Over 90 videos and images were leaked.
Rockstar Games has spoken out after hackers leaked Graft Theft Auto VI content in one of the biggest confidential data breaches in gaming history.
More than 90 videos and images of the long-awaited follow up to the 2013 GTA V game were leaked over the weekend – an intrusion which Rockstar Games described as “extremely disappointing”.
The last version of the video game raked in more than $800 million in sales in its first 24 hours on the shelves.
Rockstar Games revealed GTA 6 was in development earlier this year. On Monday, a statement from the US video game publisher confirmed an unauthorised third party had illegally accessed and downloaded confidential information from its systems, including GTA footage.
The team said they don’t currently expect any disruption to live game services, but that they will update gamers again soon and “properly” introduce them to GTA 6 when it is ready.
“We want to thank everyone for their ongoing support through this situation,” the statement concluded.
A Message from Rockstar Games pic.twitter.com/T4Wztu8RW8
— Rockstar Games (@RockstarGames) September 19, 2022
The stolen footage was posted to the GTAForums website by a user called ‘teapotuberhacker’, who claimed to have hacked Rockstar’s internal company Slack feed and gained access to the company’s servers.
While the post has been taken down, the content has still blown up across social media platforms.
SPOILER ALERT: The footage shows animation tests, level layouts and gameplay tests, including some fully-voiced conversations between characters. It also revealed a female protagonist in a fictionalised modern-day Miami, Vice City, the same setting where the 2002 version of Grand Theft Auto was located.
Rockstar Games’ parent company, Take-Two Interactive, has been issuing takedowns to remove the footage.
Speaking to The Guardian and Bloomberg, sources close to Rockstar Games suggested the leak represents an early in-development build of the game that is already a year old.
In-development builds often look rough until the final months of a game’s development, but a Bloomberg reporter who spoke to sources still described the leak as a “nightmare” for Rockstar Games.
