Hey, how was your 2022? Most likely higher than Rockstar’s. The studio grew to become the topic of one of many greatest leaks in videogame historical past in September, setting the web ablaze and giving us all our first, unauthorised glimpse of Grand Theft Auto 6 (opens in new tab). Then once more, the corporate additionally continued to drag in tons of of thousands and thousands of {dollars} from GTA On-line (opens in new tab) alone, in order that most likely cushioned the blow a bit.
It was a wild journey. After Rockstar spoke GTA 6 into existence in a February weblog submit (opens in new tab) confirming “that energetic improvement for the following entry within the Grand Theft Auto sequence is effectively underway,” the studio returned to its attribute silence relating to its future initiatives. That’s, till a brisk day in mid-September noticed a load of movies and screenshots of the following recreation splayed throughout GTAForums (opens in new tab) as if the GTA 6 information truck had overturned on the freeway.
Since then, it is solely gotten weirder and greater. We’re speaking about worldwide black-hat hacking networks, a felony investigation by UK police and the FBI, and the eventual arrest of an alleged teen hacker.
Wait, what occurred?
First, let’s lay down the groundwork of what truly passed off and what we realized from it. On September 19, a consumer by the title of teapotuberhacker dumped a treasure trove of GTA 6 supplies on the GTAForums fansite. Totalling 90 movies—some lasting seconds, some occurring for minutes—the leak appeared irrefutably legit to anybody who bought a take a look at it, and any lingering doubts had been put to relaxation when Rockstar got here out and confirmed it had suffered a “community intrusion (opens in new tab)“.
Teapotuberhacker additionally claimed to be the wrongdoer behind the September 15 hack of Uber (opens in new tab), during which an attacker gained administrative entry to Uber’s total community. Uber stated it suspected it had been attacked by somebody affiliated with the hacking group Lapsus$, a global hacking group that had beforehand focused the likes of Nvidia and Microsoft. Lapsus$ had already been within the information as soon as earlier than in 2022, when a 16 year-old within the UK was accused of being one in all its leaders (opens in new tab).
To date, so Zero Cool (opens in new tab). However slightly than a cinematic, Holmes-and-Moriarty-style warfare of intellects between cops and crooks, the story arrived at an anticlimax just a few days later. The FBI bought concerned and, in an investigation carried out alongside the Metropolis of London police, a 17 year-old in Oxfordshire within the UK was arrested mere days after the leak passed off. He denied one cost of pc misuse (opens in new tab) however pleaded responsible to violating a previous set of bail situations. It is all been fairly quiet since then.
And that is… just about the place we’re on the finish of the yr: A youngster in a youth detention centre, myriad movies of a recreation that will not see the sunshine of day for years floating across the web, and the gnawing chance that somebody, someplace on the market, may need entry to GTA 5 and 6 supply code, which has most likely generated no finish of sleepless nights for Rockstar technicians.
Dumping a wealth of contextless early construct footage out on the web is complicated and dispiriting, not instructional, and it’ll solely make Rockstar guard its secrets and techniques extra jealously.
What did we be taught? That GTA 6 will look rather a lot like GTA 5 (which regarded rather a lot like GTA 4, which… you get the thought). It’s going to most likely be set in Vice Metropolis. There will probably be crimes, cops will probably be dispatched to cease the crimes, the motion will happen from a third-person perspective, and within the background of all of it, NPCs will say zany and outrageous issues a lot as they have been doing in GTA video games for the final 20 or so years.
Most likely the one new factor we did be taught is that GTA 6 will seemingly function no less than two protagonists, one in all whom—a Latina girl referred to as Lucia—can be the singleplayer video games’ first playable feminine protagonist since GTA 2 on the Recreation Boy Color.
That is fairly neat, however I am unsure it is go-to-prison neat.
No person wins (hello, I am no one)
Should you’re attempting to work out who comes out forward in all this, which I’m for some purpose, it is tempting to level to the followers. In spite of everything, the individuals most enthusiastic about GTA 6 bought a short, tantalising take a look at the sport effectively prematurely. What’s to not like?
Properly, the truth that it is an early and ramshackle mess, principally. No matter GTA 6 finally ends up being, it would solely vaguely resemble the unusual movies—awash in placeholder textual content and recycled property—that we noticed in September. I am all for tearing up the absurd obfuscation that surrounds recreation improvement: by all means, let followers see what it is wish to make a recreation from day one, however not like this. Dumping a wealth of contextless early construct footage out on the web is complicated and dispiriting, not instructional, and it’ll solely make Rockstar guard its secrets and techniques extra jealously.
Nor did the hacker(s) win. If the true wrongdoer is not the teenager picked up by UK police, then it is most likely solely a matter of time earlier than they’re caught, and portray a goal in your again for worldwide regulation enforcement so as to disclose to the world that GTA is gonna have a girl in it doesn’t, to me, really feel like a very wonderful act of martyrdom.
However there’s the sensation I am unable to shake. you already know who bought rather a lot out of this? Me. And videogame information writers in all places, to be precise. We bought gaming historical past in movement: a quickly creating and sophisticated story to actually sink our tooth into. It grew to become, for every week or two, very straightforward certainly to decide on what story to deal with after I got here into work: The one with its personal Wikipedia web page (opens in new tab).
That is the horrible reality, I am afraid. Followers did not profit, hackers did not profit, and Rockstar actually did not profit. However me? I might fling a dart and hit one thing value writing about. I despatched emails, pored over PDFs, and crammed sufficient Google Docs to represent a novella. All through all of this nonsense, I am fairly positive that is the closest anybody got here to getting something constructive out of it. So thanks, hackers, I condemn you within the strongest potential phrases.
