Gaming · Friday, 11 September 2026

01 Briefing what happened

Rockstar fired 34 workers last year. A tribunal in Glasgow has five weeks to decide whether it was for leaking or for organising.

The hearing over the sackings at the Grand Theft Auto studio opened on 10 September and runs until 16 October, a month before the game goes on sale.

Rockstar staff dismissed last autumn, 31 of them IWGB members in the UK

three more were in Canada and had also taken part in union activity [1]

10 Sep to 16 Oct

the length of the tribunal hearing in Glasgow

it ends a month before Grand Theft Auto 6 goes on sale on 19 November [1][31]

2 minutes

the phone calls that ended the jobs of staff who were not in the office

workers say their accounts were locked before the calls finished [2]

230 million

copies sold by the last Grand Theft Auto across three console generations

the sequel these 34 worked on is due on 19 November, after about a decade of waiting and a year of delays [31]

The lead story — what happened

A hearing opened at the Glasgow Employment Tribunal on 10 September over the dismissal of 34 staff at Rockstar Games last autumn. [1][2]
Thirty-one of them worked in the UK and belonged to the IWGB, a small independent British union; three were in Canada and had also taken part in union activity. [1]
Rockstar says they were sacked for gross misconduct after sharing confidential details about Grand Theft Auto 6 in a private Discord chat. [2]
The union says that chat existed so the workers could talk to each other about their working conditions, and that the firings were punishment for organising. [1][2]
Staff say they were called in, told they were gone with immediate effect and walked out of the building, with no disciplinary process and no right of appeal. [2]
Those not in the office say they were told on phone calls of about two minutes, then locked out of their work accounts. [2]
One of them, Will Mesilane, says Rockstar withdrew his work visa and reported him to the UK Home Office, and he had to return to Australia. [2]
The workers are asking to be given their jobs back, or paid compensation, and for a ruling that the dismissals were unfair. [1][2]
Rockstar says it did not know the people it fired were involved with a union, and that it will defend the claims vigorously. [2]
The hearing runs until 16 October. Grand Theft Auto 6 goes on sale on 19 November. [1][31]
The day before the hearing opened, 1,900 Blizzard staff ratified a first contract with Microsoft after more than two years of bargaining. [33]

Who is involved

Rockstar Games

the studio behind Grand Theft Auto, owned by the American publisher Take-Two Interactive; it fired the 34 and denies any link to the union [2]
The IWGB

the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain, the small independent union bringing the case for the 31 UK workers [2]
Jason Lewis

one of the dismissed developers and an IWGB member; he says the year since has been devastating and the truth has been buried [1]
Alex Marshall

the IWGB's president; he says the result will be read by employers well beyond games [1]
Will Mesilane

a dismissed worker who says Rockstar withdrew his visa and reported him to the UK Home Office, forcing him back to Australia [2]

How it unfolded

Autumn 2025 Rockstar dismisses 34 staff, 31 in the UK and three in Canada [1]
Then protests outside Rockstar North in Edinburgh and Take-Two's London office [2]
Thu 10 Sep the hearing opens in Glasgow and the fired workers rally outside [1]
16 Oct the hearing is due to finish [1]
19 Nov Grand Theft Auto 6 goes on sale [31]

Where this points

The case turns on one factual question the tribunal has to answer: whether Rockstar knew the 34 were union members when it dismissed them, which the company denies. [2]

What is pushing on the whole day

The bar and the word are our reading of how hard each one is pushing today. The arrow is where it is heading. The evidence is in the stories below.

Owners deciding, studios finding out High↑

PlayStation cancelled Kojima's game in June and Xbox picked up the same game this week [4]; Tencent, which owns 41.9 percent of Don't Nod, refused short-term money and the studio now warns it may not last past January [10]

Debt from buying game companies Building↑

EA is carrying about $18bn of debt from its own purchase and staff expect deep cuts [9]; the Saudi fund that bought it is already weighing folding it into Savvy Games Group [7]

Old hits stop growing High→

Newzoo found most established always-online games flat or down in the first half of 2026 [18]; a brand-new shooter, Wardogs, sold more than a million copies on day one [12]

