Edinburgh-based workers at video games giant Rockstar North yesterday walked out in solidarity with dozens of co-workers fired in what has been called “the most ruthless and blatant example of illegal union busting in the history of the games industry”.
Rockstar Games last week fired more than 30 workers in Edinburgh and Dundee, all of whom were active members of the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB).
The move comes as workers at the studio come under pressure to deliver work on Grand Theft Auto VI, the next entry in one of the world’s biggest and most profitable video game franchises.
Grand Theft Auto V, released in 2013, ranks as the second best-selling video game of all time, with more than 215 million copies sold – generating more than $8.9 billion in revenue.
The sixth instalment in the series is hotly-anticipated and has been reported to have a development budget of between $1 billion and $2 billion. Industry analysts expect the game to break sales records on its release and potentially rake in more than $10 billion.
Originally set for release in late 2025, Rockstar announced in May this year that the game would be postponed until May 2026 due to delays in the development process – and yesterday announced that it would be delayed again until November 2026.
Video games workers turning to unions
The video games industry is notorious for practices like “crunch”, where workers are forced to work extensive periods of mandatory overtime in order to get projects over the line on time.
Growing opposition to these practices has led many games workers to join unions like the IWGB, which has campaigned against “reliance on overtime or crunch culture” in the industry as well as a range of improvements in pay and conditions.
Rockstar had claimed to make big internal improvements after damaging reports emerged in 2018 of serious crunch during the development of Red Dead Redemption 2, when some US-based workers were reportedly told to work up to 80 hours per week, while others averaged between 55 and 60 hours.
However, workers at Rockstar North last year complained through the IWGB that their employer was harming their work-life balance by forcing them back to the office five days a week, breaking a previous promise to continue hybrid working options introduced in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic.
Speaking to Heckle outside Rockstar North’s offices yesterday, IWGB organiser Fred Carter said Rockstar had sacked dozens of workers – some of them relying on the company for visas or healthcare benefits – because the studio is “scared of a union”.
“They’ve alleged gross misconduct in the press and we know this isn’t true,” he said. “Every worker who was sacked in the UK was a member of our union. I’ve never seen such a blatant, ruthless, brazen act of union-busting in the games industry.”
The union is demanding the reinstatement of the sacked workers with full compensation and for management to be held accountable for their firing.
Carter said: “We’re fighting back with everything we can. We’re pursuing robust legal action to reinstate our members. We’re fighting back with demonstrations and public support.
“We’ve been outside the Take-Two offices [Rockstar’s parent company] this morning with a protest in London. We’ve been outside Rockstar North in Edinburgh with a massive protest, with workers from the company walking out to support their co-workers who have been fired. We’ve had speeches and solidarity from unions across the world and in Edinburgh.”
He added: “I think this is a tipping point for the game sector in the UK.”
Scotland as a leader in games development
The Scottish Government has sought to present Scotland as a global leader in games development and has welcomed figures showing there are now 130 video games companies in Scotland, which collectively employ 2,125 people and took in £340 million in revenue last year.
Abertay University in Dundee – where Rockstar North’s forerunner, DMA Design, first created Grand Theft Auto in 1997 – was the UK’s first university to be recognised as a ‘centre for excellence in computer games education’ and many of its graduates work at Rockstar today.
However, the games industry has in the past few years seen mass lay-offs and little recruitment, while workers at both small and large employers have complained of overwork and low pay – issues which are driving workers to unionise in a sector with little history of industrial organising.
When Scotland hosted a major European games industry summit in September, John Swinney boasted that the games industry “demonstrates our nation’s capacity for innovation and entrepreneurship” and welcomed the summit’s focus on the role of AI in games development.
But there was little mention of the workers who power the industry and their anxieties, along with those of workers in other creative industries, of being replaced with AI in pursuit of profit.
Traditional trade unions have also failed to defend games workers’ interests. The largest games workers’ union in the UK is a branch of the IWGB, a grassroots union founded in 2013 which focuses on precarious workers and has much smaller resources than the likes of Unite and the GMB.
Rank-and-file trade unionists from across industries have, however, shown their solidarity.
‘An injury to one is an injury to all’
Support for the fired Rockstar workers from the wider trade union movement has been “fantastic”, Carter said, with a range of union flags and banners on display at the rally.
“This is a company that takes a huge amount of money in UK tax relief and clearly decided to put profit over the lives and livelihoods of the workers who build the games,” he said.
In 2019, think tank TaxWatch UK said Rockstar North had paid £0 in corporation tax between 2013 and 2019 despite making an estimated $5 billion in profit and claiming over £42 million in tax relief under a UK government scheme for video games companies.
Following his demotion from Secretary of State for Scotland, Edinburgh South’s right-wing Labour MP, Ian Murray, is now a junior minister in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport responsible for that generous tax break for businesses mistreating their staff.
Carter said: “We need to show them that an injury to one is an injury to all. This is an affront to the trade union movement in the UK. This is union-busting of a style of days gone by.
“It’s the kind we see in American companies like Amazon and we know that we can’t let this happen in the UK.”
Heckle readers can show support by donating to the workers’ solidarity fund, writing to their MPs and MSPs, and passing solidarity motions through their unions, he said.
“And above all, organise your workplaces so this kind of thing can’t happen again.”
Addressing games workers, he added: “This is something that’s happened because the union was strong here. We were building and reached massive numbers here.
“This is what they do when they’re scared – but this is also something they can’t do if workers stand up together. This is why you need a union.
“We’ve seen the membership grow at Rockstar over the last week. We held a call with the Game Workers Branch on Tuesday night with almost 200 members in attendance.
“This is a movement you can join. This is one that’s growing. Organise your workplace so this can’t happen to you and this can’t happen to your colleagues.”
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