The firing of several employees at the makers of the Grand Theft Auto video games came as a complete surprise, according to one of the Canadian workers who was let go this past fall.
“I had no idea what was going on. I was shell-shocked,” said one of three game developers fired from Rockstar Toronto (actually in Oakville, Ont.). CBC News is not naming the developer out of fear of retaliation, including being blacklisted from future employment in the games industry.
Thirty-one Rockstar employees working in the U.K. were fired the same day. Rockstar Games, which has multiple studios, primarily in the U.S., and U.K., alleges they were fired for “gross misconduct,” and leaking company secrets.
Alex Marshall, president of the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB), called the firings “one of the most blatant and ruthless acts of union busting in the history of the games industry.”
It’s the latest lightning rod for discussion about unionization in a hugely profitable, international industry that has historically been very resistant to it — even amidst reports of employees being burned out by unpaid overtime, and thousands of layoffs in recent years.
The employee told CBC News that on Oct. 30, three workers at Rockstar Toronto were each “brought into a room with an HR person” and told they were being terminated for breaking a non-disclosure agreement, which every employee must sign before working there.
Protesters and union members hold a picket outside the offices of video game studio Rockstar Toronto in Oakville, Ont., on Dec. 12. (Jonathan Ore/CBC)
“They ended up just giving us our essentials and … we were immediately escorted out of the building by security.”
CBC News reached out to Take-Two Interactive, Rockstar’s parent company, for comment on the fired Canadian developers but received no response.
Firings have ‘a chilling effect’ on the industry: union rep
Nasr Ahmed, staff organizer at Communications Workers of America (CWA) Canada, was part of a small solidarity march outside Rockstar Toronto’s offices earlier in December. He called Rockstar’s claims of the fired workers leaking confidential information “patently false.”
“They have not provided any proof for those claims, either for the Canadian workers or the U.K. workers,” he said.
He corroborated an account from the IWGB that all 34 workers were part of an online discussion group on the app Discord, where industry workers interested in unionizing or learning about unions in the U.K. could talk about working conditions.
The fired employee told CBC News that the workers were from different departments and had different seniorities across the company, both in Canada and the U.K., and that “the only common link among us” was they were all part of the Discord group. CBC News has not viewed chat messages from the Discord group and could not verify their contents.
“At the end of the day … discussing your working conditions is not against the law, as far as I know, in either Canada or the U.K., which is what exactly these workers were doing,” Ahmed said.
Ahmed characterized Rockstar management’s actions as “shameful.” He says it creates “a chilling effect” that will discourage employees in the wider games industry from discussing working conditions and joining or forming a union.
Union talk taboo in video games
The games industry has been historically resistant to unionization, and Aurelia Augusta of the CWA’s United Videogame Workers union says it’s “incredibly scary” to even talk about it, as it might effectively blacklist them from future employment, or lead to their removal from the credits of games they’re already working on.
“People are scared, especially in Canada where … a handful of major studios have control of a huge amount of the game development jobs pipeline,” Augusta said.
Ahmed said that when video game workers organize, their intention isn’t “to burn the studio down,” but rather “to make the studio better.”
Grand Theft Auto VI follows the previous instalment released in 2013 and a long-running online version of the game, which has made parent company Take-Two Interactive billions of dollars in revenue. (Rockstar Games/Take-Two Interactive)
In a statement to CBC News, Ontario’s Minister of Labour David Piccini said: “I want all workers in Ontario to know they have the right to raise concerns about their workplace, and Ontario’s labour laws exist to ensure those concerns are addressed through fair and established processes.”
Earlier this month, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the Rockstar firings “deeply concerning” and said he would look into the situation.
This past month, other studios have seen significant steps toward organizing.
U.S.-based Id Software, makers of the Doom games, and Ubisoft Halifax voted for wall-to-wall unionization with the CWA in the U.S. and Canada, respectively.
The former Rockstar employee told CBC News they were hopeful that more video game studios — including Rockstar — could be unionized in the future. “The company has shown a willingness to do right by their employees in the past when push comes to shove,” they said.
Culture of overtime ‘crunch’ in video games
Rockstar came under scrutiny ahead of the release of Red Dead Redemption in 2018. According to some reports, many employees worked extra-long hours in what is known in the industry as “crunch.”
Co-founder Dan Houser said in one interview that he and a small group of writers clocked 100-hour work weeks close to launch. Houser left the company in 2020; his brother Sam Houser is currently its president.
Jim Munroe, a writer and artist who also works in the independent games space, attended the protest outside Rockstar Toronto. He says he doesn’t know anyone who currently works there, but does know some developers who formerly worked there and burned out.
Union members and protesters join a solidarity picket nearby the video game studio Rockstar Toronto’s offices in Oakville. (Jonathan Ore/CBC)
“I’m a big fan of Rockstar and just want them to treat their workers better,” he said.
“In some ways I feel like the GTA games are the modern world’s equivalent of the pyramids: incredible feats of art and technical engineering, but built at an enormous human cost.”
Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that Rockstar’s crunch culture had mostly been eliminated. But it was also reported that employees were disappointed after being asked to return to work full time in the office, pulling back from pandemic-era work-from-home policies.
The former Rockstar Toronto employee said that, ultimately, the fired workers both in Canada and the U.K. just want their jobs back.
“We poured our heart and soul into our work. Everyone who was there is a talented individual in some way. We wouldn’t have been hired by Rockstar or worked there for as long as we have if we weren’t,” the developer said.
“All we wanted to do is make the best game possible. We’re all passionate folk.”