Studios paying their own way Building↑

two id Software veterans bootstrapped Turnkey Games so no publisher had to cover their costs [23]; No More Robots lost a large partner after three years and funded its own first game instead [24]

Steam sets the terms Building↑

Ubisoft is testing letting its Steam games run without its own launcher [17]; Bulkhead said Wardogs' launch-day queue came from a Steam rate limit it had to ask Valve to raise [13]

The rest of the day

16 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
Xbox picks up the game PlayStation dropped

PlayStation Studios said on 9 September it was stepping away from Physint, the action-espionage game by Hideo Kojima, the Japanese designer behind Metal Gear Solid. [5] Kojima said the notice arrived unexpectedly in mid-June and his studio then spent three months looking for another publisher. [4] Hours after PlayStation's post, Xbox said it would publish the game instead, and would work with Kojima on films and television too. [3][5] Physint was announced with PlayStation in January 2024 as a platform exclusive. [3][6]

Why it matters — Kojima's studio spent three months searching and found a new publisher [4]; a smaller team given the same notice would simply have stopped. Xbox now publishes two of his games, in a year when Microsoft cut 3,200 jobs across the division. [5][23]
03
Saudi fund weighs folding EA into its games arm

Bloomberg reported on 10 September that executives at Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, the country's state wealth fund, are weighing a merger of Electronic Arts with Savvy Games Group. [7] EA makes The Sims, Madden NFL and Apex Legends. Savvy is the fund's own games company and owns Scopely, which runs Pokemon Go. [7][8] The fund bought EA outright about a month ago alongside Silver Lake and Affinity Partners. [8] No decision has been made, and nothing is likely before Savvy finishes buying the Chinese mobile games firm Moonton for $6bn. [7]

Why it matters — EA now carries about $18bn of debt taken on in its own purchase, and staff are bracing for deep cuts. [9] Merging two companies usually removes the jobs that exist twice over in both of them. [9]
04
Life Is Strange studio may not last past January

Don't Nod, the Paris studio behind Life Is Strange, told investors it may not be able to keep operating beyond 31 January 2027 without new funding. [10] Its revenue for the first half of 2026 was 6.1 million euros and its operating loss widened to 4.3 million euros. [10] The board approved a plan on 4 September that could cut up to 90 jobs in France and pull all French work onto a single production line. [10] Tencent, the Chinese group that owns 41.9 percent of the studio, declined to put in short-term money. [11]

Why it matters — A studio's largest shareholder is under no obligation to fund it, and Tencent's refusal is what turned a bad half-year into a survival question. [11] Up to 90 jobs in France now hang on Don't Nod finding money elsewhere. [10]
05
A new shooter sells a million copies, then falls over

Wardogs, a 100-player military shooter from the British studio Bulkhead and publisher Team 17, sold more than a million copies on its first day in Steam early access at $40. [12] Early access means paying for a game before it is finished. It peaked above 300,000 players at once, fourth on Steam behind Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2 and PUBG. [12][13] Then the servers went offline, players sat in a queue behind hundreds of thousands of others, and some were banned by mistake. [13][14] The PlayStation and Xbox versions are not due until 2028. [15]

Why it matters — Bulkhead's chief executive Joe Brammer said the queue came from a Steam rate limit that big-budget games do not face, so the studio had to ask Valve to raise it mid-launch. [13]
06
Ubisoft tests dropping its own launcher on Steam

Ubisoft, the French publisher behind Assassin's Creed, appears to be testing a version of its Steam games that no longer needs Ubisoft Connect, the extra program it has made PC players open since 2009. [16] Cross-play, saved progress and rewards would run through Steam instead. [17] The test starts with Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. [16][17] The only evidence is a Steam post visible to people who own that game; Ubisoft has announced nothing, and Polygon could not open the linked page. [17]

Why it matters — Ubisoft has pushed its own launcher on PC players since 2009 and is now handing those features to Valve's shop. [16][17] Steam buyers get one fewer program between them and the game. [17]
07
Long-running online games stopped growing

Newzoo, a games market research firm, found that most established always-online games were flat or down in the first half of 2026 against the same months of 2025. [18] Growth came from a handful of titles: World of Warcraft, Diablo 4, Overwatch, Roblox and some Tencent releases outside China. [18] Digital spending fell year on year across six Western markets, which Newzoo put down to weakness in free-to-play and yearly sports-style releases. [18] It still expects console players to grow 3 percent this year, up from 0.5 percent in 2025. [18]

