Over 90 videos of a development build of Grand Theft Auto 6 have been leaked after an apparent major breach at game developer Rockstar Games, with the culprit also threatening to leak GTA 6 source code.
The GTA 6 leak includes footage of open-world gameplay and was confirmed as real by Bloomberg's Jason Schreier. It was posted to GTA Forums by user "tepotuberhacker". Emails by The Stack to Rockstar Games and its owner Take-Two went unanswered out of office hours but the latter had started filing takedown requests with YouTube over the weekend. Given the apparent scale of the breach more leaks can likely be expected.
Updated 14:20 BST September 19, Rockstar confirmed the breach and network intrusion,
https://twitter.com/RockstarGames/status/1571849091860029455
GTA 5 was released in September 2013 and is the second-highest selling game of all time. It made $800 million in its first day and has seen over 170 million sales for Rockstar Games. GTA 6 has been eagerly awaited. Gaming industry insider Tom Henderson suggested over the summer that GTA6 would release in either 2024 or 2025.
Rockstar itself suggested in August that with "development of the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series well underway, the Rockstar Games team is determined to once again set creative benchmarks for the series, our industry, and for all entertainment, just as the label has done with every one of their frontline releases."
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Rockstar Games is owned by Take-Two Interactive Software which expects revenues of $5.9 billion this year and a net loss of $439 million. The GTA franchise alone has driven revenues of some $7.68 billion.
The Rockstar breach comes amid a flurry of high-profile attacks this year that have involved social engineering and MFA bombing attacks. As yet there is no information on how the breach occurred and the hacker claiming responsibility for the breach had not responded to questions on an encrypted Telegram channel as we published.
Co-president of gaming company Naughty Dog Neil Druckman posted on Twitter: "To my fellow devs out there affected by the latest leak, know that while it feels overwhelming right now, it’ll pass. One day we’ll be playing your game, appreciating your craft, and the leaks will be relegated to a footnote on a Wikipedia page."
The apparent Rockstar breach comes after what Take-Two described as a "momentous quarter for our organization" as it closed its $12.7 billion buyout of gaming company Zynga. In August 8 earnings the GTA 6 owner said it had "made significant progress on our integration efforts [with] detailed plans to realize at least $100 million of annual cost synergies and we continue to expect approximately $50 million to be achieved within the first twelve months.
