I grew up by a dry riverbed. This was, on the whole, positive, because what a big empty riverbed is good for is setting things on fire, firing air rifles, and walloping golf balls into orbit. Some say they never stopped travelling. They're still out there, somewhere, in the space between the stars.

The reason Grand Theft Auto 5 is worse than a riverbed is that you can't do that last thing. Or, well, you can, but only at officially designated golf courses, which are prisons for the soul. I have now fixed this omission. I installed Street Golf, which lets you play golf, but in the street.

Much like the previous two mods I've bolted onto GTA 5's sagging frame (LifeInvader Business Mod and Become A Celebrity), I was immediately impressed by how much of the mod there is. This is no ramshackle creation—the possibility of equipping a golf club and whacking some balls in the street—but comes with a suite of tweakable menus, golf stats, and potent balltypes. Normal balls? Yes. Fire balls? Absolutely. Detonating balls? Very much so. And super balls, which you can set to travel about 200x further than any other ball in your arsenal.

Being as I am now accompanied everywhere by a bodyguard, who is instantly replaced by an almost-identical bodyguard whenever he happens to get pancaked by a flying car or assassinated by a squad of mercenaries, I opted to use him as a kind of ambulatory mini-golf windmill.

My shots were angled towards him, alternately sending him cartwheeling hilariously down the street, sending him cartwheeling even further down the street (super ball, you see), or setting him on fire. The detonating balls never quite worked. The mod procced some sort of achievement when I successfully nailed him in the dome with a maximum-power shot.

It's a pleasant distraction. Whenever the travails of my life in Los Santos get too much I can, at any moment, drop into Golf Mode. Would that real life were the same way.

You might have heard that I am Mark Zuckerberg now. This is true. Indisputable, even. But something isn't right—wherever he went, Zuckerberg Cool Original was recognised. He was a famous, or infamous man. When I stroll around Los Santos in Grand Theft Auto 5, even as the enormously wealthy owner of its barely-disguised Facebook parody, no one recognises me.

No longer. I have installed the Become a Celebrity mod (coincidentally, from the same author as the LifeInvader Business Mod), with the aim of becoming a prominent man about town. As with the LifeInvader mod, it's actually rather impressive in its feature set: the mod measures your public approval and your overall fame on separate axes, and allows you to undertake little repeatable quests to change both.

You start out, naturally, at zero fame, and the only things you can do to improve it are so-called "Z-lister" gigs. This means: busking. This means: busking upwards of 20 times at disparate locations scattered around Los Santos, each performance netting you about $500 and 0.5 fame points (which is not many fame points). This is fairly arduous, and made harder by all the flying cars, gang warfare, etcetera.

Also, people don't seem to appreciate it. As Franklin stood on the steps of city hall, strumming his heart on guitar, only his hired bodyguard offered any applause. Elsewhere, Los Santos either looked on impassively, ignored him, or died (due to the hazards, you see). Sometimes, to be fair to the stoic crowd, Franklin's guitar-playing animation would not trigger, and his 15-second performance would consist of him standing still and sort of grimacing.

I did it, though. All 20 gigs, eventually letting me crest a new summit of fame and take on a whole new type of gig: the Meet and Greet. In a sunny spot in the Los Santos business district, my fans gathered to revere and adulate me. They whooped, they clapped, they bounced up and down as Franklin stood stock-still and stared blankly into the middle distance. This is what it's all about. This is what I deserve.

The event was brought to an end when a significant portion of my fanbase was hit by a truck.

Let's skip the preamble: I am Mark Zuckerberg now. The original Mark Zuckerberg? Who cares? He's knocked out in a ditch somewhere. Whatever. He's the past; I am the future. Specifically, the future of Mark Zuckerberg, who I am.

The latest mod I have installed into my increasingly uncontrollable build of Grand Theft Auto 5 is LifeInvader Business Mod, which grants you the ability to buy Rockstar's thinly veiled (which is to say, not veiled at all) parody of Facebook for the cool sum of a million bucks. I did not actually have a million bucks, but one of the 46,000 other mods I have installed let me grant myself that amount at the office's front door. In real life, this is called quantitative easing.

The mod is actually quite robust. It's not just a matter of buying the website and letting passive income roll in. You get a whole new menu through which you can staff up—acquiring devs of varying levels of talent—expand your server capacity, and even hire security to keep the hoi polloi away. You can donate to charity to buff your business' reputation, and have to keep an eye on staff morale.

Staff morale, by the way, is largely unimpacted by the flying car which has careened through the second floor window and begun gyrating around the server racks, gathering a pursuing swarm of monitors and wastepaper baskets behind it like a Saab Pied Piper. Nor do they mind, particularly, when armed men burst in and try to shoot their CEO, and they are equally unfazed when that CEO uses his laser vision to turn those men to hot slag.

Actually, while all this was ongoing, the mod kept serving me notifications: staff morale was at a steady 100% because the boss had showed up in the office, which is both appreciated and also not my experience of what happens when the boss shows up in the office. But Facebo—sorry, LifeInvader's developers are made of a different, hardier stock. It's a privilege to own them.

