Grand Theft Auto 6’s hype has been defined by leaks

By James On Dec 5, 2023

With just over 24 hours to go before Rockstar Games would debut its first Grand Theft Auto6 trailer, a grainy video began circulating online: The GTA6 trailer, but marked with a huge bitcoin watermark. About 30 minutes later, Rockstar did the corporate equivalent of saying “Fuck it,” uploading the trailer and succinctly referencing it message on X: “Our trailer has been leaked, so check out the real thing on YouTube.”

It's unusual for a company like Rockstar to ignore the original announced schedule and just post the thing, but it's not the first time this has happened. When The Last of Us Part 2's PlayStation 5 remaster was leaked early on to the PlayStation Store by dataminers looking for new information. Hours later, an official trailer appeared on YouTube, featuring several prominent ones Naughty Dog developers explain this that “leaks are really bad.” (In Naughty Dog's case, however, the timing is for it The Last of Us Part 2's remaster has not yet been announced and it is possible that its YouTube release was at the scheduled time.)

Normally, in the event of a leak, a company would start issuing takedown notices as quickly as possible – which Rockstar did, of course – and wait until the scheduled debut. (We've seen this a lot when Pokémon games leak prematurely; Nintendo and The Pokémon Company try to get things out of the way, but don't directly acknowledge the leaks.) In the case of GTA6the trailer's early launch hasn't diluted the hype, with the GTA6 trailer that was viewed more than 85 million times as of Tuesday morning. It quickly gains popularity upon Rockstar's debut Grand Theft Auto 5 trailer, which was published on November 2, 2011 and has been viewed more than 99 million times.

Grand Theft Auto 6 co-protagonists Lucia and Jason, wearing leggings over their faces, burst into a supermarket and pointed guns in Grand Theft Auto 6

Several Rockstar employees have expressed their distress over the leak: “This sucks,” said one developer posted on X. (The post and the developer's X account have since been deleted.) The GTA6 trailer wasn't the first video game trailer to leak, and it certainly won't be the last in an internet landscape where everyone from fans to brands are always fighting for eyeballs.

For better or worse, leaks have already become part of it GTA6's journey to release – something that has a relatively similar theme as Rockstar's upcoming game seemingly enters the battle for internet fame.

Grand Theft Auto is one of the video game industry's most successful properties, making it a popular target for hackers and potential leakers. GTA 5 was released 10 years ago and since then people have been salivating at the prospect of the sixth entry in the series. Rockstar has been quiet about it GTA6 for most of the past 10 years; the studio did not acknowledge the game was in development until February 2022. Came later that year GTA6 history was made when the developers at Rockstar suffered one of the biggest leaks in modern video game history.

On September 18, 2022, a hacker published more than 90 videos – about an hour of footage – of the game that was still in development. The leak was and still is unprecedented due to its sheer size, the level of anticipation for the game in question, And due to how rare it is for fans to see large portions of a AAA video game in a visibly unfinished state. The leaked images showed a GTA6 that was clearly under development, with debug tools, blocked environments and all.

The sun sets behind a sign that reads “Vice” in a screenshot from Grand Theft Auto 6

The hacker claimed to have accessed Rockstar's internal Slack, an application that workplaces use to communicate and share files. A British court discovered that a British-based 18-year-old, Arion Kurtaj, was largely responsible for the hack. Kurtaj had previously been arrested for other hacking incidents carried out in collaboration with the infamous group Lapsus$, and he was out on bail when he went after Rockstar, Uber and Revolut. Kurtaj's hack of Rockstar was the last he managed to hack before he was caught again in a Travelodge hotel where he had been locked up due to security concerns (he was previously duped by 'rival hackers', according to the BBC). Kurtaj and a second 17-year-old hacker was found guilty in August. The BBC reported that the lead attorney for the plaintiff in the case, Kevin Barry, said the hackers were motivated by “fame,” “financial gain” and “entertainment.”

The damage was done; Many fans couldn't resist taking a peek behind the curtain before the real show started. The hour-long clips in the leak indicated eagerly GTA6 fans a lot of material to work through, and by September this year that the community had put together a 60-page document describing every detail of the leak.

Rockstar announced in November that it would post a trailer in December, news first reported by Bloomberg and quickly confirmed by Rockstar. Last week, Rockstar finally announced a date for the trailer: December 5. Several short videos have been released leading up to the trailer's release date have been uploaded to TikTok which claims parts of the GTA6 Vice City Plan; the video clips, which spread quickly, appeared to be recordings of a computer screen. The source and credibility of these uploads remains unconfirmed, but they do appear to match the cityscapes we've now seen in the legitimate trailer. Somewhere along the way, rumors started Rumor has it that the leak came from the son of a Rockstar employee, but Polygon cannot verify these claims. Of course, it's impossible to say whether the TikTok leaks came from the same source as the December 4 trailer leak.

GTA6The legacy of leaks not only affects how the community sees the game, but it is also something that affects developers. Rockstar is famously secretive – or maybe notoriously so – and leaks are sometimes seen as a rare glimpse behind the scenes for fans, or even a triumph for transparency. Unfortunately, leaks can often have the opposite effect. Speaking to Wired in 2022A AAA developer said leaks could worsen matters even further, hurting the industry more opaque – even within the studios themselves. Sometimes a “trust vacuum” arises between departments as studios investigate leaks internally, Wired reported. The player experience will rarely, if ever, be significantly changed by a leaked trailer or gameplay video, but the same can't be said for the people who make a leaked game.