Grand Theft Auto VI

• 1. Introduction

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  Grand Theft Auto VI, the next game from Rockstar Games, drew 46 million views for its first trailer within twelve hours of release. That set a record for a non-music video on YouTube, and the game itself had not yet reached players. It is the eighth main Grand Theft Auto, following Grand Theft Auto V in 2013. Few games get this much attention before anyone can play them. How did Rockstar build that pull while saying almost nothing for years? How did one intruder turn the game's unfinished work into public property? And why does its release date keep moving?

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• 2. Leonida and Its People

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  Leonida, the fictional state at the center of the game, borrows its geography from Florida. Its largest region is Vice City, modeled on Miami, and the game is set predominantly there. Grassrivers draws on the Everglades, and the Leonida Keys echo the Florida Keys. Ambrosia, Mount Kalaga National Park and Port Gellhorn fill out the rest of the map.

  The setting also holds up a mirror to American life in the 2020s. Social media and influencer culture get satirical treatment, as do modern policing tactics and technology such as police body cameras. Internet memes, including Florida Man, find their way in too.

  Jason Duval worked for local drug runners in the Leonida Keys after serving in the Army. Lucia Caminos was imprisoned at Leonida Penitentiary after fighting for her family from Liberty City. She is the first female protagonist in the series that players cannot opt out of. A failed bank heist pulls the pair into a state-wide conspiracy, and they are forced to protect each other.

  Cal Hampton is Jason's paranoid friend, and Raul Bautista is a seasoned bank robber. Brian Heder, a longtime drug runner in the Keys, doubles as Jason's landlord. Boobie Ike runs a business empire in Vice City. With Dre'Quan Priest, he owns the record label Only Raw Records. The label has signed Bae-Luxe and Roxy, a musical duo who perform as Real Dimez.

  The roots of this world stretch back to the aftermath of Grand Theft Auto V.

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• 3. Years in Secret

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  Rockstar began preliminary work in 2014. Early development started in late 2018, after Red Dead Redemption 2, and principal production began in 2020 under the code name Project Americas.

  Journalist Jason Schreier reported that the game would arrive as "a moderately sized release" and expand over time, a plan meant to avoid the developer crunch of earlier titles. He also reported two protagonists inspired by Bonnie and Clyde, one of them Latina, plus a significant online mode akin to Grand Theft Auto Online. He added that the developers were cautiously subverting the series's habit of joking about marginalised groups.

  Earlier reports had their own details. In 2018, The Know reported that the game would be set primarily in Vice City and partly in South America. In 2021, Tom Henderson claimed its map could evolve over time in the manner of Fortnite.

  The game is expected to run on the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine. One credit will look different. Dan Houser left Rockstar in 2020, so he did not write it. It is the first main game since the 1997 original, and the first overall since 2004's Advance, without his writing.

  Every one of those claims came from reporters and leakers rather than from Rockstar.

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• 4. The Long Silence

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  In 2020, Rockstar announced a re-release of Grand Theft Auto V and still said nothing about its successor. Some fans grew frustrated. One individual won media attention by interrupting several live stage and television shows to mention the game.

  On the 4th of February 2022, Rockstar finally confirmed that development was "well underway". That July, the studio said Red Dead Online would receive no more major updates. Development resources were being withdrawn to focus on the upcoming game.

  Industry sources said more resources were reallocated after planned remasters of Grand Theft Auto IV (2008) and Red Dead Redemption (2010) were paused. The pause followed the backlash against Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition, released in 2021.

  Later that year, the first look at the game arrived, and Rockstar did not choose it.

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• 5. The Leak

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  On the 18th of September 2022, a user calling themselves teapotuberhacker posted 90 videos to the forum GTAForums. Together they held 50 minutes of work-in-progress footage. Schreier confirmed with sources at Rockstar that the footage was genuine. The Guardian reported it came from several stages of development, with some videos about a year old.

  The clips showed a modern-day Vice City, animation and gameplay tests, level layouts, and character conversations. In them, Lucia and Jason enter a strip club and rob a diner.

