A new GTAForums account posted download links to more than 90 files of in-development Grand Theft Auto VI footage. Rockstar confirmed the breach the next day and Take-Two filed it with the SEC. It is still the largest leak in the history of the medium.

What actually leaked

• More than 90 video files of varying length, showing pre-alpha gameplay, debug overlays and unfinished animation
• Two playable characters, one of them a woman, matching the Bloomberg report from two months earlier
• Vice City locations, a diner robbery sequence, and early vehicle and pedestrian behaviour
• The hacker also claimed to hold Grand Theft Auto V and VI source code and threatened to publish it

Standing: Verified

Confirmed by Rockstar in a public statement on 19 September 2022 and disclosed by Take-Two to the SEC the same day. Take-Two issued takedown notices within hours and GTAForums threads were locked at its request.

What happened next

The hacker was Arion Kurtaj, a 17-year-old from Oxfordshire and a founding member of Lapsus$. He got into Rockstar's systems from a hotel room using an Amazon Fire TV Stick, a phone and the room's television, then posted in the company's own Slack that he was a hacker. In December 2023 a UK judge placed him under an indefinite hospital order after doctors assessed him as a continuing public risk; a second Lapsus$ member, then 17, received a youth rehabilitation order at Guildford Crown Court on 21 December 2023. Reporting in July 2026 said Kurtaj had left hospital and was in prison awaiting a retrial listed for November.

Systems traced to this leak

• Two playable leadsStory · Verified
• Modern-day Vice CityWorld · Verified

Sources