Gaming Express

There is a particular kind of story that only the games industry seems to produce — one where a labour dispute, a corporate firing, a confidential leak, and a major game announcement all collide into something that’s simultaneously fascinating, troubling, and genuinely newsworthy. The ongoing saga of 31 Rockstar’s Fired Employees Reveal a “Top Secret” GTA VI Feature has become exactly that kind of story, and its latest development has surfaced what appears to be a genuine “top secret” GTA VI feature: 32-player multiplayer sessions for the next iteration of GTA Online.

This is a story with three distinct threads, each important in its own right. There’s the employment dispute — what the firings were officially about and what they may have actually been about. There’s the investigation — what Bloomberg and the creators at People Make Games found when they dug into the story. And there’s the Rockstar’s Fired Employees Reveal a “Top Secret” GTA VI Feature — small on paper, potentially significant in practice, and revealed through circumstances that raise serious questions about how Rockstar treats workers who try to organise.

Story at a Glance

• 31 Rockstar employees fired in October 2025 for alleged “gross misconduct”
• Misconduct related to Discord conversations and alleged sharing of GTA VI information in unofficial channels
• Bloomberg reports employees believe the real reason was attempting to unionise
• People Make Games traveled to Edinburgh to speak with affected staff on record
• The “top secret” GTA VI feature allegedly leaked: 32 active players in GTA Online lobbies
• Current GTA Online supports 30 active players + 2 spectators = 32 total connections
• GTA VI releases November 19, 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S

31 Employees Fired October 2025

32 Alleged New Player Lobby Size

30 Current GTA Online Active Players

Nov 19 2026 GTA VI Release Date

What Happened — The October 2025 Firings Explained

The Alleged “Gross Misconduct”

In October 2025, Rockstar Games dismissed 31 members of its development staff. The official reason given was “gross misconduct” — the specific charges centred on two areas: participation in employee Discord conversations that were critical of the company, and the alleged sharing of confidential information about GTA VI in unofficial communication channels.

On the surface, both charges carry some weight within a company’s standard conduct framework. Most major game developers have strict non-disclosure agreements and policies around discussing unreleased products in unvetted spaces. Rockstar, given the extraordinary level of fan interest in GTA VI and the damage caused by the 2022 development footage hack, would have particular reason to enforce those policies rigorously.

But the specifics of what was allegedly leaked matter here. The confidential information at the centre of the case — the GTA VI feature that reportedly circulated in an unofficial employee Discord — was, by all accounts, not a major story-spoiling revelation. It was a player count adjustment: a move from 30 active players to 32 active players in GTA Online multiplayer sessions.

The Discord Conversations at the Centre of It All

Discord has become the default informal communication space for the games industry — developers use it for everything from project coordination to water-cooler conversation that would previously have happened in breakout rooms. The conversations at the centre of Rockstar’s firing cited criticism of the company alongside mentions of the GTA VI player count detail.

The fact that informal workplace conversations — the kind that have always existed, previously through email or face-to-face chat — were used as grounds for 31 simultaneous dismissals immediately raised eyebrows. The scale of the firings was significant: this wasn’t one employee caught violating an NDA. It was thirty-one people, fired in one action, for conversations in a space that many workers would reasonably have considered private.

The Union Angle — Bloomberg and People Make Games Weigh In

What Bloomberg Reported

Shortly after the firings, Bloomberg’s games industry journalist — whose track record on Rockstar stories specifically is well established — reported that the 31 dismissed employees had a very different account of events. According to their reporting, the affected workers believed they were fired not primarily because of the Discord conversations or the GTA VI information, but because they had been attempting to organise a union.

If accurate, this reframes the entire story. Dismissing workers for union organising activity is illegal in most jurisdictions, including in Scotland — where Rockstar’s Edinburgh studio, one of the company’s key UK development hubs, is based. The allegation is that the “gross misconduct” framing was applied retroactively or opportunistically to Discord conversations that would otherwise not have warranted termination, as a pretext to remove employees who were attempting to collectively organise.

Why the Union Framing Matters Legally

In the United Kingdom, employees have protected legal rights to organise and form trade unions under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. Dismissing an employee specifically because they are engaged in union organising is automatically unfair dismissal under UK employment law. If the 31 employees can demonstrate that union activity — rather than genuine misconduct — was the primary reason for their dismissal, they would have a strong basis for legal challenge. Whether and how they pursue that route is an ongoing development in this story.

