GTA 6 Launches Next Week. Rockstar Workers Start a Union Vote Tomorrow.

Rockstar North’s headquarters in Edinburgh, photographed October 22, 2023. File photo: Discott / Wikimedia Commons, CC0 1.0.

Grand Theft Auto VI is due to reach players November 19. Rockstar’s UK staff face an earlier date: they begin voting November 12 on whether to recognize the IWGB Rockstar Game Workers Union.

The ballot runs through November 26. In its October 27 announcement, the union said employees would vote anonymously online on a recognition deal agreed between workers and management after months of negotiations.

Rockstar’s current release information puts the game at midnight local time on November 19 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. That places launch day in the middle of the two-week voting period, with employees still casting ballots as players enter the game.

Under the proposed recognition agreement, workers would have a say over pay and bonuses, overtime, redundancies, flexible working arrangements and generative AI policies. The union says a successful vote would make it the largest recognized union in the UK games sector.

For committee member Shanti Easton-Steel, the question is how much workers can see and influence decisions affecting their jobs. In the announcement, Easton-Steel called for “honesty and openness surrounding the decisions that affect them,” pointing to overtime policies, the gender pay gap and concerns about job security after release.

Those concerns have drawn support from another group of people whose work goes into games. In a November 9 statement, SAG-AFTRA backed the Rockstar workers’ vote, linking its support to wages and working conditions across the industry.

“This is a fight for all workers,” the performers’ union said. It cited layoffs, insecure employment and crunch, and pointed to its own work negotiating protections against abuse and displacement involving generative artificial intelligence. Its statement supports the workers’ opportunity to bargain over their employment terms.

Rockstar management has also publicly addressed the organizing effort. PC Gamer reported that talks over recognition terms began in July and quoted publishing head Jennifer Kolbe’s comments to Bloomberg: “We go where the team goes. So if they want a union, they will have a union.”

The immediate decision is recognition of the union. Employees have until November 26 to cast their votes on that agreement; Rockstar’s published game release remains November 19.