Someone restored an old PlayStation 3 development kit and recorded hours of gameplay from a Grand Theft Auto V build dated July 2013, months before its official release. The files went up on the Internet Archive on Monday, August 23, under the handle justac0d3r. The same uploader opened a second archive tagged to Rockstar Games' long-cancelled spy project Agent, though that one is more of a teaser as it currently holds little more than an image.
A "devkit" is basically the special hardware Rockstar used while building the game. For this particular case, these recordings are not a playable download of the unfinished game. Instead, they are video captures of someone walking around, driving, and messing around with multiplayer in a version that sat roughly two months before the retail launch.
The GTA 5 archive contains several single-player demos and one multiplayer session that runs about an hour, clocking in at around 7GB in total. The build is dated close enough to the actual release date that most of the systems look finished, with only minor differences in logos, debut elements, and polish.
GTA 5 July 2013 Devkit Recordings
File name | Approximate length | Content focus |
|---|---|---|
dem1.mp4 | 36 minutes | Single-player demo |
dem2.mp4 | 24 minutes | Single-player demo |
dem3.mp4 | 6 minutes | Single-player demo |
dem5.mp4 | 4.5 minutes | Single-player demo |
sp_demo.mp4 | 21 minutes | Single-player demo |
mp_demo.mp4 | 62 minutes | Multiplayer demo |
Breakdown of the gameplay capture files currently available in the Internet Archive upload, showing approximate runtimes and focus of each recording.
This is not the first time PS3-era Grand Theft Auto material has appeared. Earlier dumps of leftover assets and install data from related hardware have circulated through preservation sites for a couple of years. The new videos simply let regular players watch the thing in real life.
The Agent side of the upload is just as interesting. Rockstar announced the Cold War spy game as a PlayStation 3 exclusive years earlier, then quietly let it fade. Internal codenames, concept art, and later model finds inside GTA 5 source material have kept the project in the conversation. Rockstar has since reused the material in Grand Theft Auto Online and even attempted to recycle the idea in the now-cancelled "Agent Trevor" DLC that a former developer and Steven Ogg himself confirmed.
Rockstar has never openly talked about the games they never shipped. Former staff have described Agent as a distraction that lost out to other priorities. Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser later said the open-world spy concept never fully clicked despite their multiple attempts.
The timing of the release is oddly fitting. The internet is currently drowning in Grand Theft Auto VI footage, particularly from leaks that Take-Two Interactive is working round the clock to contain. A confirmed near-final look at the previous mainline game uploaded on the internet at the same time won't make as much noise, but it does provide a change of pace. It also proves that Rockstar's development process has always produced more material than it ever ships. Some of it eventually leaks or gets restored by collectors. Most of it does not.
The videos are public on the Archive page. Anyone can stream or download them. Don't expect much. They don't reveal major cut content. However, they do serve as a concrete record of how the game looked and behaved on the original hardware just before it left the building and how much unfinished business remains hidden deep inside Rockstar's closet.