Rockstar developers in the UK are seeking official union recognition from the GTA 6 studio’s bosses, who were accused of union busting in 2025 after firing 31 workers involved in union activity. If Rockstar devs are successful in their bid, they’ll join Zero Parades creator ZA/UM in history as one of the first formally acknowledged games industry unions in the UK.
Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) Union president Alex Marshall is confident Rockstar can afford such a milestone. The organizer says in a June 30 press release, “GTA 6 has reportedly already generated more than $3 billion in preorder sales. Rockstar bosses can easily afford to sit around the table with the people whose hard work created these games, and give them a meaningful voice in their workplace.”
Rockstar itself has not revealed GTA 6 pre-order revenue, and that $3 billion estimate seems to stem, at least in part, from University of Virginia assistant professor of business Anthony Palomba saying recently that Rockstar parent company “Take-Two shares rose almost 3% in early trading when preorders opened, and some analysts modeled as much as $1 billion in revenue in the first hour alone.” Take-Two hasn’t commented on this analysis, though the publisher is clearly expecting GTA 6 to be its golden calf – it predicts, in a recent financial report, that the game will contribute to “$8 to $8.2 billion” in sales for fiscal year 2027.
What Rockstar devs are asking for in return, says Rockstar North production co-ordinator Shanti Easton-Steel, is for executives to acknowledge “our key objectives of pay transparency, fairer crunch practices and better flexible working arrangements.”
“This is a landmark moment for the Rockstar Game Workers Union, and hopefully for the industry as a whole,” Easton-Steel says. “It’s thanks to the hard work of so many of our members – both those currently with us and those who were fired last October – that we are now in a strong enough position to pursue formal recognition.”
Rockstar and the IWGB’s legal dispute over those 31 fired union members is ongoing, with the final trial set to run from September 10 to October 15, according to the workers’ union.
