Huge GTA 6 leak includes gameplay footage of robbery, Vice City locations, and two playable characters

GTA 5 Online
(Image credit: Rockstar Games)

On September 19, a user on GTAForums called "teapotuberhacker" posted 90 videos from a test build of Grand Theft Auto 6, running with "GTA 5 and 6 source code and assets". Screenshots and clips from these videos have gone around on YouTube, Twitter, Reddit and elsewhere, and line up with details from another recent GTA 6 leak, as well as an earlier one, both of which suggested the upcoming open world game will have two protagonists, a man and a woman, and be set in and around the Miami-esque Vice City.

The legitimacy of the videos has been confirmed by Rockstar. "An unauthorized third party illegally accessed and downloaded confidential information from our systems, including early development footage for the next Grand Theft Auto," the company wrote.

GTA publisher Take-Two has been using copyright rules to get the videos taken down from any mainstream website that hosts them.

In one video, a player-character named Lucia robs a waffle restaurant with an accomplice named Jason, taking hostages like they're in Pulp Fiction. A meter counts down "Time Until Cops Dispatched", and it all looks reminiscent of the robberies in Red Dead Redemption 2, in spite of the mannequin NPCs clipping through objects, placeholder dialogue text like "Jason: GENERIC_CURSE_TO_SELF", and a cop car that's been recycled from GTA 5 only with V.C.P.D. written on it.

In a poolside conversation between a male player character and a couple of redneck associates, we hear some very GTA dialogue, such as, "Oh yeah, he's dead, is he? Just like there's a country called Finland." The notification saying "WhatUp! message received" during a sequence in a strip club suggests a parody of WhatsApp, another very Rockstar thing to do, as does setting entire scenes in a strip club complete with detailed pole dancing.

For more, here's what what we learned, and what we didn't, from the GTA 6 leak.

The previous GTA 6 leak claimed the game has been in development since 2014 and was originally codenamed "Project Americas". These files, which have the word "Americas" in their names and some of which show a version running on a PlayStation 4 dev kit, may well be several years old. A source with knowledge of GTA 6's development told PC Gamer that the majority of the videos would likely have been attached to bug reports from QA testers.

The person apparently responsible for this GTA 6 information heist has also claimed responsibility for hacking Uber. The FBI is investigating.

This article was last updated on September 20, 2022.

GTA 6GTA 5 modsGTA 5 cheatsGTA 6 carsSan Andreas cheats

GTA 6: Everything we know
GTA 5 mods: Revved up
GTA 5 cheats: Phone it in
GTA 6 cars: The lineup
San Andreas cheats: All the codes

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

Read more
GTA 6 trailer
GTA 6: What we know about Rockstar's return to Vice City
Trevor's voice actor says he won't be in GTA 6, though would've liked a cameo where he got 'killed at the beginning'
Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer art
Peripheral maker Corsair says Grand Theft Auto 6 is coming to PC in 'early 2026,' then immediately yoinks it back
Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer still - woman in the front seat of a car, looking out the back window while holding a wad of cash
GTA 6 was never going to be at The Game Awards, but it is a little surprising that we haven't seen another trailer yet
Michael sunbathing in GTA V
3 years later, GTA 5’s Enhanced edition finally comes to PC, and it’s somehow 22GB smaller than GTA 5 Cool Original flavour
Lucia, a protagonist from Grand Theft Auto 6, looks over her shoulder at the camera while backlit by a prison yard.
GTA 6 fans are convinced that a new trailer is going to release on December 27, because the moon and a license plate told them so
Latest in Grand Theft Auto
GTA 5 Enhanced
Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced is a bitter-sweet return to Rockstar's money-making machine
Grand Theft Auto 5
How to transfer your GTA 5 save file to GTA 5 Enhanced and accept Rockstar's Online Policies if needed
Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced screen - Trevor setting fire to somebody's big dumb truck
Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced launch is going poorly or well depending on how you look at it: It's got a 'mixed' rating on Steam and is one of the most-played games
GTA 5 Enhanced Edition
What's the difference between Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced and Legacy?
GTA 5 money
The Grand Theft Auto series has now sold over 440 million copies, and say g'day to Rockstar Australia
Michael sunbathing in GTA V
3 years later, GTA 5’s Enhanced edition finally comes to PC, and it’s somehow 22GB smaller than GTA 5 Cool Original flavour
Latest in News
A masked man with an axe in the woods
Rebellion CEO seems kind of awed by major studios making massive videogames: 'How do you organize a game that has 2,000 people working on it?'
A young witch watering a smiling mushroom in a magic garden
Here's a roguelite dungeon crawler Steam reviewers call 'a botanical Diablo' and 'like Cult of the Lamb' except you manage a mystical garden
Destiny 2 Rite of the Nine: The Emissary, massive, ominously standing at the edge of a water basin.
Oops! Bungie rolled out Destiny 2's Rite of the Nine event three weeks early, and new loot is already dropping
Chatacabra from Monster Hunter Wilds
The latest Monster Hunter Wilds event quest gives piles of Armor Spheres for hunting a Chatacabra, making this a very bad week to be a frog in the Forbidden Lands
No Rest for the Wicked Steam early access screenshots
No Rest for the Wicked developer Moon Studios is now 'fully independent' after acquiring the rights to the game from Take-Two
A hunter posing with an absurd Blangonga outfit in Monster Hunter Wilds.
Attention, fashion hunters: There's a Monster Hunter Wilds mod to disable all those obnoxious glowing buff effects that distract from your fits