The People Make Games Investigation in Edinburgh

People Make Games is a YouTube channel run by investigative games journalist Quintin Smith and producer Chris Bratt, known for producing rigorous, long-form investigative journalism about the games industry. They have broken significant stories before — including investigations into Activision’s working conditions and the crunch culture at major studios.

For this story, People Make Games traveled to Edinburgh to speak directly with affected employees on the record. Two of the dismissed workers spoke about being specifically accused of leaking the GTA VI multiplayer lobby size — the 32-player figure — in the union Discord. Their accounts provide the most direct evidence connecting the union organising activity to the firings, and lend significant credibility to the employees’ version of events.

The report is essential viewing for anyone who wants the full picture — People Make Games’ reputation for accuracy and their firsthand interviews with affected staff make this among the most reliable accounts of what actually happened.

Why the Union Framing Changes Everything

If Rockstar dismissed 31 employees genuinely for discussing confidential information, that’s a serious conduct matter but broadly within a company’s rights. If Rockstar dismissed 31 employees who were organising a union, and used Discord conversations as a convenient pretext, that’s potentially unlawful — and it’s a story about far more than one studio’s internal policy. It would represent one of the most significant alleged cases of union suppression in the modern games industry, at one of the world’s most prominent game development companies.

The truth, as always, likely involves elements of both accounts. But the scale, the timing, and the specificity of the union activity allegations make Bloomberg and People Make Games’ reporting impossible to dismiss.

The Rockstar’s Fired Employees Reveal a “Top Secret” GTA VI Feature — 32-Player Multiplayer Lobbies

Amidst the labour dispute, the GTA VI feature at the centre of it all has attracted its own discussion — because even a small change to GTA Online’s player count carries meaningful implications for how the next version of the game will function.

What the Current GTA Online System Looks Like

Here’s the critical technical distinction that most coverage misses: GTA Online currently supports 32 total connections per session — but only 30 of those are active players. The remaining two slots are spectators who can observe but not participate. The leaked feature suggests that GTA Online in GTA VI will offer 32 fully active players per session, moving the spectator slots into actual participation.

What 32 Active Players Would Actually Change

The leap from 30 to 32 active players sounds modest — and taken in isolation, it is. Two additional people in a lobby is not going to fundamentally transform how a GTA Online session feels when you’re racing, doing heists, or just causing chaos on the streets of Vice City. But there are reasons to think the number is more meaningful than it first appears.

• Competitive modes — in PvP-focused modes like deathmatches, team battles, or ranked content, two additional players change team compositions, map coverage, and spawn dynamics in ways that compound across an entire match
• Heist scaling — some of GTA Online’s most beloved cooperative content is built around specific player counts. Expanding the ceiling opens design space for Rockstar to create more ambitious multi-crew missions that weren’t possible at 30
• World density — on a map estimated to be 2.7× the size of GTA V’s Los Santos, 30 players could feel sparse in large rural regions. 32 active players maintains visible activity across more of the world simultaneously
• Signal of intent — if this is where Rockstar starts GTA Online VI at launch, it likely signals that increases are possible over time as server infrastructure and hardware capabilities expand

Why This Might Be the Sweet Spot

Rockstar will have stress-tested server performance, hardware load, and network bandwidth requirements for every potential player count configuration they considered for GTA Online VI. The choice of 32 — if accurate — isn’t accidental. It’s the number their engineering and network teams determined delivers a stable, high-quality experience across the full range of consumer internet connections and console hardware that will be playing GTA VI at launch.

“I think the online will definitely support more than 32 players. The map is going to be huge, so it makes sense to increase the support.” — Reddit user DatRapsFan

The community argument has intuitive logic — bigger map, more players to fill it. But player count isn’t simply a function of map size. It’s a function of server tick rates, bandwidth requirements for each additional player’s position, physics state synchronisation across the session, and the processing overhead on individual consoles of rendering and simulating other players’ actions. Each additional player has a non-trivial cost that compounds exponentially, not linearly.

Could GTA Online 2 Ever Support 64 Players?