Here's some logic for you: Grand Theft Auto 6—fattened on its billions—cannot help but be the greatest game of all time. This I have gathered from the apocalyptic euphoria that surrounds its release. But GTA 6 is not out yet, and the greatest game of all time, currently, is The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction for the PlayStation 2, original Xbox, and GameCube.

Ergo, QED, post hoc ergo propter hoc, abracadabra: GTA 6 will basically be like The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction.

With that key fact in mind, and with the aim of continuing to transform Grand Theft Auto the fifth into a facsimile of GTA 6 (this time on PC), I have installed Superman V into GTA 5. Your heroes now have laser eyes (also cryo eyes, pulse eyes, solar flare eyes, and so on), super speed, freeze breath, the ability to fly, and X-ray vision—which so far as I can tell is a heat-haze effect that happens intermittently.

I have waved goodbye to guns, much like the protagonist of A Farewell To Arms, who also probably did that after learning he could set people on fire by staring at them.

It works alarmingly well. I can ignite passing cars with my heat vision, freeze cops where they stand, and subject Los Santos' now-roving ambient hit squads to the carcinogenic effects of sustained X-ray exposure. I can also fly, which sometimes works, and sometimes results in Franklin, Michael, or Trevor tumbling lazily but uncontrollably through the sky, like an airborne flower.

My only concern is that, at this point, I am rapidly running out of keys on my keyboard with which to activate the various mods I have installed. At time of writing, hitting any of my function keys will summon a pile-up of distinct mod menus: Enhanced Native Trainer, Menyoo, the one that controls giving people piggybacks, the one that controls summoning dogs. What if what breaks by the end of this thing is not GTA 5, but my ability to control it?

In the wake of GTA 6, series veterans will wax nostalgically about the era of Rockstar expansion packs. No sooner had you finished The Lost and Damned, they'll tell their nurse in between spoonfuls of prunes, The Ballad of Gay Tony landed on your hard drive. There was none of this 'waiting a decade for a new GTA' nonsense.

Fewer will remember the first age of Grand Theft Auto, when even the expansion packs had expansion packs. Really—GTA birthed GTA: London, which in turn begat GTA: London 1961. The latter was released for free online in the summer of 1999, where only a subset of disc-spinning PC gamers were ever likely to find it. Which might have been for the best. Because GTA: London 1961 is perhaps the most punishing visit to the British capital ever conceived. Even including 28 Days Later, and the press reception of Meghan and Harry.

The original Grand Theft Auto already demanded a lot from its players—splicing a nascent open world structure with the limited lives and scorechasing of the arcades. To pass a given level, you'd need to complete several back-to-back chains of missions, thereby building a sufficient multiplier to reach the target score. Getting busted would halve your multiplier instantly. And since cops only needed to bump into you to effect an arrest, like a ghost in Pac-Man, you could easily wind up back at square one, with a dwindling pool of missions to pick from.

To this brutal ruleset, the designers of GTA: London 1961 decided to add mission timers tighter than Adam West's batsuit. How does 20 seconds from East Bermondsey to West Southwark strike you? Or 30 from Westminster Palace to the City of London, where the bankers work? Even in GTA's shrunken top-down metropolis, it's an extraordinary ask—only possible if you pick precisely the right route, floor it, and somehow avoid any serious collisions along the way. "You got to be a little faster," explains your cock-er-ney paymaster, helpfully. "Or Harold'll have your guts for gardening with!"

And should you fail, even once? Those same gangsters will throw you out on your arse, ending the mission with no way of recovery. "This ain't some leisurely afternoon stroll with a stunning bird! This is major international crime, and time and crime waits for Norman, as Harold once said! You blew it, you nob!"

I can't help but wonder how Harold can afford to be so picky with his drivers. If he's got Charlie Croker on the other end of the blower, why is he talking to me in the first place? Good riddance.

Except, without the largesse of old Harold, making money in London is no walk in the park. It might be a drive through Hyde Park, knocking down pedestrians in precise combos to try and max out your score the hard way. Or a slow, repetitive shift at the docks, feeding endless stolen cars to the crane in exchange for £100 notes. I scuppered my chances there by rolling an enormous red bus halfway into the Thames, blocking the crane and making future deliveries impossible.

Thankfully, I'm not the first person to be astonished by the obscenity of those mission timers. And GTA: London 1961 belongs to a time when in-game values could be easily tweaked via notepad files buried on your PC. A kind fellow traveller named Duckilous left instructions on the GTA Forums—an added 30 seconds here, an extra 2375 frames there—and it's no exaggeration to say that those simple inputs are transformative. "I am not a modder for the classic GTA games," my saviour writes. "This is something I just figured out in one day."

Duckilous' GTA London: 1961 remains a frantic, frazzling dash through pixellated renderings of some of the world's most famous landmarks. But that extra inch of breathing room makes all the difference. Another half a minute per mission means you actually have time to read what your objectives are before haring off towards them.

You even get a moment to appreciate the, ah, prose: "What the hell are you doing? You left Mr Caukenbolls all alone. Now some gang has kidnapped him. You'd better find him and get him back here, unharmed! A miss is as good as a moron in this game, mate."

