Rockstar fired 34 developers back in October.While Rockstar claims these people were fired for “gross misconduct” over allegedly sharing company secrets, the former employees claim the company was union-busting Now, according to a new People Make Games report, the entire saga actually started after Rockstar started cracking down on developers communicating about non-work topics in the company Slack.
People Make Games posted a new video that includes alleged messages from the Rockstar union workers’ private Discord server where members discussed conditions at the studio, but specifically not the status of projects like the recently delayed Grand Theft Auto 6. One former Rockstar employee claimed the only company information that was shared there were emails about updates to the company’s Slack guidelines following discussions in recently shut down channels.
In October, Rockstar reportedly made changes to the company’s Slack, which included removing several miscellaneous channels where employees discussed non-work topics like pets, hobbies, and games they were playing. The “Slack Purge,” as it was called, prompted discussions in an outside union channel on Discord. This was then followed by another change preventing people from using emojis in their Slack statuses, which workers theorized was to prevent people from using the Palestinian flag or the Sprout emoji used to symbolize Union support.
These emails were sent outside of work hours, and Rockstar has systems set up so workers cannot access their work email outside of their office. As such, Union members sent these emails to the Discord so people outside of the office could see their contents, which led to one member of the Discord expressing their concerns to management about the discussions. PMG theorizes that Rockstar gained access to the Discord at this point and read the previous chat logs to make a case for firing 34 workers by the end of that month.
You can watch the full video below:
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