  The poster said the files had been downloaded directly from Rockstar's internal Slack groups. They threatened to publish source code, assets and internal builds of Grand Theft Auto V and VI. They also wrote that they were "looking to negotiate a deal" with Rockstar or its parent company, Take-Two.

  Take-Two submitted takedown requests for YouTube videos that showed or discussed the leaks. It also contacted moderators at GTAForums and Reddit to remove access.

  Journalists called the event one of the biggest leaks in video game history. Schreier described it as "a nightmare for Rockstar Games" that could limit employees' remote-work flexibility. Andrew Uerkwitz, an analyst at the Jefferies Group, called it a "PR disaster" that could delay the game and hurt staff morale. He thought reception and sales were unlikely to suffer.

  The Guardian noted that ill-informed users were widely criticising the footage's quality, though it did not represent the final product. Some users wrongly claimed that graphics and art assets are finalised early in development. Other developers shared their own work-in-progress footage in solidarity. Cliff Bleszinski, Neil Druckmann, Rami Ismail and Alanah Pearce offered sympathy to Rockstar.

  On the 19th of September, Rockstar confirmed a "network intrusion" and lamented how the game had first been shown. It did not anticipate long-term effects on development. For days afterward, it disabled comments and replies on its social media accounts. Take-Two said steps had been taken "to isolate and contain this incident". Its share price fell by more than 6% in pre-market trading that day, then recovered during regular hours.

  Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two's chairman and chief executive, said the incident had made the companies more vigilant about cybersecurity. It had also affected staff emotionally, he said, but business was unaffected. Rockstar later claimed the incident cost $5 million and thousands of staff hours to recover from.

  Within days, police were closing in on whoever sat behind the username.

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• 6. The Intruder

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  Uber had suffered a security breach the week before the leak, and the poster claimed responsibility for it. Uber acknowledged the potential links and said it was working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Department of Justice. It believed the hacker was affiliated with Lapsus$, a group thought to have breached companies such as Microsoft, Nvidia and Samsung over the preceding year.

  On the 22nd of September, the City of London Police arrested a 17-year-old boy from Oxfordshire. He was identified as teapotuberhacker and as a key member of Lapsus$. The National Cyber Crime Unit and American federal law enforcement supported the investigation.

  He was on bail for hacking EE and Nvidia, and under police protection at a Travelodge hotel, when he breached Rockstar. He used a mobile phone, a television and an Amazon Fire TV Stick. In a Slack message to all Rockstar staff, he threatened to release the source code.

  At Highbury Corner Youth Court, he pleaded guilty to two counts of breaching bail conditions. He pleaded not guilty to two counts of computer misuse. The case was referred to a higher court, and he was remanded to a young offender institution.

  In mid-2023, he stood trial at Southwark Crown Court on twelve offences. They included six counts of computer misuse, three of blackmail and two of fraud. Because of his autism, he was deemed unfit to stand trial. A jury instead decided whether he had committed the acts, and it found that he had.

  That December, a judge placed him under an indefinite hospital order. The judge cited a high risk to the public, since he had expressed an intent to continue committing cybercrimes.

  Rockstar, for its part, was by then preparing to show the game properly.

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• 7. Trailer Records

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  In November 2023, Sam Houser, the president of Rockstar Games, announced that the first trailer would arrive in early December. The date was chosen to celebrate the company's 25th anniversary. Within five hours, the announcement on Twitter became the platform's most-liked gaming-related post. A later post giving the 5th of December release date passed it, reaching 1.8 million likes in 24 hours. Other developers imitated the announcement's formatting to promote their own trailers.

  On the 4th of December, a low-quality version of the trailer leaked on Twitter. Rockstar responded by publishing the official version on YouTube. It revealed the title, the protagonists, the setting, and a 2025 release window for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S.

  Within 24 hours, the trailer was the third-most-viewed video on YouTube overall, with 93 million views. It was also the most-liked game trailer, with 8.9 million likes. Within two days it passed the lifetime views of the 2011 reveal trailer for Grand Theft Auto V, reaching 101 million. It stood at 168 million by January 2024, and at 268 million by November 2025.

