Developing: Rockstar manager tells tribunal he had 'little interest' in union talk

A Rockstar HR manager told a Glasgow employment tribunal he had "little interest" in union talk among staff ^[1], testimony at the heart of a case in which 34 dismissed workers say they were fired for union activity, which the company denies ^[3].

The hearing is under way and this story is developing. Everything below comes from media reports of the proceedings, not a transcript, and none of it is a finding by the tribunal.

What the manager said

Charlie Kinloch is an HR manager at Rockstar Lincoln and co-studio operations director. On October 9 he was cross-examined about material on union organising that reached him before the dismissals. According to Eurogamer, he said he had "little interest" in conversations between employees about unionisation. His priority, he said, was alleged disparagement and misinformation about Rockstar. ^[1]

He described his interest in unionisation as broad, and tied it to its possible effect on line managers rather than to what employees said to each other. ^[1]

The claimants' lawyer pressed on membership. Eurogamer reported that Kinloch first said he did not know whether employees belonged to the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain (IWGB), then said he had no way of knowing definitively who did. Kinloch rejected the suggestion that the difference was a deliberate attempt to mislead the tribunal. ^[1]

The case in brief

The dispute covers 34 dismissals, 31 in the UK and three in Canada. The workers are represented by the IWGB, and they want reinstatement or compensation and a finding that they were unfairly dismissed. ^[3]

Their case, as Game Developer set out from the opening submissions, is that managers used information from a private Discord server to identify union activists. They say the dismissals followed soon after the union reached the membership threshold for seeking statutory recognition. ^[2] The claimants also allege that an employee identified as AB passed information from the server to Kinloch. ^[2][5]

Rockstar says it dismissed staff in the UK and Canada for gross misconduct after they shared confidential company information, not because of union membership or activity. It has said it will defend itself vigorously. ^[3] According to Kotaku, the company maintains that AB shared information voluntarily. AB was not among the witnesses who could be questioned at the hearing. ^[5]

The timing problem

The claimants' lawyer asked why messages described as disparaging did not lead to dismissals when they first came to Kinloch's attention in early 2024, yet were acted on about 18 months later. ^[1][5]

Kinloch's answer was the run-up to a major GTA 6 announcement and the heightened public interest that came with it. That changed how he saw the risk. ^[1][5] He said the Discord's membership was growing rapidly in October 2025 and that he believed comments about company processes and disparagement were growing with it. He worried that public disclosure could damage Rockstar and give someone a financial incentive to leak. ^[5]

That is a coherent business reason. It also leaves the tribunal with a hard question, because the claimants say the dismissals came soon after the union reached its recognition threshold. ^[2] Eurogamer reported that Rockstar also treated discussion of a proposed union social-media account, and plans to speak with the Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier and the Guardian journalist Keza Macdonald, as concerns. ^[1]

In earlier evidence, dismissed worker Dayne Oram said Rockstar North had "kept an eye" on a group of union members after a remote-working petition. He said the petition became the basis of a "watch list." Rockstar denied that union activity caused the dismissals. ^[4]

Why it reaches past gaming

The paper's view is that this case turns on a line employers draw every day. A company has a real interest in protecting unreleased work. Workers have a real interest in talking to each other about pay and conditions. When both happen in the same chat server, someone has to decide which is which, and the tribunal will have to decide whether Rockstar decided honestly.

The answer matters to any workplace where staff organise online, which is nearly all of them. If a tribunal accepts that talk about conditions can be treated as a leak, the room for organising shrinks. If it finds that the studio acted on organising, the message to employers is just as plain.

The games industry gives the case extra weight. Rockstar's workers are making one of the most anticipated commercial products in entertainment, and the union says it wants greater pay transparency, protection from layoffs after a game's release, an end to crunch and better flexible working. ^[3] Those are the issues on which games workers have long said they have little say, and the recognition effort is running alongside the dismissal case. ^[3]

Kinloch's testimony does not settle the question either way. His account is that he cared about disparagement, not organising. The claimants will say the timing and the monitoring tell a different story. The tribunal has the evidence of both to weigh.

What comes next

The hearing is due to continue next week. IGN reported that it was scheduled to run until October 16, 2026. ^[1][3][5] Whether AB gives evidence, what Rockstar produces to back its gross misconduct case, and how the tribunal reads the gap between early 2024 and the dismissals are the points to watch. No date has been reported for a ruling.