Why it matters — These are the games built to keep selling to the same players for years, and for most of them that income stopped rising. [18] The growth Newzoo does expect comes from two new consoles and Grand Theft Auto 6, not from the games already running. [18]
08
Nintendo spends tariff refunds on a sale, not refunds

Nintendo of America announced a Customer Appreciation Sale on 10 September, up to 30 percent off games, merchandise and accessories, running from 12 to 26 September. [20][21] Its own announcement said tariff-related refunds from the US government helped make the promotion possible. [20] Nintendo raised its US prices last year, citing market conditions, after the US government brought in import taxes. [20] It is fighting a class action by arguing buyers got what they paid for, and says it absorbed most of the tariff cost itself. [20][21]

Why it matters — People who paid the higher prices are offered a discount on their next purchase rather than money back on the last one. [21] Sony and Microsoft are making the same argument in the same courts. [20]
09
Keywords merges seven agencies into one

Keywords Studios, the outsourcing group that does art, testing and marketing for game publishers, folded seven of its marketing and video businesses into a single agency called FreeAnimal. [22] The seven are Ichi, KWM, Fire Without Smoke, Gnet, TrailerFarm, Maverick and Big Farmer, spread across Los Angeles, London, Brighton, Montreal and Quebec. [22] Existing client contracts stay in place. [22] Keywords was founded in 1998 and has been buying up related firms since 2014. [22]

Why it matters — Keywords grew by buying small specialists and leaving each one running on its own, and this is where that stops. [22] Publishers who hire them now deal with one agency instead of seven. [22]
10
Two Doom veterans build a studio with no publisher

Tony Garza, art director on Doom Eternal, left id Software with his cousin Richard O'Neal and founded Turnkey Games in Dallas. [23] They paid for it out of their own pockets, kept the team small and took no office, so they never needed a publisher to cover production costs. [23] Microsoft laid off around half of id Software this year, part of 3,200 redundancies across Xbox. [23] Turnkey's first game, Apart, is a horror adventure still in development. [23]

Why it matters — Garza said they left because of the values and decisions they were seeing around them, months before the layoffs arrived. [23] Paying your own way is slower, and it is the one arrangement where nobody else can cancel the game. [23]
11
Nine years in, a publisher makes its own game

No More Robots, the small British publisher behind Descenders, is releasing Cruise Control, the first game it has developed itself in nine years. [24] Its five-person team had spent three years on an online shooter that attracted interest from a large company its founder Mike Rose would not name. [24] That partner pulled out, saying it was not the right fit, around the time Sony withdrew Concord from sale. [24] Rose then chose a cruise-ship management game he knew the team could actually finish. [24]

Why it matters — Rose said the partner walking away was one of the most unpleasant things he had felt in the industry, and that a five-person team could not launch an online shooter on its own. [24]
12
A PlayStation shooter missing for three years resurfaces

A playtest listing appeared for an unannounced PlayStation 5 and PC shooter codenamed Project Espresso, which closely resembles Fairgames, the heist game Sony revealed in 2023 and has barely mentioned since. [25] Both are third-person games about teams racing to rob high-security vaults, and the two trailers share a gold vault and a white ski mask. [25] Fairgames is the first game from Haven Studios in Montreal, founded in 2021 by Jade Raymond and bought by Sony. [25] Sony has not confirmed the link. [25]

Why it matters — Haven was founded in 2021 and has not shipped a game yet, and this is the first sign in a long while that Fairgames is still alive. [25]
13
GTA 6's trailer signed up 100,000 Netflix members in a day

More than 100,000 people in the US alone joined Netflix on the day it showed a 26-minute Grand Theft Auto 6 preview, according to the research firm Ampere Analysis. [26] Ampere says it was Netflix's third-biggest sign-up event of 2026, behind the final season of Stranger Things and a Rousey-Carano fight. [26] More than 5 percent of US members who had watched nothing for 30 days came back to watch it before anything else. [26] Netflix held the preview as a six-hour exclusive. [26]