Crucially, the added time means you get to complete more objectives, and therefore access more missions further down the chain. Among GTA: London 1961's scenarios are the theft of a rival gangster's clothes during a pond swim, the filming of a bespoke documentary for Harold to watch at home, and the first-ever implementation of driveby mechanics in the series. There's even a bit of Bond-lite cruising in a Jaguar with a union jack paint job, called the Jug Swinger.

But it's all over pretty fast. This, I now realise, is what the vicious timers were likely covering for: a damning scarcity of scripted missions. I managed to complete four of seven and, having failed the others, was left scraping around to make up the shortfall in my level score.

When run over with a 3x multiplier, policemen yield 3000 points each, and I calculated I'd need to pancake only about a dozen to reach the target. But eventually, even the coppers stopped showing up. London's streets turned eerily quiet, as if every last response unit in Scotland Yard had at last been totalled or exploded. The war was over.

In the end, I was combing the city from Camden to Camberwell, searching for one last way to eke out enough damage to sufficiently impress London's criminal class. And eventually, I found it: a tank parked on a football field. The cars and buildings of Westminster rocked with concussive force as rockets flew. Buckingham Palace's window bill for 1962 would be enormous. But I could finally say I'd completed GTA's toughest challenge to date. Give or take a 30 second timer.

You've no doubt spent dozens of hours in GTA 5 doing millions of dollars of property damage with your fleet of speeding vehicles and arsenal of deadly weapons.

But what if you could do something good for the city of Los Santos while still satisfying your insatiable bloodlust and appetite for destruction? For example, blowing up and running down a couple hundred Flock cameras.

Thanks to the GTALPR mod (which stands for Grand Theft Automated License Plate Reader), you can! The mod adds 235 Flock cameras to GTA 5, and in the modder's words, you can "do whatever the flock you want" to 'em. Shoot 'em. Smash 'em. Take 'em out with cars and tanks and shotguns. And you can even make a tidy profit while fighting back against the surveillance state.

What's especially cool about GTALPR, created by modder Morry, is that these cameras aren't just static props, they actually work. They'll photograph you as you drive past them, and you can save and format these photos for social media or your own scrapbook. The cameras will also alert the cops to your location, sometimes even if you're not breaking any laws—just like real Flock cameras are prone to do, because they suck.

Destroying the Flock cameras drops a bundle of components you can sell for extra cash, a nice bonus at $600 a pop. And if you want to go on a rampage, "there is built-in speedrun functionality, with a stats screen tracking number of cameras destroyed, and fastest time to destroy 10, 50, or all cameras," Morry says. That's rad. The mod also lets you place your own in-game cameras to save snapshots of your exploits around the city.

"Anyway, Flock is a scourge on America," the modder states bluntly on TikTok. "It's a private eight billion dollar surveillance company that operates over 100,000 cameras across the country. If you think the 235 in this mod are bad, just understand that that is literally one tenth of the cameras currently installed in LA County, which Los Santos is based on."

The modder, however, warns at the end of the video that "destroying Flock cameras in real life is illegal and will not, as far as we know, give you a loot box with $600."

Works for me. Learn more about the mod here, and grab it for yourself on Github. And thanks to FRVR for spotting the mod.

Despite vocal opposition from some commissioners, the city of Miami Beach has voted in favor of a Grand Theft Auto 6 promotional campaign that will see Rockstar drop a reported $3 million on the city in exchange for what looks to be some surprisingly light-touch advertising.

The vote on the proposal was streamed on September 10 on the City of Miami Beach YouTube channel, and it was close, finishing at 4-3 in favor. Opposition to the campaign was rooted in familiar concerns about the nature of the GTA games themselves: Violent, criminal, and just a bad influence all around.

"Grand Theft Auto is an adult videogame where players steal cars, deal drugs, commit robberies, murder civilians, and assassinate police officers," commissioner David Suarez said to kick things off. "That's their right. They can make it, they can sell it, and they can advertise it. But that doesn't mean that the city of Miami Beach has to help them do it.

"We ask our police officers every day to put themselves in harm's way protecting this community. We spend enormous resources fighting drugs, violent crime, and disorder. And we've spent over a million dollars over the past three years on a spring break marketing campaign trying to move Miami Beach away from an image of chaos and lawlessness. Now, we're going to take our beaches, one of the most recognizable symbols of this city, and turn them into a space for Grand Theft Auto. What kind of message are we sending to the world?"

Suarez also played a montage of clips from past GTA games and the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6, showcasing an extensive range of crimes that players can commit: "I for one don't want Miami Beach associated with this connotation of a brand. I don't think that this is worth what they're offering. I don't think it's worth really anything."

Commissioner Monica Matteo-Salinas countered by pointing out that "we're not going to be doing live action GTA in the city. We're not giving away pistols and cocaine to people." Instead, she said, the campaign is about people who play GTA, and videogames in general, who aren't going to embark on crime sprees because of a videogame, but who might just drop a lot of sweet tourist dollars on Miami Beach.

