The fallout from this weekend’s big GTA 6 leak continues to dominate the gaming community today. As reported yesterday, a substantial amount of pre-release footage from the title was leaked online via the GTA Forums. This, in turn, naturally made its way onto Reddit and then elsewhere on the internet, in what’s probably been one of the most extensive and damaging game leaks in quite some time.
Today though, Rockstar Games’ parent company Take-Two is taking absolutely no prisoners in its efforts to rid the internet of the leaked footage. Both the GTA Forums and the GTA 6 subreddit played host to the video footage, which was leaked by a user named ‘teapotuberhacker’ on Sunday. More than 90 videos and screenshots of in-development footage made their way onto both the forums and the subreddit, and Take-Two has now reportedly ordered any links to the leaked content to be taken down immediately.
As reported in VGC and spotted by industry journalist Tom Henderson, Take-Two reached out to the GTA Forums team and requested that the thread containing the original leak be removed, which they have complied with. A statement from a member of the GTA Forums admin team explains that “we have been contacted by Take-Two Interactive to take down copyrighted material from GTA Forums.” They continue, explaining that “as usual with previous games, we will be complying and this topic will be re-opened in due course. Thanks for understanding.” After a temporary disappearance, the original thread is now back up on the forums but any and all references to the leaked content have been wiped from the board.
It’s been a similar story over on the GTA 6 subreddit. After contact from Take-Two’s legal team, the whole r/GTA6 subreddit was closed down. It appears that again, all links to the leaked footage have been removed and as of the time of writing, the subreddit is open once more. However, there are some stipulations for use going forward. A recent post from the moderation team reads as follows.
“We are opening the subreddit with a condition that no one can post links, photos, and videos of recent leaks. This is done so to protect the subreddit from getting obliterated by Rockstar Games. However, we will allow discussions related to the leak without attaching the leaks. We don’t allow comments that have download links to the leak.”
Videos of the leaked content have also been removed from YouTube at Take-Two’s request, in what must surely be a major cleanup job for the company at this point. Rockstar Games has since come out and publicly responded to the leak for the first time since it happened. Taking to Twitter earlier today, the developer expressed its dismay at the preemptive sharing of what’s now confirmed to be in-development footage and pre-release content.
Rockstar says that it is “extremely disappointed to have any details of our next game shared with you all in this way,” which is completely understandable. Given that GTA 6 is probably at least another two to three years away from being released, it is a shame that someone has tried to spoil what’s coming up by sharing some of the game’s work-in-progress footage. In the meantime, it’s clear that Take-Two will be continuing to take immediate and necessary steps to clean up the mess caused by the leaker and attempt to prevent anything else from getting out about GTA 6 just yet.
