A real Florida nudist resort has spent the last week explaining to the internet that it is a resort in Florida and not a location in Grand Theft Auto VI. Cypress Cove, a family-owned clothing-optional resort near Kissimmee, got dragged into the GTA 6 leaks after fans decided it inspired a nudist area shown in leaked footage and its Google reviews have been a mess ever since.
Back in late August, before the Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look, various unauthorized clips leaked online. One of them showed Jason wandering through a particularly vulgar spot somewhere in Leonida, the game's fictionalized version of Florida. Fans went looking for the real-world match and decided that it was Cypress Cove, which has operated near Kissimmee since 1964.
Then, for some reason, they buried its Google page. Over the past week, in particular, reviews poured in name-dropping Jason, Lucia and plans to "book a reservation on Nov. 19 and play GTA 6 nude for three days." Some were written as if the game's events had happened at the actual resort, which is just annoying for a business trying to show real guest reviews.
How a GTA 6 leak became a real resort's problem
Stage | What happened |
|---|---|
The leak (late August) | Leaked footage showed a clothing-optional area in Leonida |
The match (early September) | Fans linked it to Cypress Cove, a real Florida resort |
The pile-on | Its Google reviews filled with GTA 6 references |
The response | Owners flagged spam and extortion, and refused to pay |
The chain from leaked footage to a Florida business fielding fake reviews.
Some of it went well past a joke. According to the owners, a number of the fake reviews arrived with demands for money to take them down. The resort documented the activity, reported it and started replying to the fake reviews with near-identical notes flagging them as spam, pointing out that the details all came from a video game.
It flatly refused to pay anyone a cent and closed with a line that got the story shared everywhere: "our marketing budget also does not contain a line item for 'internet ransom.'" For good measure, it reminded everyone that Cypress Cove is in Florida, a real resort and not in Leonida.
This entire fiasco fits perfectly with the current run of the hype surrounding Grand Theft Auto bleeding into real life we have seen for weeks, except this one has a victim. A small business got pulled into a leak it had nothing to do with, fielded a wave of fake reviews and some genuine extortion attempts, and had to spend its week swatting down fake reviews.
Rockstar Games has never confirmed Cypress Cove inspired anything and the leaked area may not even make the final game. Doing so will not stop the reviews, either. If anything, it would make them worse. So, even though they didn't do anything, a real business now finds itself stuck cleaning up after all of it and doing it with far better humor than the people who caused it, at least until the hype cools after November.