Rockstar Accuses Ex-Employee of Leaking Emails in Tribunal

Rockstar has accused a former employee of leaking internal emails on Discord, in evidence given to the Glasgow employment tribunal this week. The accusation drags the 2022 GTA 6 leak back into the legal fight over the studio's 2023 layoffs, and it offers a rare look at how the company handled internal security during Grand Theft Auto 6 development.

The claim surfaced as the tribunal hears cases from staff dismissed from Rockstar's Glasgow studio, a battle that has already produced allegations of union-busting, blacklisting, and excessive secrecy around GTA 6 work. Earlier hearings have seen former developers describe a workplace where GTA 6 details were closely guarded, and the tribunal has already been asked to rule on whether sacked staff were blacklisted across the industry. You can read more about those claims in our coverage of the union-busting allegations and the blacklisting ruling.

The new accusation is specific: a former employee is said to have distributed internal emails through Discord. Those emails are linked to the 2022 leak of early GTA 6 footage, the massive dump that showed an early build of Vice City and forced Rockstar to acknowledge the breach. What the emails actually contain has not been confirmed, and the former employee has not been named in public.

The tribunal heard the emails in question came from Rockstar's vice president of HR, Rob Spampinato, and laid out company guidelines for using Slack channels. Claimant Dayne Oram admitted posting them to a Discord group of around 350 people, including 10 who no longer worked at Rockstar, but said the emails had been sent to all staff and that they did not know some members had left. Rockstar's lawyer, Thomas Cordrey, called the posting an egregious act of gross misconduct and argued the breach was clear under policies that bar sharing internal information outside official channels.

This matters because it goes to the heart of how Rockstar protects GTA 6. The 2022 leak was one of the biggest in gaming history, and the company has kept the game's details on a short leash ever since. Trailer 1 arrived in December 2023, a year after the leak, and Rockstar has drip-fed information since. The tribunal is now effectively testing whether a former insider kept leaking after leaving the company.

There is a real question about what the emails could reveal if they surface. Internal Rockstar correspondence from the GTA 6 era could touch on development timelines, marketing plans, or the layoffs themselves. None of that is public, and the tribunal may never release the emails. But the accusation alone tells players that Rockstar believes its internal communications were compromised during the most sensitive period of GTA 6's production.

For buyers, nothing about the game changes. GTA 6 is still scheduled for November 19, 2026, on PS5 and Xbox Series X and S. Pre-orders opened in June, with the Standard edition at $79.99 and the Ultimate edition at $99.99. The tribunal is a sideshow to the launch, not a threat to it.

Cordrey tied the case directly to the 2022 breach, telling the tribunal that a phishing attack had already produced materially damaging leaks of early GTA 6 footage, and that internal emails showing how senior staff communicate would be gold dust for hackers trying the same trick again. That argument frames the entire dispute for players: Rockstar's secrecy around GTA 6 is not just marketing habit, it is a response to a demonstrated security failure. The tight control of official details since Trailer 1, and the careful staging of pre-order and edition news, fits that posture.

What remains unconfirmed: whether the tribunal will rule on the leak accusation, whether the emails ever become public, and how the former employee responds. The hearing continues, and the underlying employment claims around the dismissals are unresolved. The case has already forced Rockstar to defend its treatment of Glasgow staff, and this week's accusation adds a security dimension to a fight that started as a dispute over layoffs. Whatever the tribunal decides, the 2022 leak and its aftermath are now part of the official record of GTA 6's development.