Rockstar has shed new light on their recent layoffs, that’s opened a surprising new page to the whole situation.
This week started with news that Rockstar fired several employees outside of the US. The Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) claimed that Rockstar was guilty of union busting.
Take-Two went on record that the firings were for ‘gross misconduct’, and specifically not for trying to form a union. However, Take-Two chose to not elaborate until now.
Rockstar’s New Allegation – Employees Were Fired For Leaking Company Secrets
Take-Two shared this new statement to Bloomberg:
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.
This was in no way related to people’s right to join a union or engage in union activities.
If these allegations are true, there is a completely different dimension to these firings than everyone previously expected.
Why Did Take-Two Not Say This At The Start?
Of course, the most uncharitable take would be that Take-Two is lying to cover up their union busting. We imagine the IWGB and other unions will make such claims as well.
But if we are serious about labor issues, we would recognize how harmful propagating this is if it turns out to be untrue. For now, one can consider this a he said/he said situation.
But there are other possible explanations for this as well. It’s possible that Take-Two had to stay silent temporarily because they were still busy investigating these potential leaks a few days ago.
Because what this news implies is that Rockstar found employees or business partners who were collecting information and planning to leak them.
Did Rockstar Catch Grand Theft Auto Leakers?
Rockstar is surely still smarting from the big leaks from September 2022. An earlier build of Grand Theft Auto 6, and the source code of Grand Theft Auto V, were both leaked.
Rockstar would eventually catch the Grand Theft Auto 6 leaker, who also happened to do other high profile leaks. He is now serving a hospital prison sentence.
Earlier this month, we reported on allegations that members of CFX.RE, the dev team working on FiveM, also leaked Grand Theft Auto V’s source code. Rockstar never commented on this in public, but the rumor is that they did proper investigations and laid off leakers.
Rockstar definitely wants to clamp down on any possibility of new leaks from disloyal or suspicious employees and business partners. And if you’re a Grand Theft Auto 6 fan, you will want them to be successful in doing this too.
We rely on Rockstar to elaborate on this if they decide to. And Take-Two’s financial meeting later today might be the venue to do that.
