Rockstar Games fires over 30 employees, all were part of pro-union Discord group, "one of the most blatant and ruthless acts of union busting in the history of the games industry"
https://archive.ph/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-31/-grand-theft-auto-studio-accused-of-union-busting-after-firingsOpen linkView original on lemmy.blahaj.zone974
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Well, never giving my money to Rockstar again then :)
I pretty much only buy indie games at this point. Any game made by a company that benefits a stock ticker? You best believe I'm... (checks what comm I'm in) ..Acquiring it. Lol
Funnily enough the one exception to this rule that I probably would have made was BF6 but they forced me to sit this one out by barring Linux users 🤷♂️ So I'm playing Outer Worlds 2 instead rn.
For some good battlefield alternatives that run great on Linux check out ->
Easy Red 2
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1324780/Easy_Red_2/
Operation Harsh Doorstop
https://store.steampowered.com/app/736590/Operation_Harsh_Doorstop/
and Angels Fall First
https://store.steampowered.com/app/367270/Angels_Fall_First/
Oh, thanks. I didn't know that that was out until you mentioned it.
Thanks for the recommendations! Especially Easy Red 2 👀
I am a big fan of the Red Orchestra/Rising Storm series and there is a mod coming out soon for Rising Storm 2 called Black Orchestra that I'm planning to fill the Battlefield shaped hole in my heart with. It's in beta right now, but you best believe I'll be letting everyone know about it when it hits steam.
I tried downloading the BF6 free demo and I had to jump through a bunch of hoops trying to get it to run just to find that because the last time I used my EA account was a decade ago, my Steam account is banned from their servers until I go through customer support to unlock it.
And that last bit is wild because the one that doesn't require Windows for PC gamers is the one owned by Microsoft.
I'm the same way. I might have got BF6, I played the beta and fell in love cause it felt like BC2 which was my favorite BF game.
Sadly the hoops I had to jump through to even get it to work on a windows system, let alone getting it to work on my Debian system, combined with the price tag was enough to hard push me away from buying it.
It's a shame because the game was stupid levels of fun, and felt organic. They just are out-casting their userbase by their decisions to block Non-Windows systems.
most relatable thing I've heard all day 😂
I'm pretty sure Obsidian Entertainment qualifies as AAA.
Correct. 😉
Ah, so you're saying you only play one AAA game and the rest are indies?
They're saying they pirate them
I think this comment will age like milk once GTA6 has been out on PC for a decade
Wait, why that comment?
Sales for GTA VI will probably be similar or higher compared to GTA V.
I’m sure the department of labor will get right on this case…
I know you're being sarcastic, but if does point out the fact that capitalism is only held in check by government. RockStar obviously waited until they knew they could get away with it given the current attitudes in all branches of the US government.
People don't realise GTA is a British franchise
Ngl, I’d pirate the shit out of GTA:Milton Keynes
Hold out for the Luton expansion, they developed 13 more shades of concrete, just for the game!
GTA: Slough
Yeah. Aren't they in Scotland?
lol, this is what I deserve for not reading the damn article
Lmao
Did the USA invade the UK last night and I didn't notice?
Now, to be fair I got an early night, it was Halloween and the nutters were out in force so I popped the ol' sleeping plugs in and nodded off, but I think I'd notice when I got up for brekkie and the yanks were marching down the road xD
I made essentially the same comment on another thread yesterday, but I think it might have gone over most people's heads. That or they didn't want to admit it.
I think it's a bit self-indulgent to consider that this is big-brained or world-shattering to people. You're just repeating the dominant explanation for why these companies can make profit despite their immorality, it isn't challenging or new.
It's important to make a distinction between liberals who strive for moral purity through performativity, and people who value human life by recognizing the inequalities in labour and material security under capitalism. Narratives that reproduce the idea that people are just fundamentally impure and can't stick to their values only strengthens liberalism's claim to morality.
Most people buying it will not know about this
Many would not care
A lot think that it is not their job punishing companies over how they treat their employees
I think it is the government’s job to make laws that empower people taking jobs over people giving jobs, but as well, in my opinion, each and everyone has the responsibility to watch over government that they do the job right
Your point?
E: just want to make clear, the attribution of apathy or nihilism to the general pubic isn't genuine or useful.
Companies can do whatever they want and it literally doesn't matter because they will keep making money
Missing nuance.
The point is people are impressively stupid and impulsive
Disagree.
It's difficult to read this and not feel less empathetic toward you. Such desperation to feel superior without any clear indication that you are invested in actually embodying a set of morals yourself.