Money was also a focal point for commissioner Joseph Magazine, who said GTA 6 is coming to the world regardless of what Miami Beach does. "That spotlight's coming. The question remains whether we actually stand on the sidelines and allow that narrative and die to be cast or whether we actually take control and create an opportunity that works for the residents."

Rattling off a list of projects the city has had to put off due to lack of funding, he continued, "Protecting Miami Beach doesn't mean hiding. It doesn't mean shooing something away that's going to happen. It means the confidence to engage, to strike partnerships, to actually take control over something that we can embrace."

Magazine added that he'd spoken to police about it, and it seems like they're not particularly concerned: "One actually kind of laughed at me, he goes, 'Dude, you think a videogame is going to change what we do in the city or that's what we're worried about?'"

Interestingly, it sounds like this campaign will be fairly subtle compared to the excesses of GTA itself. Commissioner Laura Dominguez said GTA 6 logos won't appear on city property like lifeguard chairs or "iconic public places," but instead "will be advertised discreetly with our partner, the Boucher Brothers ... it'll be on their chairs and their umbrellas."

Boucher Brothers is a Florida-based "hospitality management" company that provides services to municipalities in the state. Amusingly, it's also famous enough that it's being parodied in Grand Theft Auto 6 as Sol Sisters, whose umbrellas can be seen in the background of the first GTA 6 trailer. The similarity in design is hard to miss.

Despite the hand-wringing from some commissioners, the vote ultimately passed 4-3, authorizing the Miami Beach city manager to negotiate a deal with Rockstar for a GTA 6 marketing campaign.

It should be noted that, as far as I can tell, this campaign is different from the proposed collaboration with Miami-Dade County that came to light last week: Miami Beach is a resort city within the county, and this particular campaign was focused on that city specifically. That could indicate that other such collaborations, with other cities in Florida, are in the works—I've reached out to Rockstar to ask and will update if I receive a reply.

The Independent Workers of Great Britain union held a rally today in Glasgow, Scotland to mark the beginning of the final workplace tribunal hearing that will resolve the case of 31 former Rockstar employees who were fired by the company in October 2025.

The dispute turns on the cause of the terminations, or lack thereof: Rockstar says the employees were fired for leaking information about "upcoming and unannounced" games in a public forum, while the IWGB says it's plain-and-simple union busting, and that Rockstar further erred by firing the employees immediately rather than following a disciplinary process or granting the former employees any opportunity to appeal. The fired employees are seeking a ruling declaring that their terminations were unfair, along with reinstatement or compensation.

"We believe Rockstar has tried to get away with Grand Theft Employment Rights," IWGB union president Alex Marshall said. "After a year of fighting to get answers, we hope this tribunal will finally back them into a corner and bring the truth to light. As the world gets its first proper look at GTA 6, this hearing will give people a chance to look behind the scenes at what happened to the workers who helped make it."

One especially powerful moment at the rally was a speech given by former Rockstar programmer Rachel Crawford, who worked on Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2, and was among the employees terminated in 2025.

Closing out the rally, @nershly.bsky.social beautifully speaks about her experience being fired by Rockstar and how they try to use fear.

— @austinkelmore.com (@austinkelmore.com.bsky.social) 2026-09-11T13:29:32.149Z

"The modern workplace runs on fear. Fear of speaking out. Fear of being punished. Fear of being fired, losing your livelihood and even your home.

"On October 30 2025, I was fired by Rockstar Games. I was fired without warning and without even being given a clear answer as to what it was I'd done to deserve it. Within minutes, I was out the door, feeling humiliated and ashamed, and ever since I've replayed that day in my head, wondering what I could or should have done differently.

"On that day, fear asserted its dominance. I felt its claws deep in my heart, urging me to run with my tail between my legs and never to look back. I saw it in my former colleagues, too afraid to talk to me or even, in some cases, to look at me. I heard it every time the ones who did speak to me told me how powerless they felt to do anything to stop or undo what had happened, even though they knew it was wrong.

"Fear wants to rule us. It closes our minds, our hearts, and our horizons. It makes us small, sad and hopeless.

"But today, we are fighting fear. This long-awaited hearing is an opportunity to put fear in its place below us. Over the next five weeks we will face fear and show that we refuse to be silenced by it. In spite of fear, we will stand up proudly, speak our truth, and demand a better industry—a better world—that we all deserve.

"And we're not just fighting fear in the courtroom. Many of my former colleagues at Rockstar Games have taken up the union's flag and are now pushing for the recognition, protection, and power that fear has denied them for too long. Fear will not defeat them and it will not defeat us. Union makes us strong."

The hearing is set to run until October 16, just over a month ahead of the console release of Grand Theft Auto 6, which happens on November 19. The union and fired workers are asking people not to boycott the game, saying in August that "we spent years pouring our hard work, skill, and creativity into making GTA, and we want people to experience the universe that we helped build." Instead, supporters who want to do a solid for the cause are encouraged to contribute to a fundraising campaign launched by the IWGB in support of the legal action against Rockstar.

In a statement provided to PC Gamer, Rockstar reiterated its defense on the matter. "“Rockstar Games' position has been clear and consistent throughout," a Rockstar representative said. "Individuals across the UK and Canada were dismissed for gross misconduct following the sharing of confidential company information, not because of alleged trade union membership or activity. We reject the claims and will defend them vigorously before the tribunal.”

