GTA 6 Leaked Footage: What the 2022 Leak Revealed and Why Fans Are Eager to Play

Update (October 2026): The 2022 leak turned out to be an early look at the real game. Rockstar announced Grand Theft Auto VI on December 4, 2023, and after two delays it is due on November 19, 2026, on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. A second wave of gameplay leaks hit in August 2026. Our original report follows, lightly corrected.

In September 2022, more than 90 videos of early Grand Theft Auto VI footage appeared online in a major leak. Fans quickly began combing the clips for clues about the characters, the setting and how the game plays.

How the footage got out

Rockstar confirmed the breach in a statement. It said an “unauthorized third party” had downloaded confidential information from its systems, including early development footage for the next Grand Theft Auto.

Rockstar added that it did not expect any long-term effect on development.

On September 22, 2022, City of London Police arrested a 17-year-old in Oxfordshire on suspicion of hacking. The National Crime Agency’s National Cyber Crime Unit supported the investigation.

What the leaked clips showed

According to Windows Central, the footage:

• appeared to come from an early development build, an unfinished version of the game
• showed two protagonists, including a Latina woman named Lucia
• pointed to a return to Vice City, the Miami-inspired setting of 2002’s GTA Vice City
• gave an extended look at robberies, vehicles and NPC interactions (NPCs are the non-player characters who fill the world)

Early builds change a lot before release, so not everything in the clips was expected to make the final game. Still, the footage gave fans their first real look at Rockstar’s next open world.

For many fans, it seemed to deliver what they had hoped for: a modern Vice City, a pair of criminal leads and the scale they expect from Rockstar. With Grand Theft Auto V out since 2013, the leak made the long wait for an official reveal feel even longer.

What happened to the hacker

A UK court later found that Arion Kurtaj was part of the Lapsus$ hacking group behind the Rockstar attack, PC Gamer reported. The 90 clips had been uploaded to the GTAForums fan site.

Kurtaj was sent to a secure hospital in 2023, for life or until doctors judged he was no longer a danger.

That has since changed. In July 2026, PC Gamer reported, citing BBC correspondent Joe Tidy, that Kurtaj had left the hospital and was in prison awaiting a retrial. At the time, the retrial was scheduled for November, the same month GTA 6 launches.

A second leak, four years later

In August 2026, gameplay videos of GTA 6 began spreading online from a hacker group calling itself CyberLeek.

Take-Two responded by asking a federal court for subpoenas seeking information from Microsoft and Discord about the leaks, Variety reported. A subpoena is a legal order to hand over information.

This time, Rockstar spoke to fans directly. In a statement on August 26, it said seeing the leaked gameplay “has been heartbreaking for our team” and asked players to wait to experience the game themselves, Variety reported.

The next day, Rockstar released its own footage. Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look premiered on Netflix on August 27 with 27 minutes of in-game footage captured on PS5. It arrived on YouTube later that evening.