Rockstar court representative says studio fired GTA 6 developers for discussing a 'top secret' 32-player online mode in private Discord, which it was 'gravely concerned' to have discovered

• Court documents from a UK tribunal have revealed new Discord messages from the 30+ fired GTA 6 employees
• A Rockstar representative told the court that employees were allegedly discussing a "top secret" game feature that was unannounced
• The feature was seemingly a 32-player online mode for GTA 6

Rockstar Games allegedly fired the 30+ Grand Theft Auto 6 developers in late 2025 for discussing a 32-player online mode in a private Discord channel.

After Rockstar sacked 34 employees in October, which the studio claims was due to the leaking of company secrets in Discord that included "specific game features," The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB) went on to file legal claims against Rockstar. It accused the studio of union-busting and requested emergency relief from the Glasgow Employment Tribunal for emergency relief.

This month, a UK employment tribunal ruled against forcing the GTA studio to pay out interim relief to the fired employees, and now new details from the ruling have been revealed.

As People Makes Games reports, during the forum, Rockstar representative barrister Andrew Burns referenced a "top secret" feature that was allegedly discussed in the Discord channel by the fired employees.

Although Burns didn't expand on the feature in court, it was later revealed in court documents that were not subject to reporting restrictions and were accessed by PMG at the Glasgow Tribunals Centre.

This feature was seemingly a 32-player online mode for GTA 6.

PMG shared Discord messages from the court documents in its video, explaining that the discussion about the mode came about when one fired employee wrote about trying to request time off at the studio.

The conversation went on to detail how Rockstar was limiting the number of employees who could take time off at once, before an employee mentioned a "large session" that took place in October 2025 that Rockstar found "difficult to do" with 32 people.

In response to an unseen message, the fired employee said: "Absolutely no idea, they mentioned the large session we did today 'being difficult to do' but that was 32 players, not sure how that was difficult."

Another employee later criticized the policy, writing: "Sounds like 'you have multiple studios of QA testers, surely someone can manage to organise a 32 player session and let people have their time off'..."

According to PMG, these were the messages that Burns referenced when talking about the "top secret" game feature.

It's said that Rockstar was "gravely concerned" when it discovered that its employees were discussing the "highly confidential and commercially sensitive information relating to the content and features of an unannounced online service."

"They discussed the specific number of online players planned for this service - a material feature of this new title - which has not yet been revealed by Rockstar," Rockstar's Grounds of Resistance reads.

Considering that GTA 5's online mode features 32-player sessions, it's not difficult to determine that this feature was likely GTA 6's unannounced online mode.

GTA 6 was delayed shortly after the firings and is now due to launch on November 19, 2026.

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