GTA 6 has, and continues to be, affected by leaked footage from the game finding its way out into the world without Rockstar’s say-so. It’s been happening since 2022, when leaked footage from the game damn near broke the internet on an otherwise quiet Sunday morning. For the first time, Rockstar developers working on GTA 6 have gone into detail about how that affected them and the game’s progress.
“It’s Like They’re Inside Your Head”
Aaron Garbut, one of three heads of development at Rockstar working on GTA 6, opened up about the 2022 leak during an interview with Bloomberg. “It feels like somebody’s wading through your dirty washing,” Garbut said. “It’s like they’re inside your head.”
“You see your early work out there. Nobody’s ever supposed to see that. It’s really weirdly invasive. And so it’s quite hard to deal with on an emotional level,” he continued. Rockstar did eventually officially address the leak, just to confirm it was real, but this is the first time anyone from the studio has gone into detail about the effect it had on those working on the game.
The World’s First Unofficial Look At GTA 6
The videos that leaked that day confirmed all sorts of early details about GTA 6. It showed a male and female protagonist working together, who we now know are Jason and Lucia. The footage was raw, but because it was GTA, the world stopped and watched. We always knew that those at Rockstar working on the game must have been feeling all sorts of emotions when they got wind of the leak; now we know just how big of an impact it had on the team.
As Garbut highlights, it wasn’t just that people were getting a look at the game before Rockstar wanted them to – it was the version of the game they were being shown that likely stung the most. This was four years ago, and even then, the footage that leaked may well have been old stuff that was not only never going to be shown, but may have never been used at all.
The leaker behind that original footage finding its way out into the world was tracked down and punished severely. They were initially placed in a secure hospital indefinitely due to a severe autism diagnosis. However, the leaker was released earlier this year and is now awaiting a criminal trial, although what kind of sentencing he might face remains unclear.
The severity with which that initial leak was treated makes it all the more baffling that we’re in a similar boat four years later. The more recent, still ongoing GTA 6 leaks were not addressed in the interview. However, as recently as Monday, a leaker who calls themselves Cyberleek shared new, unseen Lucia footage that heavily implies they have a playable build of the game.
