Sharing Rockstar emails on Discord was 'egregious breach' of policy, tribunal told

An ex-Rockstar Games employee committed an "egregious breach" of company policy when they posted emails from management in a Discord channel, a tribunal has heard.

A lawyer representing the games company said it took a "strict line" on information security, and that managers would have "gone ballistic" if the possibility of sharing the emails on the platform had been suggested to them.

A group of former employees of Edinburgh-based Rockstar North are claiming they were unfairly dismissed for trade union activities.

Some 34 people in the UK and Canada are believed to have been dismissed in October 2025 and 23 are taking part in the tribunal.

They are being represented by the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain (IWGB).

Rockstar North is a studio of Rockstar Games, which is owned by New York-based software company, Take-Two Interactive.

The company, which is behind the successful Grand Theft Auto series, has said it will "vigorously" contest the allegations and accused the ex-employees of breaching the company's confidentiality rules by discussing sensitive information on a Discord server.

On Monday, former employee Dayne Oram, who was one of those who lost their job, continued giving evidence to the tribunal in Glasgow.

They were asked about emails from a senior manager they posted on the Discord server in October 2025.

The emails, which were sent by the company's vice president of HR, Rob Spampinato, concerned guidelines for the use of Slack channels at the company.

Thomas Cordrey, representing Rockstar, put it to Mx Oram that posting the full text of the emails in a Discord group with some 350 members - including 10 employees who no longer worked at the firm - had breached the company's information-handling policies.

These stipulate, he said, that "internal information" should not be shared externally without management sign-off, and that it should only be stored on "systems approved by security and legal departments".

"Your breach of this policy was an egregious act of gross misconduct," Mr Cordrey stated.

Read more from the tribunal:
Unfair dismissal tribunal begins against Rockstar
Ex-employee believes workers were put on 'watch list'

Mx Oram disputed this, saying the emails from Mr Spampinato had been sent to all staff at the company, and that they had been unaware at the time that some of those in the Discord group no longer worked at Rockstar.

They also said it was "difficult to reconcile" the company's information-handling policy with rights of staff to union participation, and that sharing the letters in Discord had been necessary for union activities.

Mr Cordrey told the tribunal the use of a Discord group where security was "seriously lacking" had increased the risk of phishing attacks on the company.

The firm was targeted by such an attack in 2022, which resulted in video from an early version of Grand Theft Auto VI - which is due for release later this year - being shared online.

Mr Cordrey said: "Rockstar's concerns are not hypothetical. There have been materially damaging attacks based on employees being tricked through phishing attacks.

"If you were a hacker who wanted to trick Rockstar employees, it would be gold dust to have two emails showing exactly how Mr Spampinato communicates, and would make it much easier to trick employees (into sharing confidential information)."

The tribunal, before judge Lucy Wiseman, continues.

(c) Sky News 2026: Sharing Rockstar emails on Discord was 'egregious breach' of policy, tribunal told