Fans excited about GTA 6 after hacker behind Uber breach leaks gameplay videos

For every millennial gamer, Grand Theft Auto is up there with iconic titles such as Call of Duty, Counter Strike and EA Sports FIFA, which marked the evolution of gaming in the 21st century. From Vice City to San Andreas and GTA V in 2013, the franchise managed to mint almost $10 billion since it was first launched in 1997. Now, after waiting for close to a decade, fans have received a glimpse of GTA 6, thanks to a hacker who leaked its gameplay videos online.

Repeat offender?

The hacker who hacked ride hailing service Uber’s servers last week, also dumped 90 video clips of GTA 6 online, triggering a weekend frenzy among gamers. The visuals showed both male and female characters, who execute missions in a city modeled after Miami, which is reminiscent of the original Vice City. Debug codes and interface are also part of the leak, which is verifying the authenticity of the claims that a sixth installment of GTA is in the works.

Access to a Rockstar Games employee’s slack account was gained via social engineering to pull off the data heist, which is the same strategy which the hacker used to hit Uber. Some users pointed out that the videos seem to be of an older build from around 2017, which makes sense since the game is being developed since 2014. The credibility of the leak was further confirmed after the firm behind Rockstar Games issued copyright claims against users who shared the clips on social media.

Raising the stakes

The 18-year-old hacker who had breached Uber’s servers and shared screenshots of its Slack interactions to show how weak its security is, also claims to have GTA 5 and 6 source codes. Although he is ready to sell GTA 5 codes for at least five figures, the hacker says that GTA 6 source code is not for sale.

GTA had already entered the online gaming universe back in 2013, and its return in the era dominated by PubG and Fortnite, will attract millennials and GenZ gamers alike.