Rockstar had a mole in the union worker discord server | Hacker News Reader

Rockstar had a mole in the union worker discord server

rockpapershotgun.com

104 pointsdeathcakes46 comments

"At some point in this period, they go on, Rockstar management got hold of logins for the server, with Rockstar's vice president of information security Abid Ansari eventually signing in to download 'the contents of the Announcements and General channels'. Rockstar began firing members of the Discord at the end of the month."

Is this legal in the UK?

Sounds like a crime. They took credentials that was not theirs and used them to gain unauthorized access and then stole all the content.

The article isn't clear on if the credentials were theirs or not, or how Rockstar management obtained them. It is possible that Rockstar management simply signed up for a Discord account and went through the process to request access, which was then granted to them by the Discord server admins. Since the server admins used the company Slack to verify that folks requesting to join were employees, it seems quite plausible that is what happened. But the details aren't really there in the article.

I hope the union admins weren't foolish enough to let in management that way. My best faith assumption is that the mole got in, grabbed the content, and shared their account with management.

That still feels like a form of entrapment, though. Unless this story is fuzzy and the mole themselves simply shared the chat logs hemselves. But the story makes it sound like the Abid Ansari himself got in.

Entrapment is usually defined as when the investigator encourages the accused to commit the crime, in such a way that they were not already predispositioned to do so. If the management employee encouraged others on the forum to share company secrets, that might be entrapment, but simply being there and catching them in the act is not.

I suppose more information will come out in court, if the matter is settled beforehand.

All you'd have to do is grab a PAT from a terminated employee's workstation and you'd have access to anything they did, in their name, until it expires.

That would be stealing credentials, they were arguing they might have obtained them legitimately.

I, too, would argue I obtained them legitimately, by giving Claude access to the filesystem image and asking it questions it could only answer by doing exactly this.

Another good reason why you shouldn't use company property for personal stuff, especially not for union organizing activities.

Posted couple days ago but no activity https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49670569

He was more than a hero he was a Union man.

There is always that one person who ruins the game for everyone, metaphorically speaking. Despicable behaviour.

Or Rockstar is simply lying to get rid of the union, most things here seem to be alleged only.

> Rockstar is simply lying to get rid of the union

How would Rockstar being shown to have had a mole in the union advance Rockstar's interests?

Same reason why most companies don't want their workers to unionize?

In response to a comment about "that one person who ruins the game for everyone," a reference to the mole, you said "or Rockstar is simply lying to get rid of the union." That implies there wasn't a mole, Rockstar made it up.

I asked how making up a Rockstar mole in the union would advance any of Rockstar's goals at this junction.

Its not clear whether the OP was referring to the mole, or to the person(s) who were allegedly sharing confidential company information on an external, non-company Discord server. Rockstar claims that is why they fired them, though the fired employees allege it was to disrupt union organizing. Depending on ones point of view, either or both actors could be considered despicable.

I was indeed referring to the mole. I find that behaviour reprehensible.

Letting them dissolve or oppose the union?

> Letting them dissolve or oppose the union?

You're saying Rockstar would make up a mole that didn't exist, now, and that would somehow help it keep the union dissolved? What?

Yeah pretty much?

> Yeah pretty much?

Your hypothesis is Rockstar made up a fake mole, buried it, let the opposition find it and put it in a legal filing, and this somehow helps them. Got it.

If this isn't a troll account I'm worried.

If you do not think this is a possibility I guess you must see the world as sunshine and rainbows and corportaions working for our best interest, I don't know what to tell you. Evwrythinf can happen when your employee count is high.

> you must see the world as sunshine and rainbows and corportaions working for our best interest

I'm literally not seeing the throughline from A to B. It's like saying a greedy capitalist nuked himself as a gotcha. Like, how does that help him? I'm not saying he isn't capable of it. I just literally don't see how it helps him.

Free hype for their game, free advertising? You know they say there is no such thing as bad publicity.

Since this is from court filings, that would be perjury if they can't back it up.

Would not be the first time a company lied.

You'd have to reference rockstar's exact filings, since it's possible to paint a narrative that suggests something, without outright lying.

That's classic game theory. It'd be better if everyone refuses to defect.

> classic game theory

I'm not sure it is in unionisation fights, particularly in an industry as tightly knit as gaming. You're trading a short-term kiss from management for being hated across the industry. That forecloses all kinds of career opportunities outside the majors. In game theory, this sort of repeated interaction is exactly what incentivises cooperation.

As long as someone knows that they're going away from the industry good it's enough for a single defection.

Humans have the ability to consider things beyond their immediate incentives. Most find it difficult not to.

We don't know what benefits they received from defecting anyhow

it's always terrible companies fighting tooth and nail against unions

You have it backwards. A big part of why the terrible companies are terrible to begin with are because they do stuff like this.

This fall, buy Ocarina of Time and not GTA 6.

Rockstar deserves no sales.

https://www.eurogamer.net/doug-bowser-nintendo-doesnt-have-u...

>However, while workers at Nintendo have yet to unionise, the company has previously been accused of interfering with unionisation efforts. A QA contractor made the allegations in 2022, saying they had been fired after asking about unionisation - although Nintendo insisted the firing happened because the worker had disclosed "confidential information".

Sounds a lot like this case.

Japanese politicians make Reagan look like a card carrying communist.

So do some current US Republicans.

I don't disagree, but this was Nintendo of America. Nintendo's main branch has some of the best worker retention and satifaction in the industry (thanks to actual Japanese labor laws). NoA meanwhile, is identical to any other American company in how it operates.

It's honestly a great example on why we need proper labor laws; it's the only way to truly keep companies "honest".

Or... Just buy indie games. They're usually better and not a law firm with a small games company attached.

Sounds like Discord also has a case against RockStar because their ToS expressly forbids sharing login credentials.

You wanted your IPO money, Discord? Suing the shit out of RockStar and winning is the way to go here.

Terms of service, and more generally - contractual, violations without 'material loss' tend to have no remedies available unless otherwise agreed to. Fun lesson I learned in a project with a dubious partner.

The ToS lines up with specific laws that will very quickly make your point moot. the Computer Misuse Act of 1990 (since the place in question is in the UK) works alongside that ToS - accessing computer systems, networks, or data without permission is not only A breach of the ToS Discord has set forth but also a breach of that law.

The mole shared access credentials - forbidden by Discord's ToS and by UK's law. This is very plain and simple to anyone with half a rasher of logic about them.

This seems quite improbable. Something I looked up was whether it was illegal to share e.g. Netflix passwords in the UK since your take on the law would make this quite clearly so. And indeed the government claimed it is, but exclusively under appeals to the implications of copyright law, but with no intents to prosecute [the millions doing so] for such.

Were account sharing criminally illegal, then I think that would be the obvious first target.

>The mole shared access credentials - forbidden by Discord's ToS and by UK's law. This is very plain and simple to anyone with half a rasher of logic about them.

So we're suddenly for abusing hacking legislation to prosecute people, just because in this case the target isn't sympathetic?

Why not? The best way to repeal bad laws is to sling them against those who otherwise benefit from it. The best case here is that the law is thrown out entirely. The "worst case" is an unsympathetic target getting their just desserts.

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