He was fired from Rockstar because of the union: he doesn't know if he'll play GTA 6

Jack Hoxby, who was fired from Rockstar for supporting the union, isn't sure if he'll buy GTA 6: the blacklisting trial begins weeks before the game's release.

Jack Hoxby spent years working in quality assurance on GTA 6. Today, he doesn't know if he'll be able to sit down and play it.

In October 2025, Rockstar Games laid off between 30 and 40 employees in a single day from its offices in the United Kingdom and Canada. According to the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB), all of them were either members of the union or involved in discussions to unionize. Rockstar claimed the layoffs were in response to leaks of “confidential information,” without ever specifying what that information was.

Hoxby is one of those affected. Speaking to the BBC, he admits he probably won’t buy the game: “I don’t think I can bring myself to do it, personally,” he says. He knows that many of his former colleagues will receive free copies from the company itself, but he sees it differently: “I might try to sit down and play it, but I just won’t be in the mood. It’ll probably bring back too many memories.”

The Trial Comes Just Before the Release

What was going to be just another labor dispute has turned into a scheduling problem for Rockstar. A British employment tribunal (in Glasgow) has just rejected the company’s request to dismiss the allegations of blacklisting (the practice of compiling data on union activists to block their future employment) from the proceedings. The full trial—covering wrongful termination, union victimization, and blacklisting—will take place from September 10 to October 15, 2026, weeks before GTA 6 launches on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

The case has already been debated several times in the British Parliament and has sparked protests outside Rockstar’s offices. A company spokesperson said it “welcomes” the judge’s decision to deny the dismissed workers a preliminary injunction; the union interpreted this as “a preview of just how weak Rockstar’s defense is.”

As the GTA 6 marketing machine gears up for November, the trial will put the layoffs in the spotlight right in the home stretch. This is an awkward situation for a launch that’s being marketed as the biggest in video game history.

Should Rockstar settle this with the laid-off employees before November, or will the pre-order hype matter more to them than the trial? 👇