Every new Rockstar game is more simulation-heavy than the last, and Grand Theft Auto 6 aims to bring players closer to real-life in a variety of ways. One of these is the addition of vehicle refuelling, which will require players to stop off at gas stations (or petrol stations if you're a Brit like me) and watch your disposable income vanish in a stream of fossilised plant matter.

This mechanical tweak has proved somewhat controversial among Grand Theft Auto players, with some believing that refuelling cars will be inconvenient and interrupt the flow of driving and shooting the series is built upon. Yet while Rockstar is sticking to its guns on the matter of refuelling, co-studio head Rob Nelson recently stated that filling up your car won't be a massive drag on your adventure across Vice City.

Nelson's comments come via YouTuber TGG (via GamesRadar+) who recently saw an extended preview of Rockstar's hotly anticipated crime sim, which included refuelling in action. TGG says that gas stations allow players to both repair and refuel cars, and facilitate recharging for electric vehicles alongside refuelling for cars powered by internal combustion engines. Selecting the refuel/recharge option triggers a refuelling cutscene that TGG says lasts around 10 seconds.

The preview was apparently overseen by Nelson, who commented on the refuelling during play. "Hey, that's pretty fast for a fill up," Nelson observed when getting gas. "You can't complain about that." It also appears there is some trepidation within Rockstar about the refuelling, as when discussing the system with TGG, Nelson stated. "We'll see what people say," before asking "Do you think people are going to like it?"

For his part, TGG reckons that "Fuel isn't really going to be an issue unless you're not thinking about what you're doing". And I think this is probably going to be the case for most people unless Rockstar makes the need to refuel too frequent. When Red Dead Redemption 2 arrived in 2018, some players complained about the simulation-heavy elements of that, like how Arthur Morgan moved and having to fiddle around with your saddlebags for inventory management.

Officials with Miami-Dade County have held talks with Rockstar about using facilities and landmarks in the county to promote the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6, according to a recent report by The Miamian, saying it could represent "a unique opportunity to generate revenue for the County while showcasing Miami-Dade to a massive audience." Just one problem: the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office is dead-set against it.

The Miamian report (via RPS) says the county submitted a pitch deck to Rockstar on June 29, after which staff had "some conversations with Rockstar about potential opportunities around the launch of GTA 6," said Carlos Suarez, a spokesperson for Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.

"Nothing has been formally agreed to or approved, and any idea would have to go through the appropriate review and approval process," Suarez said. "Given Miami-Dade's clear influence on the game, we think there could be a unique opportunity to generate revenue for the County while showcasing Miami-Dade to a massive audience."

Miami-Dade is the inspiration for Vice City in the GTA series, and by "inspiration" I mean it basically is Vice City, although Miami exists as a separate city in the game's fiction. Vice City will serve as a central location in GTA 6, and will represent the seat of Vice-Dale County, much as the city of Miami is the county seat of Miami-Dade. Given that, the campaign makes obvious sense, and most of the ideas floated don't sound too overly disruptive.

Some examples:

• A display aircraft wrapped in Vice City logos and a GTA 6-inspired baggage claim at Miami International Airport
• Vice City signage and colors at the Metromover and Metrorail transit stations
• Vice City-inspired installations or public art at PortMiami
• A "family appropriate" celebration of "Miami car culture" with cars, bikes, DJs, food, artists, and branded installations at Tropical Park
• A Vice City Radio Lab at the city's main library, providing access to recording, editing, and digital media equipment to support "music production, podcasting, oral histories, neighborhood storytelling, sound engineering, video-game development, and other creative programming, while reflecting the central role that music and radio play in the GTA experience

The pitch also includes ideas for Rockstar funding permanent upgrades to county infrastructure:

That all sounds pretty cool to me, and some of it is quite civically wholesome, too. Yes, it's all part of the monstrous marketing machine for the biggest videogame of all time, but it also seems like the county is coming at it as a way to celebrate the real people and civic culture that led Rockstar to embrace Miami in the first place, and that counts for something.

The big stumbling block, of course, is that the GTA games are the polar opposite of civic-minded and wholesome, and that's led Miami-Dade Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz to speak out against the idea.

"Grand Theft Auto is a videogame franchise built around criminal activity," Cordero-Stutz told the Miami Herald. "Its fictional world includes murder, robbery, drug trafficking, carjacking, violence against law enforcement, and other conduct that the men and women of the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office work every single day to prevent."

Miami-Dade Commissioner Juan Carlos Bermudez also spoke out against the idea: "We should be promoting the Miami-Dade we have worked so hard to build, not a fictional version of our community defined by crime and violence."

The sheriff isn't wrong. GTA games have always been notoriously violent: Former attorney Jack Thompson, at one time the videogame industry's foremost nemesis, spent years campaigning hard against the games and publisher Take-Two Interactive before he was finally disbarred for his relentless antics and misconduct.

