The IWGB union has alleged material posted on the Discord forum was used as a “union busting” pretext for getting rid of staff who were simply trying to secure better working conditions.
Rockstar denies this, maintains they were dismissed for gross misconduct following the sharing of confidential company information, and says this had nothing to do with trade union membership or activity.
The tribunal heard that a total of 722 posts across 109 Discord threads were cited in the accusations of gross misconduct against the sacked employees.
These had been passed to senior HR staff by AB and other unnamed Rockstar employees in 2024 and 2025.
Asked why the firm waited until October 2025 to sack them, Scampinato said the company was by then in “crisis mode” because of delays in the development of Grand Theft Auto 6 and needed the team to be “fully focused”.
“We were in a moment when we knew we were running late on the development,” he said.
Grand Theft Auto 6 is expected to break sales records when it is released on 19 November.
But the release has already been delayed twice, in autumn 2025 and May 2026. There have been leaks, the biggest in 2022 when a hacker revealed key character and plot details.
The previous instalment in the franchise became one of the best-selling games of all time after it was released in September 2013.
Pre-orders of the new game – which features the series’ first female playable character Lucia and her partner Jason as the main protagonists – are already thought to have been worth hundreds of millions of pounds.
The tribunal before judge Lucy Wiseman continues.