Rockstar Responds To Illegal GTA 6 Leak, Messy Consequences Unfold

The effects of this weekend GTA VI the leaks are going to be long-lasting, but the immediate consequences are already disconcerting enough to be chronic. As you’d expect, Take-Two goes into a full Streisand maneuver and tries to DMCA all of the leaked footage. At the same time, the source code of GTA V appears to be offered for sale, while the originator of the leak plays mole against himself. And just then, Rockstar confirmed the leak was real.

“We recently experienced a network intrusion,” Rockstar Games says in an official statement. by Twitter. “An unauthorized third party has illegally accessed and downloaded confidential information from our systems, including early development footage for the upcoming Grand Theft Auto.”

They continue, responding directly to many speculations that leaks like this can significantly delay a game’s progress, “We do not anticipate any disruption to our live game services or any long-term effects on the development of our current projects.

Rockstar adds that they’re “extremely disappointed” with the leak and that they’ll “properly pitch” the game to us when it’s ready.

Already, a number of videos linked by Kotaku yesterday disappeared from Twitter and YouTube, in a move that had previously removed any doubts about the validity of the images. You do not issue DMCA takedowns of videos that do not belong to you. By doing so, the videos will of course continue to appear elsewhere, and it is always futile to try to control them.

Going by variations of the Tea Pot name, what appear to be various imitators of the original laker have been busy overnight, trying to cash in on it in the most surprisingly blatant way. The knockoffs were somewhat successful as the original teapot was apparently trying to get in touch with Rockstar or Take-Two to “negotiate a deal”. which they were doing in tandem with offering to sell the source code for GTA Vwhile implying that he owns the source code for GTA VI. As Teapot fell asleep or settled down, others began to cash in on the public’s desire to see more of this buzzing game. Some were share their bitcoin walletbut everyone seemed to be asking for an offer.

An alleged conversation with Tea Pot from someone claiming to work for Rockstar shows the backer claiming to have the source code for both games and saying, “Tell me your price.”

The GTA6 subreddit was shut down for a while, while moderators stripped it of leaked content, presumably after the lawyers started grumbling. The subreddit is open againbut with the strict instructions that none of the publicly available links, videos or images from the leak be included, “did this to protect the subreddit from being deleted by Rockstar Games”.

GTA Forums, where the lessor had posted, also received communications from attorneys for Take-Two, demanding that they remove all “copyrighted material”. A moderator said Kotaku, “It’s been a day,” while emphasizing how tricky their job is right now. It “definitely made things harder to moderate!” they told us.

At some point yesterday, Tea Pot’s account has been deleted even from the Wild West of messaging apps, Telegram. Tea Pot confirmed it, posting on GTA Forums to complain that his original thread had been deleted, saying, “My thread has become one of the most popular in forum history. WHERE DID HE GO ??? btw telegram suspended my other account, new account is @lilyhowarth. Even that thread has since been deleted.

No one knows who Tea Pot/Lily Howarth really is, with one person posting in a soon-to-be-deleted thread on GTA Forums“Apparently confirmed to be a 17-year-old Spanish, British 18-year-old but Russian hacker who lives in England.”