‘GTA VI Online’ Could Have a 32-Player Format

Summary

A Rockstar statement submitted to an employment tribunal in Edinburgh references employees discussing a 32-player online format for GTA VI

The filing stops short of confirming the figure as a launch specification, saying only that it was discussed and highly confidential

The same statement lays out the measures Rockstar says it takes to keep gameplay details from leaving the building

Rockstar Games has inadvertently put a number to GTA VI Online. A statement the studio submitted to an employment tribunal in Edinburgh, where Dexerto reports that 31 former employees are challenging their dismissals, describes staff discussing “an online 32 player format” for a confidential project in a private Discord server, and characterises game features as belonging among the company’s most closely guarded secrets.

The precise wording matters more than the number. The filing establishes that a 32-player format existed as a topic of internal conversation and that the detail was treated as highly confidential at the time it was raised. It does not state that 32 players will be the ceiling when the mode ships, nor does it describe the figure as final, so anyone reading it as a hard specification is reading past what the document actually says. One staff member is described in the statement as having found the Discord discussion extraordinarily alarming, which says more about how the information was classified internally than about the feature itself.

The monitoring side is staffed rather than automated. The studio reportedly maintains five full-time investigators and a director dedicated to tracking potential leaks, and it fitted privacy film to its office windows after drones were allegedly used to photograph the interior of its buildings. Rockstar set the standard it is working to directly in the statement, which reads that “Guarding the secrets of the unique gameplay and design are akin to Apple protecting the iPhone or Coke protecting its formula.”

For now, that posture makes the tribunal filing an unusually direct source on a mode Rockstar has said little about. Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier has stated that the studio has no plans to discuss what GTA VI Online will look like any time soon, which leaves a court document as the most concrete reference point available.

Rockstar describes its internal security culture as being comparable to Apple’s.

Visitors must sign NDAs, photography is strictly prohibited, contractors are escorted by security, and personal laptops, phones and tablets are blocked from connecting to Rockstar’s systems.

They also hired a five person investigative team to keep tabs on data breaches and security over the 2022 leaks.

This response came from the employee tribunal today in Edinburgh where 31 employees are fighting Rockstar.

— ben (@videotech) September 10, 2026