GTA 5 Fans Beware: Question Every "Leak" and "Rumor"

Some gaming sites on the internet would have you believe in every rumor and so-called "leak" that surfaces about Grand Theft Auto V. It's a big place, after all.

We're no strangers to reporting on rumors, because they sometimes pan out to be real. In the case of the Grand Theft Auto V map leak, however, we've found that the supposed leak was nothing more than a hoax, and not even a clever one at that.

Three supposedly leaked images of the game surfaced yesterday depicting GTA V's in-game map and a screenshot of the main character with a minimap to the bottom left. We believe the images to be clever hoaxes, as they were obviously doctored in Photoshop and then photographed with a camera.

The screenshots appear to be taken from a modified version of Grand Theft Auto IV, as they bear far too many similarities with the game. A real leak would have shown one of the locations seen in the GTA V trailer from multiple perspectives.

Of course, we can't discount the possibility that the screenshots are being leaked out by Rockstar's PR department, but the chance that they were behind it is pretty slim given the GTA community's penchant for hyping the game on their own.