Rockstar HR manager says he had ‘little interest’ in union membership, as GTA 6 tribunal continues

Rockstar Games’ tribunal fight with 31 former Grand Theft Auto 6 developers continued today at Glasgow Tribunals Centre, where HR manager and co-studio operations director Charlie Kinloch told the court he had “little interest” in employees’ union membership status.

The claim is part of an ongoing case in which the former staff, represented by the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain, say they were targeted and unlawfully dismissed as part of union-busting efforts at Rockstar. Rockstar rejects that account and says the workers were fired for gross misconduct and for leaking confidential information. The company also says it moved to fire 34 workers because of an “irretrievable breakdown in trust and confidence”.

Kinloch was cross-examined over what he knew about union organising inside the company, what he did with messages from an anonymous employee, and why comments he considered disparaging did not lead to immediate dismissals when he first saw them in early 2024. The hearing is one of the first public tests of Rockstar’s explanation for the layoffs.

Dispute over what Kinloch knew about union members

The claimants say Kinloch gave different accounts during the dispute, including an interim relief hearing in January this year. They allege he first said he did not know employees were members of the IWGB union, then later said he had no way of knowing “definitively” which employees were members. Kinloch disputes that he tried to mislead the court and said the extra wording may have been added when he was asked to provide more context.

The cross-examiner also referred to messages sent to Kinloch by an anonymous employee identified in the hearing as AB. Those messages were later marked as evidence of gross misconduct and were used in part when employees were dismissed last year. The claimants say AB was sending information he thought would interest Kinloch, including Discord discussions about union organising, leafleting and complaints about the workplace.

Kinloch rejected the suggestion that those messages identified specific people as IWGB members. He said he had a “broad” interest in unionisation only so far as it affected line managers, but had “little interest” in conversations between employees. He also said “disparagement and misinformation about Rockstar” was his priority.

The claimants argue that distinction matters because the messages were raised months before the dismissals. They say the company’s response changed only later, after the messages were reclassified as part of the case against staff who were already involved in internal organising. The trial is now examining how Rockstar moved from receiving those messages to treating them as grounds for dismissal.

Why the company says the messages became serious

Kinloch was asked why statements he viewed as disparaging did not result in terminations when they first came to his attention in early 2024, but instead led to action around 18 months later. He said the run-up to Grand Theft Auto 6 changed how the messages were viewed.

“I viewed those messages with the scrutiny Rockstar Games was under in the run up to GTA6, which was unprecedented,” he said.

He told the court that media speculation and public interest had reached a “peak” and that, if disparaging comments became public, they could “deal the company damage”. He added that leaks could cause financial harm because of the attention on the game, and said someone who chose to leak information could benefit from doing so.

Kinloch also said that, before a major GTA 6 announcement, the employee Discord was growing and disparaging comments were increasing. The hearing did not settle those claims, but they form part of Rockstar’s explanation for why it treated the messages as serious enough to sit alongside the later dismissals.

That account is central to the company’s defence. Rockstar says the firings were not about union membership, but about confidential information and conduct that it says broke trust between the company and its employees. The claimants, meanwhile, say the company has tried to recast ordinary organising activity as misconduct after the fact.

Union account and journalist contact flagged in court

Two other Discord-related topics were also raised as red flags from Kinloch’s point of view. One was a proposed launch of a Rockstar Games union Twitter account, which he considered a security risk. The other was the intention to speak to two games journalists: Bloomberg’s Jason Schrier and The Guardian’s Keza Macdonald.

Those details added to the picture presented by the claimants, who say Rockstar was paying close attention to union-related activity before the layoffs. The defence maintains that the company acted because of misconduct and leaks, not because employees belonged to the IWGB or discussed organising.

Today was only the first day of cross-examination of Rockstar witnesses defending that position, and the process is set to continue next week. Former employees laid off in the cuts are expected to attend as the case develops further at Glasgow Tribunals Centre.

The tribunal is now working through a detailed timeline that stretches from early Discord exchanges to the later dismissals and the company’s public explanation for them. The witnesses’ evidence will matter for how the court weighs Rockstar’s claim that the terminations were justified against the former staff’s allegation that union activity was the real reason they lost their jobs.

The case remains focused on a narrow but disputed question: whether the company acted on misconduct and leaking, or whether it used those allegations to remove workers who were involved in union organising.