Rockstar's most senior witness: what Jennifer Kolbe told the union tribunal on 16 October

The Glasgow employment tribunal heard its final day of evidence on 16 October, and the witness was the most senior Rockstar figure to appear in the case so far: Jennifer Kolbe. She rejected the claim that company president Sam Houser shouts at staff, told the tribunal that Rockstar is not anti-union, and called it "absolutely untrue" that she had known about the union's Discord server for years.

None of it was reported by the games press. Every outlet this site sources for GTA VI coverage — VGC, PC Gamer, GamesRadar, Kotaku, GameSpot — carried nothing from that day. The account below comes from a Press Association wire story carried by The Scotsman, the Irish News, Edinburgh News, the Express & Star and Yahoo News UK, which is where this case has been reported properly all year while the games press covered the parts of it that mentioned the game.

That is the reason this piece is running a week after the hearing rather than the day after. The case now goes quiet until closing submissions on 17 and 18 November, so 16 October is the last word from a witness box before the day before launch.

Where this sits

Who she is, and why her job title is in dispute

Kolbe runs Rockstar's publishing operation. She is the executive who signs off on what ships and when, and the Bloomberg account of GTA VI's development is built partly on her: she is the person who phoned Strauss Zelnick to tell him the game was slipping, twice, and the person who gave the studio's account of how it avoided repeating Red Dead Redemption 2's crunch.

The wire copy describes her as Rockstar's head of licensing and as the company's second most senior person. The games press, and Bloomberg, call her head of publishing. This site has used the second form, and goes on using it, because it is what Rockstar's own people use — but the discrepancy is worth printing rather than smoothing over, because it is a small example of how this case is being reported: by court reporters working from what is said in a room, not by people who know the company.

The seniority point is not in dispute and it is the thing that matters. Every previous Rockstar witness in this case has been an HR manager or director. Kolbe is management. The wider case — the filings, the 32-player line, the window film — is in our account of what the tribunal has revealed so far.

What she said

Four things, in the order they matter.

On Sam Houser. It had been put to the tribunal that Houser screams at staff. Kolbe's evidence was that he does not scream at anyone. This is the first time the company president has been directly characterised in the hearing, and the first time anyone has answered for him.

On the union. She told the tribunal that Rockstar is not anti-union, and that she had met IWGB representatives in recent months. The company's pleaded case has always been that the dismissals were about confidential information rather than membership; this is the most senior person in the building saying so in person.

On the Discord. Asked whether she had known about the server for years, she said it was "absolutely untrue". That answer matters because of the timing problem that has run through the whole case: Rockstar says the dismissals of 30 October 2025 were an urgent response to a leak risk, and the claimants say the company had been reading the server for a long time before it acted. Charlie Kinloch was asked the same question on 9 October; Robert Spampinato answered a version of it in the sittings after. Kolbe's answer closes the line at the top of the company.

On process. She told the tribunal: "Out of the office I would never discuss disciplinary action."

What was put to her that this piece does not reproduce

The cross-examination on 16 October is reported to have turned on a set of internal messages, and on an allegation that an HR manager approved time off for an employee who had been passing on material from the union's private server — "sweeteners", in the IWGB's framing, against Rockstar's position that the people concerned were whistleblowers.

That material is not set out here, because the only outlets carrying it are ones this site does not source from. It has not appeared in the PA wire copy, and it has not appeared in any of the games outlets on this site's list. Rockstar is reported to have called the underlying allegations baseless.

This is not a judgement about whether the allegation is true. It is the ordinary application of a rule that exists precisely for days like this one: a specific, document-based, uncorroborated claim about a named employee is exactly the kind of thing that gets repeated into fact by sites that do not check, and the honest thing to do with it is to say it exists, say who is carrying it, and wait.

The other senior witness, and what he said about the delay

Spampinato, Rockstar's vice president of human resources, gave evidence in the sittings immediately before Kolbe's. Our account of the November listing covers his denials on union monitoring — he called the suggestion that he had instructed managers to keep tabs on union membership categorically untrue. Two further lines from his evidence were not covered here and should have been.

