unions are about m
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That's a good insight - we're essentially talking about art. There's no real indication that AI can do the actually creative part. But I wonder if a union can either? Art is about allowing inspiration to hit somebody like lightning and allow it to rise to the top. Unions are about making rules for everything to enforce fairness, and I wonder if that will be the most creative environment. Of course top-down corporations struggle with it too especially as they get bigger.
Yeah, but there is good art and bad art. Unions - well, we must remember that once you have a union, you have two bosses, the Work boss and the union boss. So your concerns about the art of making games is well founded. And Unions are as much about lining their own pockets as enforcing fairness. That's the funny thing about those who claim that Unions are some sort of commie or socialist outfits - they are every bit as money hungry as the rest of us. They are not saviors of the downtrodden workers.
My po
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I'll assume you're American. You're demonstrating 100% of anti-union propaganda. YOU HAVE NO CLUE WHAT A UNION IS.
And no, you don't have "two bosses", moron.
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I'll assume you're American. You're demonstrating 100% of anti-union propaganda. YOU HAVE NO CLUE WHAT A UNION IS.
And no, you don't have "two bosses", moron.
All caps yelling and name calling tells me all I need to know about you.
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Yes, that they're mad that you don't understand what a union is.
I'm not gonna make any claims that unions are perfect, but a union is just a way for a collection of workers to have more leverage for bargaining rights. The most prosperous times for workers in the last century have been during times of heavy unionization.
Reagan busted the unions, and with them, he busted middle-class prosperity. As is often said, we owe weekends and the end of child labour to unions.
As a long-term worker in the industry, I'd
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Yes, that they're mad that you don't understand what a union is.
I now, right? How many years directly interacting with unions and union workers do you have? I've got going on 40 now. Doesn't automatically make me right, but I would love to hear your personal experience.
I've had Union employees tell me they have two bosses. I've dealt with grievances, Strikes, lockouts, even received a pass when some were in over their heads. I've watch the chaos of "bumping", where people bump newer employees, not even in their field - think an electrician bumping a custodian, your
So the entire industry fired 1/3 of its workers (Score:2)
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Also your post makes no sense if you spend two seconds thinking about it. Because these companies have all been laying people off, anyone they fire now can easi
A private discord server is a public forum. (Score:2)
Any place not access controlled by the entity attempting to control X is considered a public forum for purposes of legal issues which may arise from their control of the intellectual property and associated contracts in question. If any specifics of game development beyond work hours and conditions were discussed on said forum which union organizers who were not employees of R* had access too, R* was within their rights to fire the employees participating in the forum. Which since most people can't compartm