GTA 6 Leak: Rockstar's DMCA Confirms the Leak, Here's What We See

On the evening of August 18th, two gameplay clips of GTA 6 ended up on X. Low resolution, filmed in a hurry, watermarked. The kind of thing we see three times a week for two years and politely ignore.

Except that this time, something unusual happened: the videos have been hit by DMCA takedown requests .

And that's the whole point. An AI-generated video, you can't have it taken down for copyright infringement — there's nothing to protect, it's invented pixels. When Take-Two pulls out the DMCA, it means there's content in it that belongs to them. In other words: Rockstar just confirmed the authenticity of the leak by trying to erase it.

Ironic, isn't it? The most effective method to validate a leak is still to have it removed.

Two sequences, not three hours of gameplay. Let's stay calm.

Clip 1 — basketball. Jason is playing basketball in front of a house. Not just any house: the one we see at the beginning of trailer 2. The activity itself is nothing revolutionary, it was already played in San Andreas in 2004. But its return confirms that Rockstar is reintroducing neighborhood mini-activities, something that GTA V had largely set aside in favor of tennis and golf.

Clip 2 - the accident. Jason drives, causes an accident, gets out of the car, and it turns into a fight with the NPC involved. This is where it gets interesting, because it's the interface that speaks more than the action.

Click to enlarge

This is the real loot of this leak. Not the gameplay, the UI.

A fuel gauge. Visible during driving. If confirmed, it means functional gas stations and real fuel management — something the community has been asking for since GTA IV and that PC modders have been tinkering with for fifteen years.

A melee endurance bar. Attacks consume energy that depletes. No more endless spam of punches. It brings the fight closer to what Red Dead Redemption 2 does, with heavier and more tactical exchanges.

The return of the 6 search stars. That one, it's the big one. Rockstar went up to 5 stars with GTA V in 2013, and fans have been complaining since. The sixth level was the military escalation, the moment when you realize you really messed up. Its return would signal a much more aggressive police.

We also mention a karma system inspired by RDR2, where your actions would influence how the world reacts. Here, however, it's more vague — nothing directly visible on screen in the clips.

Central question, and often overlooked in news coverage.

This is not a 2026 build. Jason's rendering is below what we saw in the official pre-order images released last June. But it's not from 2023 either: in the first trailer, Jason had a rough head, while here the character is clearly finished.

The most reasonable hypothesis is a screenshot dating back to 2025 , somewhere between trailer 2 and the current version.

This implies one important thing: everything you see may have been cut since . A fuel gauge in a build from a year ago doesn't guarantee anything for the version that will be released in November. Studios remove entire systems at the end of production, it's the norm, not the exception.

The account behind the leak is called CyberLeek And his profile does not really plead in his favor.

First signal: videos are watermarked with a promo cryptocurrency . Difficult to be more transparent in intention - using the traffic generated by GTA 6 to promote a token.

Second signal: the speech. The individual explains wanting to protect players in the face of PlayStation and Rockstar abandoning physical support, and announces that he will not stop until Rockstar has released a statement and apologies.

On the surface, the debate about the disappearance of physical games is legitimate. But throwing stolen gameplay with a crypto ad is not activism, it's opportunism. And demanding public apologies from a studio because its content was broadcast without permission is a logic that escapes me a little.

Which does not detract from the authenticity of the hardware. A leaker can be suspicious and the leak true — the two do not cancel each other out.

The leak drops right before the Extended Look of August 27 , the big Rockstar presentation broadcast in advance on Netflix.

That's why some cry out marketing ploy. Except that it doesn't hold up. Rockstar has absolutely no interest in leaking two 480p watermarked crypto clips nine days before its own carefully crafted presentation. A studio that controls its communication to this extent does not sabotage its teasing with degraded content.

What is true, however, is that the leak will not cost Rockstar much. On August 27, the Extended Look will crush all of this in ten minutes of clean gameplay. In two weeks, no one will be talking about CyberLeek anymore.

Frankly, no.

Two reasons. The first, pragmatic: they are being massively deleted, you will mostly come across crappy reuploads and infected links. The second, simpler: in nine days you will have the same thing in high quality, commented, without crypto watermark.

And there's one thing that leaks steal from you without you realizing it: discovery. Spoil the mechanics one by one in blurry clips, and on November 19th, you'll feel like you've already played the game.

After, everyone does what they want. But the risk-benefit ratio clearly leans towards the negative side.

The leak is real, the DMCA proves it. The mechanics identified — essence, endurance, six stars — are credible because they are visible on the screen, not deduced.

But they come from a build that is probably a year old. What's inside may have disappeared.

The only thing that really matters is August 27th at 9pm. Ten minutes of official gameplay are worth more than forty seconds stolen in 480p.

Most likely yes. The videos have received DMCA takedown requests, which does not happen with AI-generated content - a real copyright must be asserted to trigger the procedure.

Two clips: Jason playing basketball in front of his house, and a car accident escalating into a fight with an NPC. The interface reveals a fuel gauge, an endurance bar for hand-to-hand combat, and a six-star wanted level system.

It is visible in the HUD of leaked clips, but Rockstar has not made any official announcement. The five-star system dates back to GTA V in 2013, a return to six would mark a significantly more aggressive police force.

On November 19, 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series. No PC date has been announced to this day.

In preview on Netflix at 9pm French time, with an active subscription. Free broadcast on YouTube and other platforms follows at 3am on August 28th.