He rejected the proposition that the dismissals were revenge against the union as "preposterous", and said the dismissed staff had made "disparaging" comments which breached company policy.

And on why the dismissals happened when they did, he told the tribunal the company was in "crisis mode" over the delays to Grand Theft Auto VI. The phrase is sharper than the version this site carried, which was that Rockstar was behind on the game and working out how to tell staff about a delay. The second delay was announced six days after the dismissals.

No party has alleged that the two were connected, and nothing here should be read as alleging it. A witness explaining what else was happening in the building is not a concession, and the claimants have not run that case.

The three claimant figures

The wire copy from the final week consistently describes 23 former employees claiming unfair dismissal for trade union activities. This site uses 34 dismissed and 31 UK claimants. All three numbers are in reputable reporting and they are not a contradiction.

The tribunal is hearing more than one kind of claim — unfair dismissal, trade-union victimisation and blacklisting — and not every claimant necessarily brings every one of them. That is the obvious reading of why a smaller number attaches to one ground.

It is a reading, not a reconciliation. Nobody has published the breakdown, the tribunal has not stated it, and this site is not going to pick one figure and quietly drop the others. A figure of 29 has also appeared. Where this piece uses a number it says which number and from where.

What this adds to the GTA VI record

Nothing about the game. No feature, no date, no mode, no map.

That needs saying because this case has produced game detail before and readers have learned to expect it. Rockstar's written defence is still the only place the studio has ever referred to an online 32-player format, unannounced and unnamed, set out in the online explainer. The final week of evidence adds nothing to it.

What it adds is the company's own senior account of itself, given on oath, four weeks before the game ships: not anti-union, no knowledge of the server going back years, a president who does not scream. Whether the tribunal accepts any of it is a separate question that will not be answered this year.

What is not confirmed

• All of it, as fact. Every line above is evidence given in a live hearing, by witnesses for one party, under cross-examination by the other. The tribunal has found none of it. A question put to a witness is an assertion by the questioner; an answer is an assertion by the witness.
• The exact wording of anything not in quotation marks. Direct quotations are as the wire copy rendered them. Everything else is reported speech and is summarised here from reporting this site could not read first-hand.
• Kolbe's job title. Head of licensing and head of publishing both appear. This site has not seen Rockstar state it for the purposes of this hearing.
• The 23/31/34 breakdown. The table above is the obvious reading and nothing more. No party has published it.
• The time-off allegation. Carried only by outlets outside this site's sourcing rule. Unverified either way.
• When judgment arrives. No date exists. A reserved judgment in a multi-claimant case of this length routinely takes weeks or months, and it is published in the public employment tribunal decisions database rather than announced by either side.
• Any connection to the 2022 leak or the 2026 leak investigation. None has been alleged in this case.

What to watch

9 November. Take-Two's Q2 results — the only scheduled occasion before the hearing resumes at which an executive can be asked about any of this on the record.

17–18 November. Closing submissions, and then silence while the panel writes.

Whenever the judgment lands. That is the document worth reading. Everything between now and then is argument, including everything above.

Sourcing note: rockstargames.com, scotsman.com, irishnews.com, expressandstar.com, edinburghnews.scotsman.com, uk.news.yahoo.com and every games outlet on this site's list fail DNS resolution from this writer's network and the egress proxy refuses CONNECT, so nothing here was read first-hand; it is reproduced as search results rendered the reporting. The 16 October evidence — Kolbe's appearance, the Houser denial, the not-anti-union line, the "absolutely untrue" answer on the Discord and the quotation about discussing disciplinary action — is PA wire copy carried by The Scotsman, the Irish News, the Express & Star, Edinburgh News and Yahoo News UK. The description of her as head of licensing and as the company's second most senior person is The Scotsman's; head of publishing is Bloomberg's and the games press's. Spampinato's "preposterous", "disparaging" and "crisis mode" lines are from the same wire service's copy on the preceding sittings. The 23 figure appears in that copy; the 34 dismissals, the 31 UK claimants and the 10 September opening are established across earlier PC Gamer, GamesRadar and VGC reporting. The time-off allegation is carried by Vertical Slice, TalkEsport and TheGamer, none of which this site sources from, and is named rather than reproduced for that reason.