Rockstar HR Boss Deleted Screenshots Before Sacking 34 GTA 6 Staff, Tribunal Told

✅ CONFIRMED

Rockstar’s HR director told a Glasgow employment tribunal on Friday that he deleted covertly collected screenshots from a workers’ union Discord server before 34 GTA 6 developers were sacked last October — and denied he was trying to destroy evidence. Charlie Kinloch said he had been nervous about the security implications of keeping the screenshots on his phone.

Quick answer: Charlie Kinloch, Rockstar Lincoln’s HR director and co-studio operations manager, told the Glasgow tribunal on October 9, 2026 that he deleted screenshots he had taken inside a private union Discord server before Rockstar dismissed 34 staff for gross misconduct in October 2025. He said keeping them on his phone felt like a security risk, and denied destroying evidence.

Key takeaways

• Rockstar HR boss Charlie Kinloch told the Glasgow tribunal he deleted screenshots gathered from a union Discord server before 34 staff were sacked in October 2025.
• Kinloch said he was “nervous about the security implications” of keeping the screenshots on his phone, and denied trying to destroy evidence.
• The tribunal heard he was first alerted to the Discord server by a junior employee known as “AB” in early 2023 — earlier than previously reported.
• He denied any organised monitoring of staff emails, saying information from “AB” and two others, “CD” and “EF”, was given voluntarily.
• The hearing, which runs until around October 16, 2026, has not decided whether the 34 firings were union-busting or gross misconduct — and Rockstar says the GTA 6 release date of November 19, 2026 is unchanged.

What did Rockstar’s HR boss admit to the tribunal?

Kinloch acknowledged he had accessed the private union Discord server, obtained a login, and taken screenshots of what he found — then deleted them before the decision to sack 34 staff for gross misconduct. He told the tribunal he deleted the screenshots because he was nervous about the security implications of keeping them on his phone, and he denied this amounted to destroying evidence.

The deletion is potentially significant because the screenshots were part of the material behind the firings. The claimants, backed by the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB), say the 34 developers were unfairly dismissed for trade union activity — Rockstar says they were fired for gross misconduct, including leaking confidential game information. For full context on the case so far, see our earlier report on the tribunal’s Discord “mole” claims.

When was Rockstar first alerted to the union Discord?

According to The Times, the tribunal heard on Friday that Kinloch was first alerted to the Discord server by a junior employee known only as “AB” in early 2023 — a considerably earlier date than earlier coverage of the case had indicated. Kinloch said he had initially seen the server “just over someone else’s shoulder” and had not immediately realised it could be a recruitment and organising tool for the union.

The “AB” timeline matters because the case’s central dispute is about why Rockstar acted when it did. The tribunal has already heard that a junior employee allegedly fed screenshots and recordings of union activity to Kinloch over many months — the new testimony suggests the line between Kinloch and that server ran further back than the earlier 2025 timeline suggested. Kinloch maintained he was interested in limiting leak risk, not in staff union status.

Did Rockstar monitor its employees’ emails?

Kinloch denied there was any “organised monitoring of emails” at Rockstar, and said the disclosures he received from “AB” and two other employees, referred to in the hearing as “CD” and “EF”, were voluntary. He said repeated concerns had been raised about the sharing of confidential information and disparaging remarks about senior staff.

The claimants’ lawyers are testing a different account: that screenshots of union organising, leaflet distribution and office complaints were passed to Kinloch precisely because he was interested in union activity, and that the firing decision followed once the union was close to the 10% recognition threshold. Kinloch rejected that reading, saying disparagement and misinformation about Rockstar — not unionisation talk — was his priority. For the latest on the parallel leaks legal fight, see our report on the November 9 court hearing for the 2022 GTA 6 leaker.

How does this connect to the GTA 6 delay?

The IWGB’s case hinges on timing: 34 developers were fired on October 30, 2025, and Rockstar announced days later that GTA 6 was delayed from May 2026 to November 2026. The union says the firings were designed to stop the IWGB gaining a foothold; Rockstar says the timing reflected the heightened security stakes of the delay announcement, when public interest in the studio was at its peak.

The tribunal heard Kinloch’s version of that logic: with the studio “on the cusp” of a major announcement about its next project, he viewed discussions of working hours and crunch in the Discord through the lens of commercial risk — and argued a single comment reaching the public could damage the company. The tribunal has not yet ruled on which account it accepts. Rockstar also faces separate scrutiny over an earlier UK minimum-wage enforcement action against Rockstar Games UK Limited.

When will the tribunal decide?

The Glasgow hearing is scheduled to run daily until around October 16, 2026, with workers fighting to get their jobs back or win compensation if the tribunal rules in their favour. Rockstar has already lost a bid to have the workers’ “blacklisting” claims removed, so those will be heard in full.

No decision has been reached yet, and a verdict could come some time after the hearings conclude — potentially weeks before the November 19, 2026 GTA 6 launch on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Rockstar has said throughout that the dispute has no effect on the launch date or the game’s development.

What this means

The deletion admission changes the shape of the case. It is one thing to argue the screenshots were routine security work; it is another to have to explain, under oath, why that routine work was then wiped. Kinloch’s explanation — a personal fear about keeping sensitive material on his phone — is plausible on its face, but the claimants will argue it looks like evidence being tidied away before the firings. Whether the tribunal buys either version now sits alongside the mole allegations as the week’s most damaging material for Rockstar’s account.

The broader context is a studio under extraordinary pressure 38 days from the biggest launch in its history. Rockstar’s anti-leak apparatus — the Discord monitoring, the firings, the deleted screenshots — all belongs to a company guarding GTA 6 closely in the final weeks before launch. That guarding is exactly what the tribunal has to decide between: legitimate security, or union-busting. Either way, the launch date stands.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• The Times — HR boss at Grand Theft Auto maker denies trying to destroy evidence
• Kotaku — Rockstar HR Questioned Over Discord ‘Mole’ And Sudden Timing Of GTA 6 Dev Firings
• WDC News 6 — Rockstar HR manager claims he had “little interest” in staff’s union membership status
• YouTube — Did Rockstar Fire Developers to Kill a Union?
• YouTube — Rockstar’s HR Boss Just Got GRILLED in Court

Every claim above was verified against the named outlets’ reporting on the October 9, 2026 Glasgow hearing (The Times, Kotaku and WDC News 6) and the two YouTube breakdowns linked. The deleted-screenshots testimony, the early-2023 “AB” alert timeline, the voluntary-disclosure denial and the hearing schedule were checked against all three outlets’ accounts before writing. No leaked footage or stolen material was embedded, linked or downloaded for this article.