Rockstar calls leaked GTA VI footage 'heartbreaking' for team

Rockstar Games broke its silence on the wave of leaked Grand Theft Auto VI footage, calling the situation "heartbreaking" for the team in a statement posted to X on August 26 — one day before the game's official Extended Look was due to premiere on Netflix.

"It would be an understatement to say that having videos of Grand Theft Auto VI gameplay leak in this way has been heartbreaking for our team, and this is obviously not how we intended for you to see the game after all this time," the studio wrote, adding an apology for how long the game has taken to finish and for the delay in sharing official footage.

The leaks began on August 18, when clips attributed to a persona calling itself "Cyberleek" started appearing on Discord and, later, in a GitHub repository. The footage showed previously unseen gameplay involving protagonist Jason, including a police chase, and ended with what fans identified as a cutscene featuring the second lead, Lucia — material Rockstar had not shown in either of its two trailers to date.

Take-Two Interactive, Rockstar's parent company, responded with two DMCA subpoenas filed in the Southern District of New York on August 20, targeting Microsoft and Discord. The Microsoft filing seeks records tied to the GitHub repository and to Microsoft's own internal investigation of the Cyberleek persona; the Discord filing names three accounts — CYBERLEEK, CINEMATICROCKSTAR and Surfer24k — and asks for phone numbers, linked accounts and device identifiers for anyone who posted in three named servers since June 1. Both companies face a September 4 deadline to respond.

Despite the disruption, Rockstar's statement confirmed that both the Extended Look — streaming on Netflix on August 27 at 3 p.m. ET before going free on YouTube — and the game's November 19 release date remain unchanged. The leak turned what was meant to be a tightly controlled marketing rollout into a legal scramble a day before the studio's own reveal, and gave players an unauthorized, out-of-context look at a story Rockstar had planned to present on its own terms.