Hackers Steal Early Development Footage of New ‘Grand Theft Auto’ Video Game
Grand Theft Auto continues to be one of the most successful gaming franchises, but gamers got an unexpected look at some of the elements for the next iteration of the game when a leak uncovered 90 videos of clips from the game, along with the debug code and interfaces to help verify that the images were legit. Now Rockstar Games, the company behind Grand Theft Auto, have commented on the leak.
The hacker, going under the moniker "teapotuberhacker," posted the materials Sunday morning (Sept. 18) within the GTAForums. The hacker also threatened to “leak more data soon,” which could include source code, assets and testing builds from both GTA V and GTA VI. This person also has claimed credit for a recent Uber hack.
In response, Rockstar Games issued the following statement:
We recently suffered a network intrusion in which an unauthorized third party illegally accessed and downloaded confidential information from our systems, including early development footage for the next Grand Theft Auto. At this time, we do not anticipate any disruption to our live game services nor any long-term effect on the development of our ongoing projects.
We are extremely disappointed to have any details of our next game shared with you all in this way. Our work on the next Grand Theft Auto game will continue as planned and we remain as committed as ever to delivering an experience to you, our players, that truly exceeds your expectations. We will update everyone again soon and, of course, will properly introduce you to this next game when it is ready. We want to thank everyone for their ongoing support through this situation.
– The Rockstar Games Team
The clips are said to include footage of both the male and female lead characters in the game, while also showing some of the gameplay taking place within the fictional city.
The initial Grand Theft Auto video game arrived in 1997 and there have been five different iterations of the game, the last coming in 2013. While Grand Theft Auto VI is currently in the works, an official release date has not been announced, and it's not known as of yet how the leak will affect what is eventually released to the public.