It’s been more than 18 months since the last trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6 was released.

A few weeks ago, developer Rockstar announced it would break its long silence with a special “extended look” at the highly anticipated video game in a 30-minute special on Netflix.

But the run-up to the splashy preview has been potentially overshadowed by a string of apparent leaks which appear to show footage of GTA 6 in action.

Rockstar has not publicly acknowledged the clips, nor replied to any requests for comment, since the first leaks appeared on Wednesday. But there’s plenty to suggest the material that’s been posted online is genuine.

The developer’s parent company, Take Two Interactive, launched legal proceedings regarding the leaks in a New York court on Friday.

BBC Newsbeat has obtained the filings, first reported by video game website Kotaku, demanding Microsoft-owned site GitHub and chat app Discord turn over the user details of accounts thought to be sharing “copyrighted material”.

Copies of clips are being quickly removed due to copyright claims, and multiple accounts claiming to belong to the group behind the hacks have also disappeared.

Many fans have described this as a “nightmare scenario” for the company, but BBC Newsbeat has spoken to experts and a former Rockstar developer who say the reality is a little more nuanced.

Obbe Vermeij is a game developer who worked as a technical director on major GTA titles including GTA 3, GTA Vice City and GTA San Andreas until he left Rockstar in 2009.

The company’s games have grown bigger and more complex since, with thousands of staff worldwide working on each one.

“To be honest, it’s amazing that they can keep things under wraps as well as they do,” says Vermeij.

Rockstar is renowned for being tight-lipped about its projects, and Vermeij says this has long been the company’s culture.

“We always wanted to keep things a secret,” he says. “And the reason was that it makes launch day so much more fun.

“People would just go home with their disc and they were just excited about the game that they knew very little about.”

Video game journalist Wesley Yin-Poole, director of news at IGN, says the apparent leaks will be tough for the game’s developers.

“GTA 6 is an enormous endeavour,” says Yin-Poole. “It’s being built over the course a decade, essentially, with thousands of people involved.

“To have the game exposed in this way will have been devastating to many people who worked on it.”

The group behind the apparent leaks claims to be acting in the interests of players, accusing Rockstar of engaging in anti-consumer practices, such as its decision not to release a disc version of GTA 6 at launch.

Not everyone is convinced about the group’s intentions, as each release of new material has invited viewers to send cryptocurrency “donations” to the user uploading them.

Stop Killing Games, which campaigns against all-digital distribution models, criticised the alleged leaks as “destructive” and urged people not to send money to those claiming responsibility.

Yin-Poole says there’s “a huge amount of scepticism” about the stated motivation.

“Most people believe this is about money,” he says, “it feels like, honestly, the whole ‘we’re doing this for the gamers’ angle is nonsense, and I suspect most people have dismissed it.”

Vermeij believes it’s possible to overstate the significance of the leaks.

“I think the vast majority of gamers aren’t really on the internet, hunting down these clips,” he says.

However, Vermeij accepts there is a “very small subset” of hardcore fans desperate for any new information they can get their hands on.

So far, two official trailers for GTA 6 have been released, the most recent in May 2025. Since then, ardent fans have leapt on any rumours or apparent clues in official Rockstar posts.

Some famously came up with an elaborate theory suggesting an image of the moon included in a promotional post for GTA Online held clues to the release date of GTA 6’s first trailer.

“To a certain extent, Rockstar has themselves to blame,” says Vermeij. “That’s their strategy – and I think it’s a good strategy, it’s exciting. But the consequence is that every little bit of information, every little event, gets sort of blown out of proportion.”

Yin-Poole says while people will likely understand this isn’t the way Rockstar had intended GTA6 to be revealed and that it doesn’t show the game in the best light, he believes most will “reserve judgement” about it until they have seen official footage in action, or played it for themselves.

Ultimately, he believes there’s little chance the leaks will “derail the potential success of the game”.

“GTA 6 will be an unprecedented moment in pop culture history,” he says. “So ultimately, this will become a footnote in the history of GTA 6’s development.”

Vermeij, who has not watched any of the latest leaks, agrees.

“I think it will have no impact at all whatsoever,” he says. “People will have forgotten about it by the time the game comes out.”

Grand Theft Auto 6 is due to be released on 19 November for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, with a PC release expected at a later date.

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