The 2022 GTA 6 Leak: A Complete History
In September 2022, Arion Kurtaj posted 90+ minutes of GTA 6 development footage to the internet. Here's the full history — leak, response, vindication.
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In September 2022, Arion Kurtaj posted 90+ minutes of GTA 6 development footage to the internet. Here's the full history — leak, response, vindication.
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In September 2022, a hacker named Arion Kurtaj stole and posted approximately ninety minutes of in-development gameplay footage from a Rockstar Games internal server. The leak was one of the largest video-game development breaches in history. Below: the complete factual history.
The footage appeared on the GTAForums on September 18, 2022, posted by an account called "teapotuberhacker." The clips totaled approximately 90 minutes and showed:
The footage was immediately recognised as authentic — the rendering quality, the GTA-engine signatures, the character models, and the level of detail were beyond any plausible mockup.
Within 48 hours, Rockstar Games:
The leak was acknowledged as real development material rather than fabrication — a significant statement that vindicated the leak as authentic.
UK authorities arrested Arion Kurtaj in September 2022 (he was already a person of interest in the Lapsus$ hacker group investigations). The Lapsus$ group had previously targeted Microsoft, Nvidia, Samsung, Ubisoft, and Okta.
Court proceedings:
The Lapsus$ broader case continued through 2024-2025; multiple other group members were prosecuted in the US and UK.
The 2022 leak fundamentally changed Rockstar's GTA 6 marketing strategy:
Rockstar's internal document leaks indicated the original marketing plan was to delay confirmation of any in-game details until late 2024 or 2025. The 2022 leak forced a year+ acceleration of the confirmation timeline.
A retrospective comparison of the 2022 leak vs the eventual official material shows the leak was highly accurate:
The leak's batting average is remarkably high — most claims have been formally confirmed in subsequent marketing.
A few things the leak didn't include:
The 2022 leak prompted industry-wide development-security audits. Major publishers (EA, Activision, Take-Two competitors) reviewed their own internal-server access controls. The industry consensus shifted toward:
The 2022 leak is now used as a case study in cybersecurity training across major publishers.
In Take-Two's earnings calls following the leak, CEO Strauss Zelnick:
The statement that the leak "did not delay GTA 6" is debatable — the eventual two delays from 2025 to 2026 had multiple causes, but the marketing-acceleration the leak forced was likely a contributing factor.
Twenty-eight months after the leak, the 2022 leak is canonical in the broader GTA 6 conversation:
For the broader leak roundup, see GTA 6 Leak Roundup: Every Rumor, Rated. For the formal launch context, see GTA 6 Release Date Confirmed for November 19, 2026.
