GTA 6 director opens up on the painful 2022 leak

Rockstar’s first big GTA 6 leak still weighs on the people making the game.

Aaron Garbut, one of the game’s development leads, has spoken about the 2022 incident in a new interview. He called it “weirdly invasive” and “quite hard to deal with on an emotional level.”

What happened in 2022

In September 2022, a phishing attack exposed dozens of unfinished GTA 6 gameplay clips. The footage showed an early build, and people criticised the graphics and animations even though the game was still years from release.

The person responsible was later arrested. By then, the clips had already spread across the internet, and Rockstar had little control over how the public judged work that was far from finished.

Garbut compared the experience to “somebody’s wading through your dirty washing.” He explained that having unfinished work seen by millions felt like an invasion of privacy.

New leaks add to the pressure

Rockstar is now dealing with another leak. A person going by CYBERLEEK has been sharing GTA 6 gameplay snippets online, some of them before Rockstar could reveal the footage itself. Some of the material has reportedly included explicit content the studio likely never intended to be public.

Garbut’s comments are about the 2022 incident, not the current one. Still, given how he described the first leak, the new one could bring back similar feelings for the team.