GTA VI's Week of Leaks Shakes the Gaming World

August 22, 2026 - 07:15

Big upcoming video games often leak, but not quite the way it has been happening to Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto VI for the past several days. Earlier this week, a person or group going by the online handle CyberLeek posted two gameplay clips from the game. That was just the start.

Tuesday brought the first two clips, each about a minute long, showing co-protagonist Jason Duval driving on a highway and tossing a basketball into a hoop. Wednesday saw two more clips leak. Thursday morning produced another leak, this one ending with Jason shooting bullet holes into a wall to spell out the word "LEEK," strongly suggesting the leaker has access to a build of the game. Friday added yet another.

The leaked footage was overlaid with links and messages, including a solicitation for people to buy a memecoin and a threat to conduct similar hacks and leaks against video game companies that did not follow a set of "commandments." Those demands included offering offline modes for online games, refraining from "fake single-player DLC," and not soliciting digital pre-orders for games "before release and independent review," according to a Kotaku rundown of the manifesto.

If those demands are at all meant earnestly, and not simply leaking for profits and thrills, it is the last one which would apply to GTA VI. Take Two and Rockstar released trailers and started pre-orders for the game without showing any gameplay, nor previewing the game to the press, which they had done for prior big Rockstar games by this point. The company still has not shown any gameplay, as its November 19 release date approaches.

Regardless, some of the very parties that would sympathize with the manifesto's goals condemned the leaks. On Tuesday night, the head of the Stop Killing Games movement wrote on Reddit that the leaks were wrong. "Using illegal means to make a point is unacceptable to us and does nothing to protect our right to keep using what we paid for. No matter how strongly you disagree with the decisions of upper management at these companies, there are still thousands of developers who worked hard on this project, and they are the ones being hit the hardest."

GTA publisher Take Two quickly moved to wipe the footage from the internet, but copies of the videos have persisted and lengthy descriptions have been posted online as each new one has appeared. Common takeaways are that the game looks impressive, though also what you would envision a modern GTA set in virtual Florida to look like. Some fans are debating the possible need for gas in cars, which some of the leaked clips appear to indicate. Among the unknowns about the leaks are whether they come from a recent build of the game and therefore whether details seen in the clips are even still in the game.

There have been signs of a crackdown. Website URLs included in the leaked clips stopped working by mid-week. On Thursday, Take Two asked a court in New York to subpoena Discord and Microsoft to try to get details on accounts the company believes are associated with the leaks. On Friday, a judge gave the go-ahead for the subpoenas.

Take Two has ample experience dealing with game leaks, among them a prior 90-video GTA VI breach in 2022 that resulted in an arrest and a pending retrial, as well as a set of Borderlands 3 leaks that led it to send investigators to a YouTuber's house. Rockstar and Take Two reps did not reply to requests for comment about the leaks nor the age of the footage shown in them. Rockstar will premiere an official "extended look" of GTA VI on Netflix next Thursday.