A new report has exposed changes Rockstar Games have made internally and how this likely led to the firing of a few dozen employees. In the weeks following Rockstar’s mass exodus, we’ve seen past and current employees protest, sign open letters and legal proceedings begin. As we wait for the situation to go through the legal system, we are learning more and more about what went down inside of Rockstar.
Despite plenty of support for those affected, some Rockstar fans are buying one side of the story: Rockstar’s. That may change now more information has just been released and as more protests continue.
The Changes Being Made
YouTube channel People Make Games have published a video containing messages from Rockstar staff that are the apparent cause of the issues.
Host Chris Bratt says people close to the situation told the outlet that Rockstar made a change to their internal Slack policy last month. The change was the removal of “miscellaneous channels” that were used by Rockstar employees to talk about anything unrelated to their job. This is not abnormal for companies to have such channels. The move went down like a led balloon with Rockstar staff members.
According to Rockstar, employees talking about other games, music, their pets and more had become a distraction to GTA VI’s development. There was no evidence provided that it had caused issues with the game’s development.
Later on, a crackdown on what employees could put in their Slack status messages took place: no more emojis. It’s thought this was because some staffers used a seedling emoji. This has become the symbol of the union. It could also be found as a reaction emoji on games industry layoff news in the aforementioned channels. You can spot a seedling in the bottom left of the image down below.
What’s New On The Firings
We learned a few weeks ago Rockstar’s claim was confidential details were discussed in a public forum. That forum is said to be an invite-only Discord server that Rockstar staff members used to organise a union. British Trade Union law protects this say affected employees.
A current Rockstar Games staffer sent screenshots of said Discord to them. The images included the specific images which may have led to Rockstar taking action. Plenty of GTA fans online have speculated the fired employees talked about GTA 6 on the Discord server but this current employee disputes that. The conversations were generally about working conditions, not the game.
Set up more than 3 years ago, the Discord server would onboard Rockstar Games employees to the union. It had amassed over 300 Rockstar employees before the company’s purge. The server was clear in what was able to be talked about on the platform.
One of the above-mentioned policy changes was made out of work hours and developers at Rockstar cannot access their work communications outside of the office. Due to this, a staff member sent the policy change to the union Discord.
From here, one Rockstar Games employee was concerned by this behaviour and alerted some management. From here, Rockstar ended up looking into the situation and the rest is history… The IWGB union believe the behaviour from the workers is fairly standard and above board legally. Hence why they are taking Rockstar on legally.
We highly recommend watching People Make Games’ full video which can be viewed here on YouTube. There’s a lot of details worth taking all in.
In other related news, the UK government may get involved after members of parliament expressed concern over Rockstar’s actions.
Be sure to stay tuned to RockstarINTEL for all the latest news on Rockstar Games and GTA VI.
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