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August 2026 Leak

Between 18 and 26 August 2026 a person or group operating under the handle CyberLeek circulated more than a dozen unauthorised video clips said to come from a development build of Grand Theft Auto VI, along with material presented as a map of Leonida. Rockstar Games has never authenticated any of it. Take-Two Interactive responded with filings in a United States federal court aimed at identifying whoever was behind the release, and Rockstar issued a public statement on 26 August, the day before it premiered its own Extended Look showcase.

This page covers the leak as an event: what happened, when, what the legal response was, and what Rockstar said. It does not describe what the clips contained, and nothing drawn from them appears anywhere on this wiki as confirmed content.

Why the Contents Are Not Documented Here

Unauthorised footage of an unfinished build is not a record of the game that ships. The age of the build is unknown, cut content cannot be told apart from shipping content, and Rockstar has confirmed none of it. Several things visible in the clips were later described through official channels, including a six star wanted meter, police identification icons and vehicle refuelling, but confirmation through an official channel validates that channel, not the clip that happened to agree with it.

One item that spread alongside the footage is worth addressing directly, because it is still circulating. A list presented as the game's radio stations, with a song list attached to it, was distributed as part of the leak. It has never been confirmed by Rockstar or by any reliable account and is treated here as fabricated. Rockstar has named exactly one Grand Theft Auto VI radio station, Coral Chorus, and it is not among the names on the leaked list; nothing else on that list has been confirmed by any other route, and none of it appears in Radio Stations or Soundtrack. Readers who encounter the list elsewhere should treat every entry on it as unverified.

Timeline

Legal Response

The filings were made in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. One petition is directed at Microsoft in its capacity as the operator of a code-hosting service, not as the operator of any games platform, and follows the takedown request against the repository that had collected the leaked material. The other is directed at the operator of the chat platform through which much of the material circulated, and seeks device identifiers, login addresses and stored files for accounts that were in, or communicated with, three named servers across a set period. A comparable subpoena was later served on a social-media company.

Take-Two also asked the code-hosting provider for records of its own internal investigation into the CyberLeek persona. Microsoft's chief technology officer for Xbox said publicly that the company was working closely with Take-Two and Rockstar on the matter. Several account handles are named in the filings; this wiki does not reproduce them, because none has been connected to an identified person by a court.

Rockstar's Statement

Rockstar published a short statement on 26 August 2026. It described the leaks as "heartbreaking for our team", said that "this is obviously not how we intended for you to see the game after all this time", and closed by hoping that people would "wait a bit longer to experience the game for themselves on November 19".

The statement did not confirm that any particular clip was genuine, and as of 12 September 2026 no Rockstar statement has identified any leaked material as authentic.

Claims Made by the Leaker

The releases were accompanied by a manifesto setting out three demands: an end to digital pre-orders, no single-player add-on content shipped on the disc or built into the base game, and a guaranteed offline mode that keeps a purchased game playable. A public apology from Rockstar and Take-Two and a physical disc release were demanded alongside those.

A cryptocurrency token was promoted in parallel with the releases. Reported figures for its value, for sums withdrawn from it, and for the timing of those withdrawals are thinly sourced and are not recorded here. A campaign group associated with game-preservation advocacy publicly distanced itself from the leaker on 19 August 2026, having been invoked by the manifesto's wording.

Context

The leak ran alongside an employment tribunal in which Rockstar is contesting the dismissal of thirty-four employees. During those proceedings the company testified to blackmail attempts by hackers within the preceding weeks, and to drone fly-bys over its offices that it said had prompted it to fit privacy film to the windows. The final hearing was scheduled to run for five weeks into mid October 2026. See Development History for the wider production timeline.

This is the second large unauthorised release of Grand Theft Auto VI material. See September 2022 Leak for the earlier one, which is documented here on the same basis: the event is recorded, the contents are not treated as canon, and nothing sourced from either leak has been used to write any other page on this wiki.