The most important thing to know about the Grand Theft Auto VI leak is that the show will still go on as intended. According to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, who spoke with people inside Rockstar Games this week, the studio has no plans to move the premiere of Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look from its original schedule on Netflix, and the entire incident will not have any effect on its marketing at all.
After a week of stolen footage flooding the internet, Rockstar is holding the line. In the meantime, Take-Two Interactive is working behind the scenes, using the law to its fullest extent to catch the culprit.
As per Schreier's sources, the game is still not finished but it's close to done and it's still coming out November 19, which we've known for a while already. Pre-orders have already broken several records even though Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick is refusing to confirm it just yet, and Schreier expects the leak to do little or nothing to the final sales tally.
Now for the most interesting part of Schreier's report, because it definitely isn't the footage or what he said about it.
The leaked clips, by his own account, are unremarkable, showing Jason Duval driving around a gorgeous Vice City, getting into a knife fight, flying a plane, listening to the radio. It looks, in other words, like a Grand Theft Auto game developed and released for current generation consoles. Rather, it's what's going on over at Rockstar right now.
You see, after the big 2022 leak, Rockstar clamped down hard. It ended remote work and ordered the GTA 6 team back into the office five days a week, and it went further than an ordinary return-to-office by cutting off remote access to the tools and builds entirely. Employees hated it, said so, and lived with it for years, because they were told it was the price of keeping the game from leaking again. Yet it still happened, so you can only imagine how those employees feel right now.
The people who gave up their flexibility for that security are now watching it fail in real time, which likely leaves them demoralised and frustrated.
To make matters worse, GTA fan's first real look at the game is of older, unpolished footage smeared with memecoin watermarks, played by a leaker who, by several accounts, is not even good at the game. After putting in years of work, watching your big reveal get hijacked by a barcode and a bad driver will leave you at a loss for words. Schreier notes that the situation isn't any better for Netflix, which was promised that premiere.
Where the GTA 6 leak actually lands
What could be hit | The real impact |
|---|---|
Sales | Minimal. Pre-orders already broke records, and the footage just looks like a GTA game |
Take-Two's stock | Overblown. A few-percent dip has many causes, and a market-cap drop is not lost cash |
The August 27 Netflix reveal | Undercut. The leak spoiled the planned first official gameplay look |
Employee morale | The real damage. Staff are exhausted and feel their work was hijacked |
Release date | Untouched. Close but not finished, still on track for November 19 |
The financial hit is mostly just for the headlines. The toll that it's taking is most felt by the people who made the game.
So where does the damage actually hit the hardest? It's definitely not financial. The toll is on the people who made the game.
We've known from previous Rockstar developer interviews how much work and effort was and is still being put into making GTA 6. It's also the first GTA 6 without Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser, a game releasing on the tail end of the current console generation lifecycle, and a game that has had at least three delays now. The last thing the folks reportedly working endless nights to finish GTA 6 is for this leak to happen.
Whether it's out of sympathy, fear, respect, or all those feelings combined, Stop Killing Games and streamers are standing in solidarity with Rockstar as it deals with the latest GTA 6 leak and subsequent fallout.
However, Schreier made it clear that Take-Two isn't losing billions because of this. The share price dipped a couple of points over the past two days, and that sort of thing happens. No one can reliably predict what the stock market will do on any given day. Besides, we made the same point when the leak first broke and we're standing by it: this is not a company leaks tend to leave hurting financially.
So, now more than ever, Rockstar and Take-Two needs August 27 to happen. It was always its chance to GTA 6 on its own terms. After a week of watching a stranger present their best work in the worst light possible, and still get praised, it's easy to imagine the developers wanting that official reveal more than anyone.