But the game industry, and its audience, have matured in the 25 years (that's right, look it up) since Grand Theft Auto 3 changed everything: GTA is still steeped in criminal violence, but the shock factor—and the hand-wringing over it—are long gone. These days it's completely mainstream, as evidenced by the performance of the GTA 6 reveal showcase on Netflix, which was the platform's biggest show of the week.

Would Miami-Dade have to tone down some of the seedier elements of GTA 6 for its "family appropriate" events? Sure. But I also have no doubt that a significant number of sheriff's deputies and police in the county grew up playing GTA themselves, and I bet an awful lot of them will be calling in sick when GTA 6 drops.

Okay, two things. First: Los Santos Customs will be taking a hiatus next week, as I spend nine days in a row sleeping and attempting to develop the antibodies to counter whatever exotic German illness it is I acquired at Gamescom 2026.

Second: it's snowing in Los Santos, just like the real-life LA.

I have installed WinterV Beta, with the aim of making Grand Theft Auto 5's weather a little more interesting than it usually is. The pitch is simple: what if there was snow? Well, reader, having played a little GTA 5 with WinterV Beta, I can assure you that there very much is snow. Plus, all the world's lighting takes on a kind of a sickly, ochre hue, which is also just like LA.

From the sky: flurries of flakes. On the roads: cars covered in a sheen of powder, tyre-chains inexplicably equipped (the snow does not, in my version of GTA 5 where a significant chunk of the exterior map has absconded to the phantom zone, settle). In the air: a crisp winter chill. Santa Claus is coming to town; fire a truck at him.

I can't tell you if the presence of snow on the city roads impacts car handling because, as we have established, cars in my GTA 5 no longer have handling. Nevertheless, it does change the vibe quite a lot. As someone who's spent a lot of the last month looking at GTA 5—a change is as good as a rest.

But also, it is time for a rest. I will see you the week after next, whereupon we'll probably finally convert this game into GTA 6. I can feel it.

The problem with Grand Theft Auto 5, really, is that its world lacks verisimilitude. Unlike GTA 6, which will be more real than real, a psychosis-inducing perfect recreation of reality that we will be both unable and unwilling to tear ourselves from, Los Santos in GTA 5 is just sort of… stagey. It's a big Hollywood set (of Hollywood), all outside and no inside.

I have now added the inside. I installed Open World Interiors, whose aim is to furnish various GTA 5 businesses with actual, inhabitable inside zones. Restaurants, hospitals, gyms—all these and more, so the pitch goes, unfurl beyond you as new territory to explore and conquer.

That's the pitch. In reality, stepping outside of Franklin's Beverly Hills house quickly revealed that a significant chunk of Los Santos had been inexplicably deleted. I do not know where it has gone or why it has gone there. Maybe, one day, it will return.

Some things do work, though! Navigate through the hit squads and flying cars until you find a fast-food joint, and you can now dip inside, at which point you will be confronted by a taster's plate of Los Santos freaks sat in infrangible silence while one of the game's radio stations plays, inscrutably, from somewhere.

So, all well and good—Los Santos has an inside now. Only one thing is broken (apart from the large chunks of the outside that are broken): attempting to enter a gym will send you plummeting into the fathomless void at the secret heart of the world. You will scream. The radio will continue playing. "This is the rhythm of the night," declares Corona as Franklin tumbles, screeching into the void. After falling for some time, he reappears in front of the gym's doors. Los Santos is a mysterious place.

We saw many things during Grand Theft Auto 6's weird Netflix reveal, and it's official: GTA is simmy now. The gendarmes will meticulously document your physical appearance, and escaping them will necessitate changing it up. Jason and Lucia will also, the prophets tell us, feel the effects of sleeplessness and bad diet, just like mortals.

One thing we haven't seen from official sources: cars needing petrol. That particularly sim-ish feature has only been part of contraband GTA 6 leaks. Nevertheless, I have completely internalised this mechanic into my vision of the game. If you can't trust anonymous online weirdos trying to flog you some crypto thing, who can you trust?

So, naturally, I had to incorporate a working gas mechanic into my ongoing quest to turn GTA 5 into GTA 6 or kill it by trying. I installed Fumes – Animated Persistent Fuel, whose functions are thus: "Every vanilla and online vehicle carries a real fuel tank. It empties as you drive and it is still empty when you come back to that car tomorrow.

"Refuelling is not a menu," it says, casting subtle shade on all those non-hardcore car-gassing mechanics out there. "Get out, walk to the pump, take the nozzle off it—it goes in your hand and the hose comes with you on a real physics rope." Yes. All of these things are refuelling, to me.

It works like this: on your minimap, while driving, a new meter now tracks how much petrol your car's got left in it. Run out, and your journey's at an end. You know, like how cars work.

This was difficult to test. As we've already well-established, my current installation of GTA 5 is a nightmare merry-go-round of frictionless cars and increasingly contradictory mods. To actually acquire a car, I first had to figure out how to make one stop, and how to make sure it did not get immediately detonated by the hordes of hitmen and ambient gang violence that have become the burden of my Los Santos life. It's harder than it sounds: even throwing myself beneath a car's wheels didn't really help. Yes, the driver would get out to ask if I was okay (I was not), but the car would keep going.

