GTA 6 Leaks: Rockstar, don’t worry about us – but about a dozen other things.

There was a mega leak for GTA 6. That’s not really an exaggeration, because in contrast to the Ubi leak that has now been firmly planned shortly before an important announcement, there weren’t 3 minutes of largely finished material to be seen here, that you can see a few in better quality anyway hours or days later, but several hours of unfinished things from GTA 6, developer tool overlays, source code parts and more included.

It is now clear that the material is genuine and has also been confirmed by Rockstar. If they had no other choice, if only because they were the usual badly faked click-snapper vids freshly cobbled together in Unity, Rockstar wouldn’t have put so much effort into getting things off the web as soon as possible . The unavoidable Streisand effect at this point – for those who don’t know the story: In 2003, Barbra Streisand sued a coastal photographer who documented landscape erosion for a ridiculous 50 million because he had photographed her villa. Just like every other house along tens of kilometers of coast. After the lawsuit, everyone knew this house belonged to Streisand, nobody did before, and if she hadn’t sued, nobody would have known. Assuming that even 50 million for Streisand would not have been a game changer for her finances, she achieved the opposite of what she wanted with the lawsuit. Just like Rockstar has now confirmed that everything is real, without perhaps initially wanting it. But unlike the quirky celebrity lady, they didn’t have much of a choice.

Not because the material would hurt popularity or anticipation. On the contrary. What was shown looks fantastic, especially considering that some of it is already three years old. The diner, the small town, all the countless details in it, immediately invite you to grab the controller, get used to the controls that are sure to be a bit tricky, and enjoy the next-level sandbox. The first protagonist of the series makes her entrance and everything looks as you would imagine it as the most technically demanding game in the world prepares for the next round. Just great, want to have, stupid that it still takes. The leak increased that feeling instead of decreasing it.

That aspect may be right for Rockstar, and it’s probably the only one a number of commentators on the web had in mind when marveling at Rockstar’s reaction. But what it’s going to be much more about is that knowledgeable people, from CD Projekt down to the smallest open-world indie developer, can get a glimpse of the way, if they want to, like Rockstar, the best worlds in the world creates. Details of the videos, meaningless to the layman because one would rather admire the rust on a street sign, can be worth real money in the industry, not to mention the leaked parts of the source code. CD Projekt can tell you a thing or two about it. In the extreme case, a development lead that you have earned for a lot of money would be destroyed. The FBI should be involved. If so, I don’t want to be the supposedly 18-year-old who produced this…

The employees should then also thank him, whose home office should now finally be called into question. The documents all appear to be from 2019 and early 2020. That would then be the beginning of a Wild West era of data transfer from secure office servers out into the wide world, which continues to this day in some cases, wherever someone was working on something. Whether this was done by phishing into the network of a Rockstars employee, an intercepted WeTransfer link, whether it’s something banally stupid like a backup hard drive released into the wild, or whether company servers were attacked directly, shouldn’t be part of the discussion play a big role. People working from home are now likely to have a harder time across the industry.

So was it worth it to anyone? Certainly not for the hacker. Apparently he realizes that too, because he seems to be offering negotiations with Rockstar. Hardly for the employees, certainly not for those who have made the faux pas of whatever kind. Not for Rockstar, whose enthusiasm that part of the net is excited about the quality of an early build may have been dampened by exposure to the company’s internals. We’re excited to get a glimpse of a game that we’re pretty sure would look like this and a lot better. Is something, I suppose, you have to see the good sometimes.

It’s not that I wouldn’t be happy about leaks at all. I’m happy to take small insights into the otherwise inaccessible world with me, thanks Ubisoft for that. When it comes to uncovering grievances, then that’s something else again. But this only harms the development of such absurdly expensive triple-A products in general, the employees of Rockstar in particular and in the end nobody really won anything. Well, we took the clicks with us. Fair enough, thanks for that I suppose.