Rockstar Games are being accused of yet another battle tactic against former GTA 6 developers.
UPDATE: 12th December @ 9pm GMT:
IGN are reporting Rockstar suggested that the Discord that was being used to set up a union contained a games journalist and an employee from another game developer. Rockstar also say that employees who were pro union but did not break their NDA were not fired.
In response to these allegations, the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain says that all members of the Discord were Rockstar Games employees or union staffers. Furthermore, if someone left Rockstar, they would be removed from Discord. They also dispute the accusations of leaking game features.
In yet another development, Rockstar have taken a shot at the union. They told IGN “As we suspected and as evidenced by the response to our statement, they have no idea who was in this Discord.”
Original story:
The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB) has retaliated after Rockstar issued a statement on Thursday. The company claimed employees were fired over leaking “game features from upcoming and unannounced titles”.
This claim came after the UK Prime Minister announced an investigation into the scandal surrounding Rockstar. With political pressure being put on them both locally and nationally, Rockstar caved into letting UK politicians into their Edinburgh office for a meeting this week. The meeting left a lot to be desired according to the MPs.
Given Rockstar’s staunch statement, the IWGB has decided to share their point of view. In a statement provided to GTABase, the IWGB slam Rockstar’s recent comment. They state it is “littered with falsehoods and disinformation” having given various conflicting reasons for the firings.
The IWGB suggest this might be an attempt “to reverse engineer a rationale for the dismissals”. The statement goes onto say that Rockstar have “chosen to mischaracterise workers speaking about their working conditions in a private forum as “leaking information”. It is hard to understand this statement as anything but a desperate attempt to deflect from the global scrutiny they have come under over the last month.” This was also called a “lawless attack” on those affected.
Just last week, the City Of Edinburgh Council have passed a motion to support affected Rockstar Games staff in wake of the alleged union busting scandal. Learn more about what is being done to Rockstar in Edinburgh here. A protest outside Rockstar Games’ HQ in New York City took place on Friday.
What do you think of the situation? Let us know down in the comments below. Be sure to stay tuned to RockstarINTEL for all the latest news on Rockstar Games and GTA VI.
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