Grand Theft Auto VI has been subject to a series of substantial leaks during its development. The game's first leak, on 18 September 2022, has been considered one of the biggest leaks in video game history.[1][2][3]
September 2022
On 18 September 2022, a new user on GTAForums.com called "teapotuberhacker" posted download links to over 90 files, purporting to originate from the next Grand Theft Auto game. The apparent leak spread like wildfire across the internet in a single day, with countless news outlets reporting the leak as one of, if not the, "biggest in video game history".[1] The leaked material showed behind-the-scenes development footage of what was eventually revealed to be Grand Theft Auto VI, exposing sensitive details such as certain characters, locations, and vehicles. Within hours, Take-Two Interactive issued takedown notices for any sites hosting the leaked content[4] and various GTAForums threads were removed and/or locked at Take-Two's request.[5] One day later, on September 19, 2022, Rockstar Games released a statement condemning the hacker and promised players that disruption to live game services or upcoming titles was not expected at the time. They also promised to officially introduce players to the game "when it is ready".[6] Take-Two Interactive also filed notice of the breach with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on September 19.[7]
The hacker's identity was eventually revealed to be Arion Kurtaj, a 17-year-old boy from Oxfordshire, England, who founded the international Lapsus$ hacker group and executed the data breach using just an Amazon Fire TV Stick remote, mobile phone, and a hotel TV. In December 2023, he was placed under an indefinite hospital order by a judge due to being considered a high public risk, as he expressed intent to continue engaging in cybercrime.[8] Another Lapsus$ member, who is 17 years old and whose identity is protected by law, was found guilty in the same trial of two counts of fraud, two offenses under the Computer Misuse Act, and one count of blackmail. He was sentenced to a youth rehabilitation order at the Guildford Crown Court in Surrey, England, on 21 December 2023.[9]
December 2023
On 2 December 2023, three days before Trailer 1's scheduled release, a now-deleted TikTok account named @azzarossi posted a video with the caption "First look at GTA 6 👀". The video featured a phone recording of a monitor displaying a development build of the next Grand Theft Auto game, with the recorder panning the camera in a 360-degree motion to show the Stockyard neighborhood of Vice City and the surrounding areas.[10] In TikTok direct messages, the alleged leaker provided additional details about the game, claiming that the map would be twice the size of Grand Theft Auto V, include "three major cities and "four sub-cities", and feature at least 70% of interiors that are enterable.[11] However, these claims have yet to be verified and may simply be assumptions. The source of the leak is presumed to be either the son or the friend of the son of Aaron Garbut, the current head of development at Rockstar North.
Although the authenticity of the video has not been confirmed by Rockstar Games or Take-Two Interactive, there is widespread consensus in the community that the leak is legitimate. This is due to certain buildings, most notably the exteriors of Jack of Hearts and What's Cooking, which were prominently featured in Trailer 1 of GTA VI released two days after the leak, being visible in the footage and strongly aligning with both the trailer and the September 2022 leaks footage.
Trailer 1
On 4 December 2023, less than 16 hours before Trailer 1's scheduled release, GTA VI's first trailer was leaked online.[12] The leaked trailer was a lower quality version of the eventual official release, with the words "BUY $BTC" written in large letters across the footage. Soon after the footage was more heavily circulated, Rockstar Games brought ahead their premiere to 6:00 PM EST later that day.[13] Multiple Rockstar employees took to social media to exclaim their frustrations at the leaks the day after, as well as to celebrate the official release of the trailer.[14] Later on, Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take Two Interactive, would comment that believed the leak ultimately did not hurt the game's reception or the development team, though it was "disappointing".[15] In June 2024, industry insider Tom Henderson from Insider Gaming reported that YouTube had recently conducted two internal investigations into its employees potentially breaching contractual agreements by accessing backend data. The latter investigation was reportedly conducted "soon after" the Trailer 1 leak, sparking rumors that this incident was the event that motivated this investigation.[16]
January 2025
On 1 January 2025, after an entire year with no official or leaked footage of the game, a Reddit user named "JustLovett0" posted a thread on r/GamingLeaksAndRumors titled "GTA 6 Photo from Mid-2021". In the thread, the leaker claimed to have an image of an early development build of GTA VI, along with other two videos captured in a Rockstar office at an unspecified location by an individual described as close to the leaker. Attached to the thread was a Google Drive folder containing the alleged content, which was deleted shortly after it was uploaded, along with the thread itself.
The image in the Google Drive is a phone shot of a monitor in an office displaying GTA VI, depicting Lucia in an unknown location in Leonida. On the screen, the scene includes trees, Quonset huts, containers, a silage bunker, and various types of construction equipment. To the right of the monitor is an authentic PlayStation 5 game development kit with a connected controller. The image’s metadata reveals that it was taken on 22 June 2021, at 6:59 PM with an Apple iPhone 12 Pro, with the location listed as 2220 Faraday Avenue in Carlsbad, California—the address of Rockstar San Diego. The surrounding environment of the office, including the building's architecture (such as the pillars and horizontal strip window design) and the trees outside, directly aligns with the geo-location information in the metadata.
One of the two videos shot within the office also contained an authentic Xbox Scorpio game development kit, labeled with "SAND" (standing for San Diego) and displaying an IP address that matches with Rockstar San Diego’s internal network range, as revealed in the December 2023 GTA V source code leaks.
In the comments of the now-deleted thread, another Reddit user asked if the leaker would "feel like shit if the guy gets [fired] just so [the leaker can] get some likes", to which the leaker replied, "He is super far from Rockstar now, doesn’t work there or in any related field. I’m not worried but I’ll probably delete the post soon enough, I don’t need the likes but I had to get it out there".
Although, much like the December 2023 GTA VI leak, the authenticity of this leak has not been confirmed by Rockstar Games or Take-Two Interactive, many in the community have come to largely consider it as genuine, mainly due to the real-world setting in the background of the photo, which can be verified as that of Rockstar San Diego.[17][18][19]
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