Take-Two Interactive is done casting a wide net. In new court filings, the publisher says its hunt for whoever leaked Grand Theft Auto VI footage is "rapidly evolving," and this time it wants the details kept secret. After a first round of subpoenas that swept up thousands of Discord users, its latest request, as reported by TorrentFreak, zeroes in on just one or two people it says it has now identified, and it is asking a judge to seal the filing so the targets do not catch wind and start deleting evidence.
A DMCA subpoena lets a rights-holder pull identifying information from a platform like Discord without having to sue anyone first. Take-Two fired off a cluster of them the moment the leaks started, aimed at Discord, Microsoft, X, and YouTube. The first request was public, but the new one is narrower, sealed, and pointed at people rather than an entire crowd. Take-Two has even withdrawn its YouTube subpoena, saying it no longer needs it.
This kind of targeted approach only happens when you think you have a name and you would rather not spook them into wiping their tracks.
How Take-Two's leaker hunt narrowed
Aspect | First subpoena (public) | New request (under seal) |
|---|---|---|
Targets | Thousands of Discord users | One identified user, plus one newly identified |
Information | Broad, including IP addresses and phone numbers | Narrow, tied to specific users and servers |
Visibility | Public, so reporters found the named servers | Sealed, hidden so the targets cannot react |
The read | Casting a wide net for leads | Zeroing in on people it thinks it has found |
The shift from the first public subpoena to the new sealed request, and what it means.
Let's say Take-Two gets its name, or names. Then what? The footage is already out. It has been screencapped, reuploaded, and picked apart for two weeks. Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look came and went, pre-orders spiked nearly 600% on PlayStation regardless, and the group behind it, Cyberleek, reportedly cashed out more than $200,000 in a memecoin rug pull before going quiet. You cannot un-leak a game. Whatever Take-Two recovers here, it is not the footage and it is not the money.
So what is all the legal firepower actually buying? Deterrence, mostly. This is Take-Two making an example, loudly and expensively, so the next person who thinks about leaking a Rockstar Games build remembers that the company will spend whatever it takes, for however long it takes, to find them. It is also, quietly, about the people who built the game, whose reveal got hijacked and who deserve to see someone answer for it.
In a nut shell, this is about Take-Two going Tywin Lannister and making sure that no one treats their house from impunity and gets away with it.
Just like the Lannisters, who are famous for their bottomless gold coffers, Take-Two can afford to chase this indefinitely, because it costs the company nothing it will miss. The leak did not dent demand, the stock barely twitched, and a publisher that has talked openly about an unlimited GTA 6 budget is not about to flinch at legal fees.
The sealed subpoena is genuinely revealing, then, just maybe not the way it first looks. It shows a company that has stayed publicly unbothered about the leaks the entire time while privately running a manhunt.
Catching Cyberleek will not change a single thing about Grand Theft Auto when it lands in November. It might change what the next leaker decides to do, though, and for Take-Two, that is probably the entire point.