  Tom Petty's "Love Is a Long Road" featured in the trailer. The song saw Spotify streams rise by nearly 37,000%, drew almost 250,000 searches on Shazam, and ranked second on the worldwide iTunes chart. Fans recreated the trailer in other video games and other media, including as a brickfilm and in live-action.

  On the 1st of January 2025, a Reddit user posted a photograph and two videos of a PlayStation 5 development kit running the game. The poster said they had worked at the Rockstar office for a few months in mid-2021. The post was later deleted. Judging by the surroundings, Eurogamer determined the images were taken at Rockstar San Diego. Ian Walker of Polygon found no new information and called it the "worst leak of all time".

  The second trailer arrived on the 6th of May 2025 and revealed the protagonists' full names. Many viewers took the opening, where Jason says he is "just fixing some leaks", as a reference to the game's troubled history. Its songs included "Hot Together" by the Pointer Sisters, which saw Spotify streams rise by 182,000%. Others were Wang Chung's "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" and Tammy Wynette's "Talkin' to Myself Again".

  Some viewers doubted that the graphics were real. Rockstar reiterated that the trailer was composed of cutscenes and gameplay recorded on the PlayStation 5. A website update brought 70 screenshots and several character and location descriptions.

  The trailer received over 475 million views within 24 hours across all platforms, beating Deadpool & Wolverine as the biggest video launch. In 2025, it won Best Game Trailer at the Golden Joystick Awards.

  In November 2025, footage imitating the game received millions of views before its creator admitted it was a deepfake. Later that week, some development footage was spotted in a former Rockstar animator's demo reel.

  Marketing for the game is set to begin alongside preorders in mid-2026.

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• 8. Industry Bets

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  At the Golden Joystick Awards, Grand Theft Auto VI won Most Wanted Game. At the Game Awards, it won Most Anticipated Game. It took both honors in 2024 and again in 2025.

  Rival publishers watched Rockstar's calendar closely. Several waited for a release date announcement before scheduling their own games, and others were prepared to reschedule to avoid competition. Schreier described the standoff as playing out across the entire video-game industry.

  Some industry figures hope the game sells for as much as $100, above the standard $70, because it might prompt a wider trend. Analysts consider that unlikely, since a higher price could limit sales.

  Circana predicted the game could help the market rebound with record consumer spending. DFC Intelligence projected sales of 40 million and earnings of $3.2 billion in the first year, including $1 billion in preorders. That would double Grand Theft Auto V, which had the highest-grossing game launch.

  Rumours and analysts suggested the budget surpassed $1-2 billion, which would make it the most expensive game ever developed. That figure remains unverified.

  Whether the forecasts hold depends on a date that has already moved more than once.

  From April 2024, Rockstar asked employees to stop working remotely and return to offices "for productivity and security" in the final stages of development. The Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain criticised the company for contradicting its promise to maintain flexible working conditions. Some employees worried the change could hurt their health and morale and prompt resignations and crunch.

  Zack Zwiezen of Kotaku reported that the decision was partly meant to avoid a delay. Other journalists and Take-Two said the game remained on schedule for late 2025. The amount of remaining work led employees to expect a delay anyway. In May 2025, the release moved to the 26th of May 2026.

  On the 30th of October 2025, Rockstar fired 34 employees, citing public discussion and distribution of confidential information. The union accused the company of union busting, saying the workers were attempting to unionise with labour organisers. Protests followed outside Rockstar North and Take-Two's offices.

  The following week, Rockstar delayed the game to the 19th of November 2026, citing additional polish. Journalists noted that the firings did not cause the delay but could lead to missed deadlines. A Rockstar North employee said morale was "at rock bottom". Take-Two's stock price briefly dropped by almost 10%.

  Other developers supported the delay, and a Polish politician jokingly referenced it in a Sejm session. Some players expressed waning interest, while others found the wait acceptable. Analysts expected publishers to move their games into the vacated release window or away from the new date.

  The new date applies to the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X/S.

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