Leaks

0:09 Grand Theft Auto 6 has leaked three times on a large scale: 90 videos stolen from Rockstar's Slack in September 2022, a photo and videos of a development kit in January 2025, and clips posted by an account called CyberLeek in August and October 2026, which never posted the whole build it threatened and said on Oct 14, 2026 that its leaks had stopped. Rockstar has joked about it: Trailer 2 opens with Jason up on a roof, "just fixing some leaks". The first leak, in 2022, came before the game was even revealed and was called one of the biggest in the history of the games industry. The leaks of August 2026 ran for more than a week before Rockstar's own first gameplay showing, An Extended Look, and the same leaker came back in October, six weeks before release.

Quick facts

2022: the Slack hack

On Sep 18, 2022, a user calling themselves "teapotuberhacker" posted 90 videos to GTAForums, about 50 minutes of work-in-progress footage taken from Rockstar's internal Slack, and threatened to release source code and builds of Grand Theft Auto V and VI. Take-Two had the videos taken down. Jason Schreier called it "a nightmare for Rockstar". The hacker, Arion Kurtaj, a 17-year-old from Oxfordshire and a key member of the group Lapsus$, had broken in while on bail and under police protection in a hotel, using a phone, a television and a Fire TV Stick. He was arrested on Sep 22, found by a jury in 2023 to have committed the acts but judged unfit to stand trial, and placed under an indefinite hospital order that December. Rockstar told the court the hack cost it $5 million and thousands of staff hours. In July 2026, once a High Court judge lifted reporting restrictions, the BBC's Joe Tidy reported that Kurtaj had left the secure hospital for an ordinary prison, to face a standard criminal trial with hearings set to start in November 2026, the month the game comes out; why he was now found fit to stand trial has not been explained.

19:18 Rockstar has nodded to that leak since. One of the robberies in the Extended Look takes place at Hank's Waffles, the diner of a robbery seen in the 2022 footage, which TGG calls fan service: "We're getting nostalgic for leaks."

2026: CyberLeek

0:25 In August 2026 an account called CyberLeek posted the game's map and several minutes of footage, some of it apparently from a playable build, and threatened more unless Rockstar changed its plans for Ultimate Edition content and the discless boxed copy. Its videos carried the watermark of a "$CYBERLEEK" meme coin, and paying token holders voted on which clip came next; at least sixteen appeared in nine days. penguinz0 describes the hunt that followed, with impersonators and fake accounts trying to cash in, and the coin "pumping". Take-Two sought records from Discord, Microsoft and X in a New York federal court to identify the leaker.

1:12 On Aug 26, the day before the Extended Look, Rockstar spoke: "It would be an understatement to say that having videos of Grand Theft Auto VI gameplay leaked in this way has been heartbreaking for our team, and this is obviously not how we intended for you to see the game after all this time." It apologized for how long everything had taken and asked players to "wait a bit longer to experience the game for themselves on November 19."

2:47 penguinz0 thought the leaks undercut the developers, since some of the footage was from older builds, but did not expect them to hurt the game: if anything, they raised interest in the Extended Look. On Aug 27, hours before the premiere, CyberLeek withdrew about $268,000 in fees to four crypto wallets and the coin collapsed.

0:40 Watching the official footage, DarkViperAU, whose Discord server was among those subpoenaed, said he had doubted the leaker's claim of a new build all along, found Jason sounding better than in the leaked clips, and concluded that the leaker had only ever been in it for the money. Some leaked clips had raised fears of a graphical downgrade since the first trailer; to DarkViperAU and Luke Stephens, the official footage looked far better than the leaks.

CyberLeek went quiet after the coin collapsed, until Oct 8, 2026, when it posted a 25-minute video called "Extended Leek", a jab at the Extended Look. Days before, GameSpot reported, a poll with an Oct 8 deadline had appeared on its site and the project's crypto wallet had come back to life. Unlike the August clips, which mostly kept away from the story, the new video was full of story scenes, Kotaku found, along with a dirt bike race, a street race, Jason wandering around entirely naked, and a closing tease of more to come.

On Oct 10, 2026 CyberLeek raised the stakes. A notice on its site promised to post the entire build, "full story mode, played to the end, credits and all", if its coin reached a market value of $30 million, and offered Take-Two "one way out: physical disks and a public apology", Kotaku reported. The coin passed $4.75 million that weekend as more clips appeared, then lost half its value in a day; on Oct 12, with the market value near $2.2 million, CyberLeek posted a "roadmap" of further clips tied to price milestones.

On Oct 14, 2026 CyberLeek posted a three-part message, "End of the road". "The 30M was not reached, so no build," it wrote, adding that it would not publish the ending because that would "ruin the experience for the gamers", that it denied the scheme was a scam, and that "The leeks stop here. For now." Kotaku noted that the leaker still claimed to hold story spoilers and a "dead man's switch" to release them if anyone came after it. Nothing CyberLeek has claimed about a build has been confirmed by Rockstar.

