GTA 6 employees fired from Rockstar Games after leaking 'confidential information' to the public

The gaming industry loves a good leak, and whether it be that dramatic death in The Last of Us Part II being ruined just ahead of release, Kotaku being blacklisted by Bethesda for spoiling Fallout 4, or Insomniac Games more recently having its plans through to 2030 leaked, players can't get enough of trying to spoil their own fun.

While we're not sure anything will ever top the September 2021 Nvidia's GeForce Now database leak that seemingly spelled out the entire future of gaming, Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto 6 megaleak comes pretty close.

While two record-breaking trailers have confirmed details like the dual protagonists of Jason and Lucia alongside a return to the beloved Vice City, some GTA 6 fans knew this long before we got that first tease in December 2023.

Even the first GTA 6 trailer was hit by its own leak lament, with Rockstar Games forced to drop it early after a low-quality version did the rounds online. Despite the supposed GTA 6 release of May 2026 racing toward us, the gaming giant is still battling every day with leakers. There are obvious repercussions for these leakers if Rockstar and publisher Take-Two Interactive tracks them down, and while most are hidden under a veil of anonymity, it seems the call is coming from inside the house.

In a statement to Bloomberg, Rockstar Games said that over 30 employees recently let go were sent packing due to leaking company information in a forum that included non-Rockstar members of the public: "Last week, we took action against a small number of individuals who were found to be distributing and discussing confidential information in a public forum, a violation of our company policies."

It comes in the aftermath of the developer facing union busting accusations that the dozens of fired employees were trying to unionize. Rockstar went on to add: "This was in no way related to people’s right to join a union or engage in union activities."

This has been denied by the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain, which claims the fired employees were simply speaking with labor organizers in a private Discord group. While Rockstar refers to 'gross misconduct', the union maintains that 30 to 40 former staffers from the UK and Canada had been involved in union efforts, branding the layoffs as "one of the most blatant and ruthless acts of union busting in the history of the games industry.”

Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain president Alex Marshall responded to Rockstar's allegations and said that the company was "afraid of hard-working staff privately discussing exercising their rights for a fairer workplace and a collective voice."

Marshall concluded: "Management are showing they don’t care about delays to GTA VI, and that they’re prioritizing union-busting by targeting the very people who make the game."

Bloomberg notes that Rockstar has become increasingly cautious when it comes to security, famously coming under fire when it was called 'reckless' for insisting employees return to the office five days a week.

Even though Rockstar said the move was partly due to security concerns, it came in the aftermath of it previously being accused of pushing a 'crunch' culture when developing 2018's Red Dead Redemption 2. GTA 6 might be poised to become the biggest video game of all time, but Rockstar definitely doesn't need the headaches of union busting allegations if it's going to hit that May 2026 deadline.