If you care, you should take the time to explore inconvenient explanations for why this happens and refuse satisfaction with actionless answers.
"... I don't feel superior to anyone... . ... evoked some feeling of shame from you isn't my problem." You can't even pretend to be an honest person without trying to suggest other people are less morally pure than you. This is not a simple life, it is a dishonest one. I will not be responding again, obviously. There's no conversing with people who lie to themselves.
His point is simple enough that you should understand. Use your brain.
Ah. Good luck to you.
This is a good question to ask. This person is not very critical of what they've said and is clearly satisfied with liberal (as in liberalism) explanations for people's behaviour.
Their point is that people are just fundamentally bad and that is why these companies make profit despite an apparently universal condemnation of their actions. It's shallow, inaccurate, and is only useful to feel morally superior to some imagined decadent group that they believe is the source of this problem.
"Gross misconduct, and no other reason"... from 30 people at once? And they're not going to elaborate on what the "misconduct" was?
Maybe we're supposed to believe the fact they were all part of the same discussion to unionize was a coincidence, too?
My best bet is the Discord server had internal Rockstar files, and their angle is these files should have never been put on external servers, and that other Discord members should have reported it
Pfft...Like y'all don't know what to do with GTA VI.
Rockstar have been pieces of shit for decades. Didn't change anything then, and unfortunately, it probably won't now.
light my beard on fire?
Play it so much that you don't notice your crew set your beard on fire and left without you?
look up the life and times of Edward Teach.
Huh, I assumed that photo was just AI nonsense. But from the Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbeard
Roll it up with gunpowder, stick it in my ears, and light it on fire?
Wait 2 goddamn extra years or however long until they release it for PC.
The good news is by then I can easily justify upgrading my PC too. Right now it's hard to justify upgrading from my RTX 3060 Ti, but by 2027 or 2028 when the PC version comes out, I'm sure that there's something enticing available from all 3 GPU manufacturers (yay, we almost have competition now) and I can get the hell off Nvidia again finally.
Hold your horses, Intel is going through some stuff, and I hope the GPU division survives.
Ugh I hope if it doesn't they'll at least sell it off to someone who can realistically keep it running. Though I have no idea who that would be at this point.
It's going to suck if we're back to the duopoly.
Don’t play it?
Pirate it? Yeah, I'll probably do that.
What a joke. Fuck rockstar.
Everyone should already be boycotting this company
That's against the law, but don't count on this DoJ to enforce it.
wrong country 😅
Is that allowed in the UK and Canada? As an American, I'm not familiar with the law there.
What GTA-like games do you enjoy by indie devs?
The closest I can provide is Wobbly Life which is unironically an awesome physics heavy GTA-like themed around being a destructive kid.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1211020/Wobbly_Life/
For driving jobs, hanging out in a living multiplayer city and driving feel that hits just right check out the rabidly loved Motor Town: Behind The Wheel.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1369670/Motor_Town_Behind_The_Wheel/
Contractville looks interesting but I haven't tried it.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2698780/ContractVille/
Schedule 1 seems popular
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3164500/Schedule_I/
Inzoi seems like it is similar in the open world roleplaying sense
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2456740/inZOI/
I can vouch for Motortown, even if it’s not a ton like GTA. There’s a surprising amount of gameplay detail considering the assets look low-detail. Great roleplay experience.
Motor Town is a behemoth, I have driven so many urgent taxi jobs I put myself on the taxi leaderboard for a hot minute without intending too... with pretty much all the driving manual not autopilot which I am not sure many of the other drivers higher taxi level than me do... lol
Yeah, Motor Town is GOOD.
If you like the old-school top-down GTA feel, American Fugitive is super cheap now and is a good-ish game. Same dev has The Precinct, which is top-down GTA but you're playing a cop.
The story is not a strong point with either, but if you need that, go to a different genre.
And there is also Rustler, which is ridiculously fun.
I also loved Simpsons Hit and Run, but that's a bit old and IDK how indie was it.
You also HAVE to check out the quick multiplayer match topdown GTA-like Skillshot City. The gameplay feels super tight.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/308600/Skillshot_City/
Maniac is a singleplayer police escape arcade mayhem game with locked in topdown GTA-like gameplay.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1482380/Maniac/
In a different genre but still worth mentioning for having cool topdown arcade multiplayer & singleplayer combat is Running With Rifles
https://store.steampowered.com/app/270150/RUNNING_WITH_RIFLES
Contractville is janky as hell and not anywhere near the scale of GTA. But it is damn fun.
$49B company, all driven by labor.
