Last weekend leaked videos and photos purporting to be of the unannounced Grand Theft Auto VI hit the internet. This morning, Rockstar Games released a statement and confirmed that the footage was real.
According to Rockstar Games, someone broke into its network and downloaded “confidential information from our systems, including early development footage from the next Grand Theft Auto.” The company said it didn’t anticipate disruption in any of its services nor did it think this would affect development. Its parent company, Take-Two Interactive, notified investors in an SEC filing.
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Grand Theft Auto V is nine years old and has been released on three different console generations. Its sequel is highly anticipated and the subject of both fan speculation and ire. Rockstar Games first said it was officially working on a new Grand Theft Auto game in a community update following the rocky launch of its Grand Theft Auto Definitive Edition, but never announced a title or released any footage.
Fans eagerly downloaded and dissected every scrap of leaked footage of the game over the weekend. A person who claimed to be responsible for the leak first posted the footage on the GTAForums, a third-party site where people talk about the franchise. The person claims to have also been behind the Uber hack, though we cannot confirm this. The leaked footage has now been removed from the original thread, presumably at the request of Rockstar. “All copyrighted/ sensitive media, code and links have been removed and this topic has been locked,” a moderator said at the top of the thread.
But the footage is out there on the internet, including more than 90 video files showing various small portions of the game. What we’ve seen seems to confirm earlier reports that Grand Theft Auto VI will star a male and female protagonist and take place in Vice City. The footage appears to be from debugging sessions for the game and is mostly unpolished. Some animations seem to be placeholders, many textures aren’t finished, and much of the footage has bits of code overlaying the gameplay.
Rockstar Games served DMCA takedown notices to Twitter and YouTube in the aftermath of the leak, working to pull down footage. But the videos and screenshots are already out there on the internet and as soon as a Reddit thread is pulled down, another takes its place with fresh links.
“We are extremely disappointed to have any details of our next game shared with you all in this way,” Rockstar Games said in its statement. “We will update everyone again soon and, of course, will properly introduce you to this next game when it’s ready.”
