The Rockstar union tribunal now ends on 18 November — the day before GTA 6 goes on sale

The employment tribunal brought by 31 former Rockstar staff was due to finish tomorrow. It will not. Two further hearing days have been added for 17 and 18 November 2026, which moves closing submissions out of October entirely and puts the end of the case one day before Grand Theft Auto VI goes on sale on 19 November.

The reason is procedural rather than dramatic: questioning of witnesses has run long, and Rockstar's legal team asked for more time to cross-examine one of the dismissed employees. Hearings overrun constantly and nobody schedules a tribunal around a release calendar. But the arithmetic is still what it is — the case about the people who built the game now closes the day before the game ships, and that is a fact about the calendar, not a claim about either side's case.

This piece sets out what changed, what the October evidence added since our account of the Discord informant allegation, and why "the hearing ends on 18 November" is not the same sentence as "this is decided on 18 November". The wider case — the filings, the 32-player line, the window film — is in our account of what the tribunal has revealed so far.

Where this sits

What the calendar now looks like

The last row is the important one, and it is the row most coverage of this change has skipped.

Why an end date is not a verdict date

Closing submissions are the last thing an employment tribunal hears, not the moment it decides. In a case of this length a reserved judgment is the normal outcome: the panel takes the evidence away and writes, and in multi-claimant discrimination and trade-union detriment cases that process routinely runs to weeks or months. When it arrives it is published in the public employment tribunal decisions database rather than announced by either party.

So the realistic reading of the new dates is that the hearing ends the day before launch and the judgment almost certainly does not. Anyone presenting 18 November as the day Rockstar learns its fate is reading a listing as a verdict.

The most senior witness so far

The October sittings produced the company's most senior witness to date: Robert Spampinato, Rockstar's vice president of human resources. His evidence is reported under the line that he did not keep tabs on union membership, and the substance is a set of denials with one piece of context attached.

On the central allegation — that he had told managers to monitor union membership — he is reported to have called it categorically untrue, and to have said he was not aware the information had been solicited. He accepted that material about union meetings and recruitment reached HR, and that it helped management follow workplace grievances, while denying any attempt to suppress organising. Asked for his view of the IWGB, he is reported to have said he had no issue with the union as such, and that the company preferred to handle staff matters itself.

Two further points from his evidence matter more than the denials, because they are about dates rather than intent:

• He told the tribunal that Rockstar did not establish who was actually in the Discord server until October 2025. That is the company's answer to the timing problem put to Charlie Kinloch on 9 October — if the server had been read for two years, why were the dismissals urgent? The answer offered is that reading it and identifying its members are different things.
• On why the dismissals happened when they did, he is reported to have said the company was behind on GTA VI 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 this is a witness describing what else was happening in the building, not a concession. It is worth recording precisely because the Bloomberg account of the delays is now the fullest explanation Rockstar people have given, and it does not cover this.

The journalist in the server

One disputed detail has run through the case from the start and surfaced again in October. Rockstar's position is that the Discord was not a private union channel: the January interim-relief judgment described a server of roughly 350 members, including former employees, at least one of whom had previously published articles about the company. Spampinato is reported to have told the tribunal that Rockstar did not know a journalist was among the members until October 2025.

The IWGB's position is that the people Rockstar characterises as journalists and competitors were union officials and recently departed staff. Neither account has been found as fact. It matters because Rockstar's defence is that confidential information was shared in what it calls a public forum, and how public the forum was is part of what the panel has to decide.

What this does and does not add to the GTA VI record

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

That is worth repeating because this case has been a source of game detail before and the habit has stuck. Rockstar's written defence remains the only place the studio has referred to an online 32-player format, still unannounced and still unnamed, set out in full in the online explainer. The October evidence and the November listing add nothing to it.

What they do add is a date collision that the company did not choose and cannot move. Take-Two's next quarterly results, historically in the first half of November, now fall between the end of evidence and the release — and they remain the other occasion on which the company can be asked about any of this in public.

What is not confirmed

• The new dates themselves, as an official listing. They are reported from the hearing and are consistent across every outlet that has carried them, but the Glasgow Tribunals Centre's own listing is the authority, and this site has not read it.
• That the extension reflects anything about the strength of either case. It reflects how long cross-examination took. Reading intent into a scheduling change is guesswork.
• Spampinato's account, and the claimants' account of him. Both are evidence and submissions in a live hearing. A question put to a witness is an assertion by the person asking it; an answer is an assertion by the person giving it. The tribunal has found neither.
• When judgment arrives. No date exists. It could be December, it could be well into 2027.
• The number of claimants, as reported. This site uses 34 dismissed and 31 UK claimants, which is what the bulk of the reporting supports; figures of 23 and 29 also appear in coverage and nobody has reconciled them publicly.
• Any connection to the 2022 leak or the 2026 leak investigation. None has been alleged in this case.

What to watch

Three things, in order of how soon they could move.

Tomorrow. The hearing still sits on 16 October; what changes is that it does not finish. Whatever evidence remains is heard, and then the case goes quiet for a month.

Early November. Take-Two's results call, which is the only scheduled moment before the hearing resumes at which an executive can be asked about it on the record.

17–18 November. Closing submissions, and then silence until the panel writes. The useful habit here is the same one this case has rewarded all year: wait for the written judgment, and treat everything before it as argument.

Sourcing note: rockstargames.com, kotaku.com, pcgamer.com, gamesradar.com, videogameschronicle.com, gamespot.com, scotsman.com and eurogamer.net are all refused by this writer's network — DNS fails and the egress proxy answers 403 — so nothing above was read first-hand and it is reproduced as the reporting rendered it. The extension and the 17–18 November dates were reported on 14 October 2026; the first account came from a journalist reporting from the hearing, Eurogamer carried it the same day, and every outlet that has repeated it agrees on the dates and on the reason. Spampinato's evidence — his role, the denial, the October 2025 line about identifying Discord members and the journalist, his answer on the IWGB, and the remark about the delay announcement — is reported by The Scotsman, which has covered this tribunal from its opening. The roughly 350 members and the previously published articles come from the January interim-relief judgment as reported at the time. The 34 dismissals of 30 October 2025, the 31 UK claimants and the 10 September opening are established across earlier PC Gamer, GamesRadar and VGC coverage. No outlet on this site's source list could be read directly to confirm the November listing, and the sentence above saying so is the reason it is flagged as unconfirmed rather than stated flat.