The same day Bloomberg published a long report on the game's making, and Aaron Garbut of Rockstar North, who has worked on the series since the first game, described seeing the 2022 footage spread: "It feels like somebody's wading through your dirty washing. It's like they're inside your head," he said, calling it "weirdly invasive". After that leak Rockstar brought everyone back to the office five days a week by 2024 and stopped staff reaching its servers from home, Kotaku summarized; head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe doubted the studio would return to hybrid work soon, saying "if we did not have a game that people wanted to steal as much, maybe it would be an easier conversation". Bloomberg reported frustration inside the studio that the August leaks happened anyway.

Other leaks

In January 2025 a Reddit user posted a photo and two videos of a PlayStation 5 development kit running the game at Rockstar San Diego in mid-2021; Polygon's Ian Walker called it the "worst leak of all time" because it showed nothing new. In November 2025 some development footage turned up in a former Rockstar animator's showreel. After the firings of October 2025, Rockstar said the 34 employees had shared confidential information in public; see Development.

Frequently asked questions

Did CyberLeek leak the whole GTA 6 build? No. CyberLeek threatened on Oct 10, 2026 to post the entire Grand Theft Auto 6 build if its meme coin reached a $30 million market value; it did not, and on Oct 14, 2026 the leaker said "no build" would be posted and that its leaks had stopped "for now".

Has the GTA 6 ending leaked? Not as of Oct 15, 2026. CyberLeek claimed on Oct 14 to have the ending of Grand Theft Auto 6 but said it would stay unpublished; Rockstar has not commented on the claim.

Who hacked Rockstar in 2022? A 17-year-old from Oxfordshire, a member of the group Lapsus$, posted 90 videos of early Grand Theft Auto 6 footage in September 2022 and was arrested days later; a court placed him under a hospital order in 2023.

Who is CyberLeek? Nobody has said publicly as of Oct 21, 2026. CyberLeek is the anonymous account that posted Grand Theft Auto 6 footage tied to a "$CYBERLEEK" meme coin in August and October 2026; Take-Two asked a New York federal court for records from Discord, Microsoft and X to identify it.

What happened to the hacker who leaked GTA 6 in 2022? Arion Kurtaj, the Lapsus$ member behind the 2022 leak, was placed under an indefinite hospital order in December 2023, moved to prison in July 2026, and faces a criminal trial set to start in November 2026.

Has Rockstar confirmed the leaked GTA 6 footage? Only in part. Rockstar's statement of Aug 26, 2026 acknowledged that "videos of Grand Theft Auto VI gameplay" had leaked and called it heartbreaking for its team, but it has not confirmed CyberLeek's claims about a build or the story as of Oct 21, 2026.

Are the leaked GTA 6 clips what the game looks like? Not necessarily. Some leaked Grand Theft Auto 6 footage came from older builds, and commentators including DarkViperAU found Rockstar's own Extended Look of Aug 27, 2026 far better looking than the leaks.

Sources

• Grand Theft Auto 6, Wikipedia (the 2022, 2025 and 2026 leaks, the trial, CyberLeek)
• Rockstar officially responds to GTA 6 leaks, GamesRadar+, Aug 26, 2026
• GTA 6 Leaks Aren't Over Yet, As New 25-Minute Gameplay Footage Appears, GameSpot, Oct 8, 2026
• Massive GTA 6 Leak Reveals Story Spoilers, Car Chases, And Jason's Dong, Kotaku, Oct 8, 2026
• GTA 6 Leaker Threatens Rockstar With Doomsday Scenario If Meme Coin Hits $30 Million, Kotaku, Oct 10, 2026
• GTA 6 Leaker Promises Escalating Mayhem As Meme Coin Crashes, Kotaku, Oct 12, 2026
• GTA 6 Leaker Announces They Won't Release The Full Game: 'The Leeks Stop For Now', Kotaku, Oct 14, 2026
• GTA 6 Lead Reacts To The Infamous 2022 Leak: 'Like Somebody's Wading Through Your Dirty Washing', Kotaku, Oct 14, 2026 (Bloomberg's report of Oct 14)
• Grand Theft Auto 6 Hacker Has Been Moved to Prison to Await Retrial, GamingBolt, Jul 17, 2026 (citing the BBC's Joe Tidy)
• Grand Theft Auto 6 Trailer 2, Rockstar Games, May 6, 2025 (video)
• GTA 6: Every New Gameplay Feature & Mechanic YOU MISSED, TGG, Aug 28, 2026 (video)
• Rockstar Addressed the Leaks, penguinz0, Aug 27, 2026 (video)
• GTA 6's Extended Look Has SO Many Details... Full Breakdown, DarkViperAU, Aug 28, 2026 (video)
• RE: The 'GTA 6' reveal..., Luke Stephens, Aug 28, 2026 (video)