A ton of GTA 6 gameplay and screenshots was leaked on Sunday by someone who claimed to have hacked Rockstar's servers and stolen highly confidential information and footage.
Update (September 23): The UK police have reportedly arrested the GTA 6 hacker. According to the official statement by the London police, a 17-year-old has been arrested on suspicion of hacking and remains in custody.
Original Story: It's been a grim couple of days for Rockstar and their parent company Take-Two after a massive GTA 6 leak revealed countless screenshots, gameplay clips and information about this highly anticipated title.
The eventful weekend was packed with all sorts of information, both legit and fake so we tried to collect the former and make a short timeline, explaining how everything unfolded and what happens next.
Before we get to the actual breakdown of everything bad that happened to Rockstar over the weekend, it's important to say that we won't be sharing any screenshots or videos of GTA 6 here out of respect for the developers who are working hard on the game.
How did it happen?
On Sunday, GTA Forums user "tepotuberhacker" uploaded over 90 videos of what appears to be GTA 6, revealing male and female protagonists, the Vice City setting, combat and much more. The hacker continued posting on the forum, stating that the leak is the result of a hack.
As expected, the footage started spreading like wildfire over various forums, Reddit and social media. A couple of hours after the leaks surfaced online, Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier reported that the footage is indeed real and that we're looking at an early development build of GTA 6.
Ransoming, source code on sale and Telegram messages
Furthermore, tepotuberhacker posted that among the GTA 6 footage, they have also stolen GTA 5 and GTA 6 source code. In one of their posts that you can see below, the hacker invites Rockstar's employees to contact them via email or Telegram, in order to "negotiate a deal"
Hacker then stated that they are willing to sell the GTA 5 and GTA 6 source code and started listening to offers of "no less than 5 figures".
GTA Forums / screengrab
Take-Two lawyers in action
Hours after the footage and information spread over the internet, Take-Two finally started issuing DMCA copyright claims against users who shared GTA 6 footage. GTA subreddit was shut down temporarily, GTA Forums admins closed the topic and told users to stop sharing links to the stolen content.
Twitter users who shared the content got suspended and videos got deleted from the platform in quick succession.
Hacker gets a taste of his own medicine
While this was happening, the hacker's proton email account was allegedly hacked, stealing his and his family's information which was then stored to Darkweb's notorious doxing website doxbin.
Shortly after those events, the hacker backtracked on his earlier statement, saying that GTA 6 source code is not for sale anymore.
Then, he was banned from the GTA Forums, Telegram, Discord and many other platforms.
Take-Two are still cleaning the internet of the leaked GTA 6 content.
Rockstar statement + hacker disappears
Rockstar have released an official statement , acknowledging the hacker attack. The company also offered an encouraging update on the development process of GTA 6, confirming that the attack should not delay or slow them down.
As for the hacker, it remains to be seen if they appear on the internet again, given that Take-Two probably have a whole army of people trying to track down this person and get him arrested.
All in all, we'll keep an eye out for anything new in the next couple of days and update the article accordingly.
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