First responders, including six fire engines, descended upon Rockstar Games’ Edinburgh office, Rockstar North, early on Monday following reports of structural damage to the offices of the Grand Theft Auto 6 maker. The result of an apparent explosion of some kind, the incident thankfully left no one injured.
“We were alerted at 5:02 a.m. on Monday, 19 January to attend an incident on Holyrood Road, Edinburgh,” a spokesperson for emergency crews told The Herald. “Operations Control mobilized three fire appliances and specialist resources to the scene, where firefighters worked to secure structural damage at a commercial building. There were no reported casualties and crews left the scene at 9:21 a.m.”
According to Rockstar, the explosion was the result of a boiler malfunction and the studio remains fully operational as it prepares for the launch of GTA 6 in November.
“Early Monday morning, there was a malfunction in one of the heating boilers at Rockstar North,” a spokesperson for Rockstar Games told Kotaku in an email. “Many thanks to those that reached out with concern, and also to the police and fire crews who were on scene quickly to assess the situation–please know that everyone is well and our studio remains open and operational.”
The office has recently been at the center of an ongoing labor dispute with 31 fired developers who were trying to unionize. The workers claim they were targeted for trying to organize while Rockstar maintains they were fired for violations of confidentiality rules, including leaking development and gameplay details in a union Discord channel with outside observers.
A judge reviewing the case recently denied the fired GTA 6 devs immediate relief in the form of back pay, but a full ruling on the overall merits of the complaint is still pending.