Why it matters — A games trailer is now something a streaming service buys subscribers with, and it reached people who do not follow games at all. [26] PlayStation and Xbox sales in the UK rose about a third in the week afterwards. [19]
14
Palworld's publisher says studios now ship early for cash

John Buckley, who runs communications and publishing at Pocketpair, the Japanese studio behind Palworld, told GamesRadar that people buying early access games on Steam no longer know what they are signing up for. [27] Early access lets you pay for an unfinished game and send feedback while it is built, and both Palworld and Baldur's Gate 3 were made that way. [27] Buckley said the buyers of a decade ago wanted to talk to developers and shape the game. [27] He said the worst abuse now is studios shipping early purely because they need the money. [27]

Why it matters — Buckley called it the new Kickstarter, a way of raising money by selling the half-built game rather than by finding a backer. [27] Wardogs did exactly that this week and took more than a million sales in a day. [12]
15
Kamiya says preservation matters more than discs

Hideki Kamiya directed Resident Evil 2 and created Bayonetta and Okami. He told Video Games Chronicle he does not much mind whether games are sold on disc or as downloads, only that they stay available at all. [28] He said he buys nothing physical any more. [28] Sony will stop making discs for new PlayStation games from January 2028, a decision players have argued about for weeks. [28][32]

Why it matters — The disc argument is usually about whether you own what you bought; Kamiya is pointing at a different loss, which is old games nobody can buy in any form. [28]
16
Nvidia buys Hugging Face for $12.9bn

Nvidia, the American company that makes the chips most AI systems run on, agreed to buy Hugging Face for about $12.9bn, roughly $11.9bn to investors and up to $1bn more in shares. [29] Hugging Face is an open platform where developers share AI models and the tools to run them. [29] Amazon, AMD and Intel were among its backers. [29] Nvidia's chief executive Jensen Huang said it will stay open and that developers will not be forced onto Nvidia hardware. [29]

Why it matters — Nvidia already sells the chips these models run on, and now owns the place developers go to get the models. [29] Huang said the platform stays open and nobody will be forced onto Nvidia hardware. [29]
17
The sold-out Zelda console is already $900

Nintendo's Legend of Zelda 40th anniversary Switch 2, announced this week at $519.99 with black-and-gold controllers, sold out and is being listed on resale sites at around $900. [30] The console does not ship until 29 October, so nobody reselling it has one yet. [30] It is the first special edition Nintendo has made in the Switch 2's first year. [30]

Why it matters — Anyone who missed the pre-order now chooses between paying nearly double and waiting for Nintendo to make more, and Nintendo has not said whether it will. [30]

02 Lesson why it matters

A game can be cancelled on a day when nothing about it has changed

PlayStation cancelled Hideo Kojima's game in June, and three months later Xbox agreed to publish the very same game.

The twist

The people who can end a game are usually not looking at the game. They are looking at everything else they own.

How it works

A studio takes money from an owner to make a game
That owner holds many studios and many games at once
The owner's own money or plan changes
It reviews the whole pile together, not one game at a time
Each game is judged on what it does for the pile
So a game can be dropped while the work on it is going fine

The same force, elsewhere today

Where this chain is also running, in today's other stories.

Don't Nod may not last past January

Tencent owns 41.9 percent of the studio and turned down a short-term cash injection, and a studio that is still shipping games now faces cutting 90 jobs
The Saudi fund weighing an EA merger

the reason given is better coordination between the fund's holdings, which is a decision about the fund and not about any EA game
No More Robots losing its shooter partner

a large company spent three years interested in the project and then said it was not the right fit, and the five-person team had to start again on something else
Two Doom veterans building a studio with no publisher

the same step, refused in advance: they paid for the studio themselves so that nobody else's plan could end their game

Where you've seen this

Television

a show with good ratings is dropped when the channel decides it wants a different kind of show

Restaurant groups

a busy branch closes because the lease renewal does not suit the group's plans

University courses

a course with full classes closes while the faculty is balancing its own budget

Drug research

a treatment that is working in trials is shelved when the company changes which illnesses it wants to be in

The catch

Sometimes the owner is right. A game can feel fine from inside the team and still be heading for a loss the team cannot see.