The Technical Case For It

The argument for 64-player lobbies in GTA Online VI rests on several genuine foundations. PS5 and Xbox Series X hardware are significantly more capable than their predecessors — particularly in terms of I/O speeds, memory bandwidth, and CPU thread performance. Rockstar’s next-generation RAGE engine has been built from scratch for this hardware generation. Cloud gaming infrastructure has advanced considerably since GTA Online launched in 2013. And the map’s scale genuinely does support the idea that more players could be distributed across it without the constant overcrowding that would occur in a smaller world.

The Technical Case Against It

The counterarguments are equally substantive. GTA Online’s architecture is peer-assisted rather than purely server-side — each player’s console handles some processing locally, which means client hardware is part of the equation. Console bandwidth caps vary dramatically across players’ home internet connections, and Rockstar has always designed for the realistic floor of player connectivity rather than the ceiling. As one Reddit commenter noted, the PS5 sustaining 64-player GTA Online sessions would push hardware in ways that could cause thermal issues for some units — a risk no publisher wants to take at launch of their biggest game in over a decade.

Arguments For 64+ Players Eventually

• PS5 and Series X hardware headroom is substantial vs PS4/Xbox One
• GTA VI’s map is vastly larger — more space for more players
• Cloud infrastructure could offload some server processing
• PC version (eventually) has no consumer hardware cap
• Rockstar could phase increases in post-launch updates

Arguments Against 64+ at Launch

• Console thermal limits are real and Rockstar knows them
• Network bandwidth variance across consumer connections
• GTA Online’s peer-assisted architecture has inherent limits
• 32 appears to be an engineering optimum, not a compromise
• High player counts create cheating and grief scaling problems

What the Community Is Saying

pyeteoweb on Reddit

“The PS5 will become the PS4, like an aeroplane turbine” — on the prospect of 64-player GTA Online sessions pushing hardware to its limits.

laaacrx on Reddit

“32 is already the max number for GTA Online. It will most likely get increased” — arguing the 32 figure is a floor, not a ceiling.

DatRapsFan on Reddit

“I think the online will definitely support more than 32 players. The map is going to be huge, so it makes sense to increase the support.”

Community consensus

The balance of opinion leans toward 32 being a reasonable launch figure, with the possibility of increases post-launch as infrastructure and player hardware matures.

The Bigger Picture — Unionisation in the Games Industry

The Rockstar firings don’t exist in isolation. Over the past several years, the games industry has seen a wave of unionisation attempts and labour disputes across major studios in the UK, US, and Europe. QA workers at Activision Blizzard and ZeniMax have successfully formed unions. Efforts are underway or have been attempted at studios including Sega, EA, and several smaller developers.

The games industry has historically operated on a model of passion exploitation — the assumption that because people love games, they will tolerate conditions (crunch, job insecurity, inadequate pay) that workers in other industries would reject. As that assumption has come under increasing scrutiny, and as high-profile layoffs at major publishers have undermined the implicit bargain between studios and their workers, organising activity has accelerated.

Rockstar, as one of the world’s most successful and recognisable studios, would be a significant prize for labour organising — and a significant deterrent if the message sent by these 31 firings is that union activity leads to dismissal. How this story resolves — whether through legal challenge, settlement, or ongoing dispute — will send signals across the entire industry about what is and isn’t permissible in how studios respond to workers who organise.

Must Check: GTA VI Map Size Comparison: What the Mapping Project Reveals About Leonida’s True Scale

The Full Timeline of This Story

• October 202531 Rockstar Games employees dismissed. The studio cites “gross misconduct” — specifically Discord conversations critical of the company and alleged sharing of GTA VI confidential information in unofficial channels.
• Late October 2025Bloomberg reports the union angle. Dismissed employees tell Bloomberg they were organising a union and believe that — not misconduct — was the primary reason for their termination. The story reframes the firing as a potential labour rights violation.
• Late 2025 / Early 2026People Make Games travels to Edinburgh. The investigative YouTube channel interviews two of the affected employees, who describe being specifically accused of leaking the 32-player GTA Online lobby detail in their union Discord server.
• March 2026Story reaches wider attention. The People Make Games report gains significant traction in the gaming community, bringing the 32-player GTA VI feature and the labour dispute back into active discussion ahead of the November 2026 launch.
• November 19, 2026GTA VI launches (confirmed) on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Whether GTA Online VI launches with 32-player lobbies — and whether the dismissed employees’ accounts are vindicated — remains to be seen.