Take-Two scrambles to strike leaked GTA 6 videos and screenshots

The weekend has brought Rockstar and its parent company, Take-Two, a lot of headaches. A massive amount of GTA 6 development videos and screenshots were published online by an anonymous leaker. GTA never suffered a leak at this scale, and the material understandably got published everywhere.

The footage and screenshots showed various bits of gameplay, a Red Dead Redemption 2-like conversation system, some vehicle action, and a bit of the open world. More importantly, it featured the rumoured protagonist, and seemingly confirmed the Vice City setting, which has long been rumoured, and recently confirmed by a Bloomberg report.

The leaks were posted by a user named teapotuberhacker on the GTA Forums. Since then, the thread was locked and the media removed, though it's available to read once again at the time of this writing.

Take-Two quickly moved to strike down everything that came out of this leak on YouTube, Twitter and any other platform that complies with copyright takedown requests. Though some of those leaks are likely archived by a few of those who saw them, the takedowns all but confirm the footage is authentic.

It remains unclear, however, how one would get their hands on such a major batch of footage, screenshots and other material. There may be much more to it, too. Teapotuberhacker claims they are in position of GTA 5 and GTA 6 source code, as well as a test build for the latter - which is likely where the leaks originated.

They later posted their email address, asking to be contacted by Rockstar staff from their corporate email addresses to supposedly "negotiate a deal." Assuming their claims about what they have are true, Take-Two could be dealing with a ransom situation, which seems to be getting common in recent years.

The Witcher, and Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt fell victim to a similar breach. Japanese giant Capcom also had years-worth of information leaked, including plans for many years into the future.