I eventually commandeered one, however, by teleporting (Franklin can teleport now). The mod worked! Also, numerous other mods I already had installed kept throwing errors, which is probably fine. But amid the error messages and chaos, I managed to make it to a petrol station, in order to test the mod's robust in-person refuelling mechanics.

Never mind.

Netflix's exclusivity deal for the Grand Theft Auto 6 reveal in August struck me as a little silly. Sure, it'd probably make "a little pocket change," as PC Gamer's Harvey Randall put it at the time, but a video that would remain exclusive for only six hours? Not days? How much of an impact could that really have?

Well, uh, quite a lot, as it turns out. We already knew that Netflix was probably pretty happy with how it all worked out, but a Variety report nails it down more specifically and impressively, saying Netflix pulled in 31.1 million views with the GTA 6 reveal between its August 27 debut and August 30, which is when the window for its weekly top 10 ranking closes.

That's not just a huge number, it makes the reveal showcase Netflix's most-watched title of the week, topping the English-language film list, where it was classified, in 87 out of 93 countries.

It's not a direct comparison because of the differences in how they count "views," but that Netflix number—again, over just four days—is almost double the 17 million views YouTube has put up in total since the showcase went live on that platform.

Here it is, if you haven't seen it—although given those viewership numbers, my guess is that if you wanted to see it, you likely already have.

The GTA 6 reveal was a unique phenomenon, not the sort of thing that's easily duplicated year over year, but it was obviously a big win for Netflix, which got to be the tip of a very pointy spear for a short but lucrative stretch of time. Take-Two hasn't said what it got out of the deal, although I imagine money would figure prominently.

But the scale of its success makes me wonder if maybe we'll see more of this in the future: GTA is a rare bird but I could see Microsoft setting something up for future Call of Duty reveals, possibly, or Sony opting for a similar exclusivity window for particularly important State of Play showcases. Gaming is mainstream now—maybe this is what that ultimately looks like.

The recent GTA 6 "extended look" on Netflix wasn't very clear on whether you can swap between its protagonists Jason and Lucia at will. Apart from a moment where the camera pulls away from Lucia and back down to Jason miles away, there wasn't a lot of swapping going on, especially during the action.

According to an interview on Famitsu with Rockstar North's co-studio head Rob Nelson (translated by GamesRadar+), the ability to swap characters will depend on the mission and where you're at in the story.

"During the story, there are times where you can't switch from one character for some reason," he said. "There are some missions where you are free to switch as much as you want, but there are some sections where we want you to experience it from a certain character's perspective, like GTA 5, so we limit switching."

As an example, Nelson said you used to be able to swap between Jason and Lucia during a mission early on in the game, but the team decided it would make more sense for Jason to take the lead with his military background. Other missions, like the one we saw in the extended look where the two are escaping a bank robbery, will do the swapping for you. After firing at the cops as Jason in the backseat, you'll be put in the driver's seat as Lucia so you can make your getaway.

The mission where Jason and Lucia are under attack at the end of the extended look, however, will let you freely swap between them, Nelson said. We don't see this actually happen, but I think I can see how it would play out, especially if part of the objective is to survive long enough to reunite the two by the end.

Nelson makes it sound like the in-mission hot swapping will be reserved for pivotal moments in the story and everything else will be locked to one or the other. I had hoped that maybe GTA 6 would be a co-op game disguised as a singleplayer game, but it looks like we'll have to play by Rockstar's rules. That said, we already know you'll be able to freely swap outside of missions thanks to Dazed's preview of the game, so there will be plenty of time to see what kind of mayhem you can cause with that kind of power at least.

I imagine it like one of the cutscenes that play in Civilization when you construct a wonder of the world. A scant few days ago, humanity put its differences aside. The guns fell silent. Nary a harsh word was said. For a shining moment, we were one—ensconced in the warm glow of our television sets and monitors as we took in our first legitimate glimpse of Grand Theft Auto 6.

I guess people without Netflix subscriptions continued shooting each other.

Anyway, amid the hullabaloo we got our first insight into how GTA 6's wanted system will work. Seems simmy. Cops will now remember things like your physical description and the clothes you're wearing as they work to bring you to justice, and it all, in general, seems a bit deeper and more involved than in GTAs of yore.

So I brought it to the GTAs of yore: VI Wanted System does what it says on the tin—it brings a facsimile of GTA 6's cop-suspicion mechanics to GTA 5. Clothes, hair, and what-have-you all factor into the police's hunt. Losing the heat doesn't mean you're free anymore: you'll have to anonymise yourself to evade pursuit entirely.

I immediately put it to the test by opening fire on all and sundry in downtown Los Santos. Very quickly, the cops had my physical description and knew the expensive clothes I was wearing. This did not, necessarily, help them find me, as they were too busy dealing with their frictionless vehicles, ongoing gang warfare, and ambient hit squads that were also out to kill me. Nevertheless, they theoretically had a better chance of pinning me down than before.

My attempts to lose the heat by dipping into a clothing store were foiled by the store's 'no selling to people flanked by angry, armed cops' rule, so I was forced to dash home through the cacophonous and exploding streets of Los Santos in order to find a new shirt. This helped, somewhat, but the rest of me remained an issue.

