Rockstar's union vote deserves as much attention as GTA 6

Rockstar Games employees will vote from November 12 to November 26 on whether the company recognizes the Rockstar Game Workers Union, according to Destructoid.¹ The vote overlaps with the November 19 release of GTA 6, and I would like to argue that the union count will tell us more about Rockstar than the sales count will.

Start with scale. The largest video game union in the United States today is Activision’s Quality Assurance United-CWA, with 600 QA workers, followed by ZeniMax Workers United at 300.¹ The IWGB Game Workers Union in the UK and Europe counts more than 2,000 members across over 80 studios.¹ Rockstar employs more than 4,700 people, so a recognized union there would be the biggest in the industry.¹

The vote also lands next to a legal fight. Rockstar is in court with the IWGB over the firing of 31 employees the company holds responsible for the GTA 6 leaks, while the union calls the firings unfair and an attempt at union busting.¹ The court’s decision is due on November 19, the same day as the game.¹ Our earlier report covers the UK staff vote.

The best counterpoint is a fair one. Rockstar’s head of publishing, Jennifer Kolbe, has said, “We go where the team goes. So if they want a union, they will have a union.”¹ If that is sincere, the company is already honoring the process, and a vote is just a vote. Players could also fairly ask whether any of this touches the game they bought. A union is a labor arrangement, not a feature list.

Here is my answer. A studio’s track record is evidence, and the source notes that Rockstar has faced allegations of workplace problems before, which peaked shortly before Red Dead Redemption 2.¹ Kolbe’s sentence is welcome, but a sentence is the cheapest thing a company can offer. What makes it real is what happens after the ballots are counted. For players, the connection is practical: a studio that settles how it treats its people tends to be a studio you can predict, and predictability is worth something when you are waiting years between games.

What would change my mind? If the vote passes and Rockstar recognizes the union promptly, I will concede that the company meant what it said and that my skepticism was misplaced. If the vote fails by a clear margin in a process nobody disputes, I will accept that workers chose differently than I expected. What would not move me is a quiet stall: a result nobody acts on, or recognition that arrives only after a fight.

There is one more thing to watch. The court’s ruling on the 31 firings and the vote’s outcome arrive within days of each other.¹ Read together, they will say more about how Rockstar treats its people than any launch-day statement.

Our read: The vote runs through November 26, a week after launch, so the final tally will come after the reviews. The number to remember is 4,700, the headcount at stake.

Footnotes

1. Destructoid, “Rockstar employees will soon vote on whether to create the biggest games union in history”. Retrieved October 28, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