And the whole of it

Kojima has said the notice from PlayStation in June was unexpected, so the people building the game did not know the decision was coming. Most of us are somewhere in a chain like that, doing work whose future is being settled in a room we have never been in.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

PlayStation told Kojima Productions in June that it was cancelling Physint, and this week Xbox agreed to publish it, with development carrying on. [4][5] Tencent owns 41.9 percent of the French studio Don't Nod, refused to put in short-term money, and Don't Nod now says it may not be able to operate past 31 January 2027. [10][11] In both, the owner decided first and the people making the games were told afterwards.

Why it works on us — Both companies announced the Kojima switch in the language of admiration, PlayStation saying it still admires his vision and Xbox saying it was honoured, which makes a cancellation read as a friendly parting rather than one side's decision. [3][5]

Who gains

Xbox — It picked up a Kojima game another company had already funded for two and a half years, and added film and television work with him on top. [3][5]
Bulkhead and Team 17 — Wardogs turned a million wishlists into more than a million sales at $40 on its first day, with no platform holder funding it. [12]
Nintendo of America — It keeps the tariff refunds the US government paid it and spends part of them on a discount sale that brings buyers back into its own store. [20][21]
Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund — Folding EA into Savvy would give it one company to buy and build games with, instead of several run separately. [7][8]
Valve — Ubisoft dropping its own launcher moves another publisher's cross-play, saved progress and rewards onto Steam. [16][17]

Who pays

The 34 dismissed Rockstar workers — They have been out of work for about a year, and one of them, Will Mesilane, left the UK after Rockstar withdrew his work visa and reported him to the UK Home Office. [1][2]
Don't Nod's staff in France — Up to 90 positions could go as the studio pulls all French work onto a single production line. [10]
EA's developers — They work under the $18bn of debt the purchase loaded onto the company, and are bracing for cuts nobody has yet put a number on. [9]
The Wardogs players who paid $40 on day one — Servers went offline, the queue was cleared out once, and some players were banned by mistake. [13][14]
US buyers of Nintendo hardware since the price rise — They paid the higher prices, are offered a sale rather than a refund, and Nintendo is arguing in court that it owes them nothing. [20][21]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

Whether Rockstar knew the 34 people it dismissed were involved with a union.

Rockstar says it did not know at the time. The IWGB says they were targeted for exactly that, and the tribunal will not rule before 16 October. [1][2]
02

Why PlayStation cancelled Physint.

Neither Sony nor Kojima Productions has given a reason. Polygon says weak sales of Death Stranding 2 may be behind it, and Sony has published no sales figure for that game. [4]
03

How far Don't Nod's revenue actually fell.

GamesIndustry.biz reports revenue down 14 percent to 6.1 million euros. Kotaku reads the same statement as a fall of about 56 percent, because it compares a half-year containing a game launch with one that did not. Both figures come from the same filing over different comparisons. [10][11]
04

Whether the EA and Savvy merger happens at all.

Bloomberg says no final decision has been made and nothing is likely until Savvy completes its $6bn purchase of the Chinese mobile games firm Moonton. [7]
05

How many EA jobs would go if it does.

PC Gamer reports staff expect deep cuts against the $18bn of debt taken on in the purchase, but nobody has published a number. [9]
06

How many of Don't Nod's 90 jobs are actually lost.

The board only approved the plan on 4 September and talks with staff representatives have just begun. [10]
07

Whether Ubisoft's Steam change is real.

The only evidence is a screenshot of a Steam post visible to people who own Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Polygon could not open the linked page and Ubisoft has announced nothing. [16][17]
08

How many people were left queuing for Wardogs.

Bulkhead cleared the queue once and took the servers offline, and has published no figure for how many were waiting. [13][14]
09

Whether the 100,000 Netflix sign-ups figure holds up.

It comes from the research firm Ampere Analysis rather than from Netflix, and Ampere has not published how it counted. [26]

04 Hope carry this

Hideo Kojima's Physint was cancelled by PlayStation in June. His studio spent three months looking for another publisher, found Xbox, and the game is still being made.

Also true today

Tony Garza spent a decade at id Software and left with his cousin before the layoffs came. They paid for their own studio in Dallas, kept the team small and took no office, and their first game is in development.
Wardogs sold more than a million copies on its first day. Its developer had earlier published a list of ten reasons not to buy it.