Rockstar bad
If you're going to organize a union, don't fucking use Discord...
If it's good enough to overthrow a government, you'd think it's good enough for a union
Some companies are wealthier than most countries.
*many
Most countries are poor…
just more evidence that you should only support smaller private companies, not corpos
Weren't the antagonists of rdr2 the pinkertons?
developers usually know what's up. assassin's creed 4, a pirate game that mimicked the assassin's creed series that ended with ac3, made the templar's modern day front, abstergo, into a ubisoft parody. in that game abstergo literally makes assassin's creed games with ulterior motives. it was almost like the devs were going "man, fuck this dumbass company" and did that as a middle finger to their bosses.
Never talk about unionizing on company time, on company property, or with someone else that is, and especially with someone unvetted.
Keep it private, keep it quiet.
We don't respect you anymore though Rockstar.
Previously decided never to buy a Rockstar game again (after an unplayable PC port on GTA 4) this just crystallizes that decision
It was like 5 years ago but I heard a family friend working there was making 27k as a mid level dev.
At a certain point the blame lies with the worker, I am pro union but jesus have some self respect and look for better.
Game dev is predatory because people can and will do it for free. Many "dream jobs" have this issue.
So, next time use Matrix to send messages?
Schreier couldn't be bothered to list what the employees positions were. Gonna take a wild guess they weren't devs. Even better, the union Discord clearly has a leak. Now that's how you protect workers, amiright, unless these employees were dumb enough to spread the word at work
In case anyone thought the "rockstar" being referred to was Joe Strummer, it's actually Gene Simmons.
pass, shit news though, unsurprising
I know Discord has it's flaws, but why would that discredit them from organising a union? Would you referred if they had used Teams or an email chain?
It's interesting how Discord absolutely nukes its own trust by pretending to be more than it is. I loathe discord, to the point I'd use a competitor (not teams) just to evade it. I'm sick of finding a hobby group using it as a Frankenstein forum / chat / info hub when it's only built for chat.
Discord is fine for this use, but I'm getting used to the distrusting it so often that it blends into reasonable use.
It's freaking everyone. Every niche is Discord now. It's so annoying.
...That being said, this is likely a private chat group. That's ostensibly what its for.
They probably should've used something anonymized with non-persistant chat, but still.
Hard to organize when you can’t look at history.
Not to mention, discord can easily be anonymous, and you can easily kill off viewing history.
True.
Makes me wonder how they got caught? Discord basically not anonymos by default, so maybe no-one anonymized and someone in the channel reported it all to managment?
I wouldn’t doubt they required some sort of “prove you’re in the company” or something, or were shooting the shit publicly in a way that would allow for easy identification.
It sounds like they weren't being particularly secretive about anything. I think this was not an expected move
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9nOwjeznjI
Apparently they have a ¹BitchSky account, email, and phone line you can reach the unionist at. I am not particularly interested in non-cooperative owned businesses to deal with a self-defeating compromise. (2×🔗)
If they make a threadiverse account, jabber, or other privacy respecting p2p, then maybe I’ll ask them details of their discord leakage.
¹ as in complaining without actions
🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂 And Zoomers will continue to use discord after they specifically sold the unionists out.
Zamn.
Source, please? Nobody claimed that except you
read the title again…
They were in a discord group. That's a far cry from 'discord selling them out'
Now get your critical thinking skills cap on: How did Rockstar Games identify each member of the discord group?
Screenshots of employee devices, having a mole in the group, etc etc? We all know there's a million ways to gain information about people online, there's literally a dozen comms on lemmy about privacy and protecting your info. Your critical thinking cap is more like a conspiracy theory cap.
It's not impossible discord collaborated with rockstar, but it's fucking unlikely. What would discord even have to gain from it that's worth the risk?
So you're implying to me, a mole managed to acquire what Discord has in it's database, and managed to 1:1 identify employees and rat them out, instead of just bribing Discord to give them GEOlocation and MAC address information…
Money. GTA is one of the most famous genre people make groups for. Why would you turn down a whale rancher's bribe to identify employees willing to negotiate for better conditions when your rancher is a billionaire that can buy you?
Nah, they're saying a member of the discord group might know the other members of the discord group. That member might rat out the other members.
One of the simplest answers is that someone likely was using it at work, and just left a window open while they went to the bathroom. Someone saw it and ratted. Until proven Discord shared the info, it's a little dangerous to make the assumption.
One employee had access to multiple employees’ geolocation and mac address data through that one user account…
Now a little homework for you: How does Nintendo crush modders, emulators, fan works, and now patent infringers?