Details from the evidence documents from IWGB’s lawsuit against Rockstar have been revealed, hinting at 32-player lobbies for GTA 6 Online.
For those unaware, Rockstar is under investigation for alleged union-busting, with IWGB claiming that the company fired employees who were “organising for better conditions”. Rockstar has denied these claims, stating the dismissal was due to employees sharing “confidential information” in insecure channels. Now, details about this confidential information have surfaced online.
Rockstar Hosted a 32-Player Session, Suggesting It Could Be for GTA 6 Online.
The details about GTA 6 Online’s 32-player lobbies come from a recent YouTube video by People Make Games (via RockstarIntel), in which Chris Bratt accessed a hard copy of the court documents in Glasgow. In these documents, Bratt read the Discord messages shared by Rockstar as evidence of employees leaking information. Across these messages, there was some information that was “so sensitive” that Rockstar’s barrister didn’t want to read them in court and asked the judge to read them privately.
The “top secret” messages Rockstar referred to have now been revealed, as Rockstar applied no reporting restrictions to them. The messages start with an employee talking about Rockstar not wanting “more than 13 people off at one time”, which was seemingly later reduced to “no more than 5 people off at a time”.
Then a message comes in as a response to a previous message that talks about a session they conducted, which was “difficult to do” and included 32 players. Another employee responded, stating that they have “multiple studios of QA testers, surely someone can manage to organise a 32 player session and let people have their time off.” This is information regarding an “unannounced feature” in a game currently being developed by Rockstar.
Rockstar’s response also states that it is “gravely concerned” about the claimants sharing “highly confidential and commercially sensitive information relating to the content and features of an unannounced online service.” The claimants discussed the specific number of players planned for this service. However, it hasn’t been explicitly stated that the online service is indeed GTA 6 Online.
For context, GTA 5 Online features 32-player lobbies with 30 active players and 2 spectators. If this is indeed for GTA 6 online, then it won’t be a significant upgrade over the previous title.
At the same time, there was some evidence that Rockstar stated was directly related to GTA 6. Rockstar presented multiple messages as proof for each employee who was fired, but one employee received only one message as evidence. The message itself stated, “Nothing that I’ve heard in the North QA! Will keep you updated if that changes ofc.” Rockstar’s head of publishing, Jeniffer Kolbe, stated that this message “could indicate the stage of development that GTA VI was at for those familiar with the games industry and could also undermine team collaboration.
In other news, GTA 6 might not be content complete but the 2026 release still feels solid. Additionally, fired Rockstar employees have been denied interim pay while the legal battle goes on. Do you think GTA 6 online features 32-player lobbies? Leave your thoughts down in the comments, and join the official Insider Gaming Discord server.
For more information from Insider Gaming, read about Eidos Montreal developing an unannounced ‘AAAA’ game in Unreal Engine 5. Don’t forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter.
