Two gameplay clips and an alleged map image of GTA 6 appeared online on August 18, posted on a site run by a group calling itself Cyberleek, before Take-Two's DMCA requests began pulling them off Twitter and other platforms. The footage landed nine days before Rockstar's planned Netflix premiere of Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look on August 27. Kotaku and Dexerto both reported the clips on August 18 while they were still circulating.
The first clip is Jason at his house. He leans over a balcony, drops down to where a car and a jet ski are parked, and picks up a basketball. A tutorial prompt explains the shot, and sinking one gives him a 2 percent bump to a Focus stat, which ties a mini-game directly to character progression. The second clip is a driving sequence on a highway. Jason crashes into a mail van, gets out, beats the driver with a wrench, and drives off with police on him.
Two HUD details in that second clip did most of the work. When Jason attacks a man who cannot fight back, a purple devil icon with a minus symbol appears on the right of the screen, which is close to how the honor system worked in Red Dead Redemption 2. And the wanted meter shows two filled stars next to four grey ones, six slots in total, where the series has used a five-star ceiling for years. When Jason gets into the car, named on screen as a Vapid '70 Ganado, what look like separate gauges for fuel and engine condition sit under the vehicle name above the minimap. A track by SG Lewis, Robyn and Channel Tres called Impact plays on the radio, per Kotaku. The map image posted alongside the clips shows Leonida with named locations including Dalton Island, Tequesta Retreat, Gloriana Key, Catalan Key and Catalan Bay, per Dexerto.
Take-Two has issued DMCA takedowns across Twitter and other platforms, which is the closest thing to confirmation of authenticity the footage has. Rockstar has made no public statement. The clips are reported to come from a build that could date as far back as 2023, and Kotaku's Zack Zwiezen noted there is no way to tell when the footage was actually recorded, so none of it is necessarily how the finished game looks or plays. Cyberleek has since published a manifesto explaining what it wants, and the November 19 release date is unchanged.