The perpetrator of the biggest video game leak of all time has indicated what is about to happen next.
Going by the name Teapotuberhacker on the official Grand Theft Auto forums, he has shared this latest update.
“Ok, so this has gone unexpectedly viral, woke up to 3000 Telegram DM’s. If you are an employee of Rockstar or Take 2 and you’re trying to contact me, send me a message containing 22559219889638875756 on Telegram or you can email me at teapotuberhacker@protonmail.com ** from your corporate email address ** I will try to read all these replies soon – I am looking to negotiate a deal.”
Over the weekend, Teapotuberhacker had suddenly come out leaking a lot of material from Grand Theft Auto VI. They claim they had downloaded this footage from a Slack channel. Given the scale of the leak, the stated financial importance of the game and its franchise, and how severe a breach of security it is, this has to be considered the greatest video game leak of all time.
We won’t be sharing any of the leaked material here. If you do go out of your way to seek it out, you may come out disappointed with what you see. That’s because the game is still in the very middle of its development cycle, and was far from ready for Rockstar to even share a vertical slice with the public.
To refresh everyone’s memories, GTA V was released all the way back in 2013 alongside GTA Online. Thanks to the popularity of GTA Online, Rockstar has focused on development solely on this online live service game for nearly a decade and across three console generations. Fans who loyally stuck by GTA Online have no doubt made the case for Rockstar to delay working on GTA VI for that next decade.
However, Rockstar had not been forthcoming on information on GTA VI, not even willing to commit to a release date or platforms. They did not really confirm development until February of this year, leaving fans in the dark as to when they started proper development or even when they started planning for it. There was also this announcement of some development details, that aren’t that specific nor do they seem totally committal. While Rockstar has the prerogative to make announcements and plan games at their discretion, they unwittingly created this high demand for information that’s made the leaker’s work very popular.
This also isn’t the first time someone has leaked information on GTA VI, albeit an earlier leak is so slight that Rockstar may have decided to let it go. As for what could come next from this leak, Teapotuberhacker may not find things going exactly his way. Rockstar has a long history of playing both plaintiff and defendant in court for their games. On their end, Rockstar hasn’t hesitated to go after fans reverse engineering their games, online game cheat companies, and even the BBC.
The implications for this leak go beyond Teapotuberhacker’s fate, of course. Rockstar may end remote work and/or beef up security for their company. GTA VI may go through serious delays as the studio would be forced to counter the false narrative created by this early footage that the final product would not look good. This leak may have already delegated GTA VI to the very next console generation, after PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: VideoGamesChronicle