San Andreas' barbers are less strict about their clientele, it seems, because I was able to get a haircut just fine, the probably offensively camp stylist remarking that my outfit was "Goooooorgeous" in what felt like a divine stamp of approval on my effort to avoid being punished for murder.

I tested the system to breaking point by standing in front of the police station. They did not recognise me. They did recognise that I had a shotgun equipped and which I had forgotten how to holster using a keyboard. The cops began to shoot me to death. I considered my mission successful.

It is high time I paid for my crimes. There are things I've done that can't be forgiven, mostly relating to that time I drove a Chinese anti-air missile truck into Beverly Hills, and someone should make me face consequences for that.

Alas, in GTA 5, no one will unless I make them. So I made them. I have installed Ambient Hit Squads, a mod inspired by Red Dead Redemption 2 that will dispatch armed men to eliminate you every so often as you're out exploring the game's world.

This functions more or less as it should in my nightmare-frankenstein version of GTA, already lumbering under so many mods. Once in a while, my map will bloom with red dots as armed assassins arrive to kill me, and the clatter of gunfire will join the now-constant chorus of cars ramming each other, pedestrians, geometry, me, and themselves.

But of course, these hitmen have to navigate this reality too. For the guys who are just there—just men on the ground running at me, that's not so much of a problem. For the ones in helicopters, it is an irresolvable problem.

They are trapped in a new circle of hell, constantly trying to orient their choppers toward me while other mods wrestle to send them unstoppably forwards. This is, at least, very funny, and has the effect of making the helicopters look like they are piloted by drunk drivers as they bob up and down through the sky.

And as for the guys on the ground? Well, I just shoot my car gun at them.

Original story:

The Grand Theft Auto 6 leak party is presumably over: The Netflix showcase has wrapped, and Cyberleek has made off with more than $200,000 in a perfectly predictable yet somehow still very lucrative rug pull. I imagine the leaker is now looking for a good hole to hide in, and for their sake it better be a deep one because it sounds like Take-Two's hunt is zeroing in on something.

Take-Two Interactive filed subpoena requests with Discord and Microsoft shortly after the GTA 6 leaks began to flow, seeking "business records and investigative records associated with Microsoft’s internal investigation of the 'cyberleek' persona sufficient to identify the user(s)," as well as detailed information on potentially thousands of users who interacted with certain Discord servers. Subsequent subpoenas seeking similar information were filed with X and YouTube.

Those requests were very broad, but a newer filing made on August 28 (via TorrentFreak) is much narrower: "Take-Two has identified one additional Discord user and obtained additional identifying information for a previously identified Discord user, as well as additional information concerning the community servers identified in its prior subpoena for which it now seeks more targeted information. These additional accounts and server are believed to be involved in the same infringing activity as that described in Take-Two's first request."

A footnote adds that "Take-Two's investigation of the infringement at issue is rapidly evolving and ongoing," and says the information sought by this subpoena is different from what was covered in the first, "and provides additional clarifying information regarding one of the user IDs specified in the first subpoena."

Also interesting is that while previous subpoena filings were public, the details in this one are sealed. A motion requesting the seal remain intact argues that the filing in question is "not subject to the presumption of public access," and says that even if it was, Take-Two's "countervailing interests" would take precedence because the document "reveals highly sensitive, confidential information about an ongoing investigation into copyright infringement and the misappropriation of Take-Two’s confidential information."

"Public disclosure of this information could compromise Take-Two's ongoing investigation and even tip off the alleged infringers as to the nature and progress of Take-Two's investigation and information Take-Two has gathered about the infringement, creating a substantial risk that the infringers will delete, destroy, or otherwise conceal evidence of their infringing activities, and/or take further steps to evade identification."

At this point, a ruling on the request to keep the document sealed hasn't been made, and the subpoena itself hasn't been issued.

Also on August 28, Take-Two withdrew its request for a DMCA subpoena filing with Google, repeating that the situation "has been (and is) evolving rapidly as new information becomes available."

There are big-budget blockbusters, and then there's GTA 6. If you want any sense of just how big this thing is, look no further than a recent interview Rockstar North co-head Aaron Garbut gave The New York Times (via Techradar). In it, he said the studio dedicated an entire new team solely to making NPCs.

"We art-directed each individual one of them," Garbut said in the interview. "Every room in the game, somebody thought about this … Who's sitting where, what they're drinking, the marks that are left on the table. The pictures on the wall will have the people that are in that room, with their tattoos on their arms and their family behind them.

"That whole thing has been made, and built, and photographed, and placed in this random room in a random building in a huge city, in a world." He revealed that GTA 6 has over 600,000 animations—double the amount Red Dead Redemption 2 had, both of which dwarf GTA 5's 55,000. Considering the game's map is also three times as big as Red Dead 2's, it seems like the game operates on an unprecedented level of scale and fidelity.

This all lines up with what PC Gamer's US editor-in-chief Tyler Wilde said of the game in the wake of recent leaks earlier this month: even if GTA 6 doesn't reinvent the open world crime-'em-up, it "will be impressive for the same reason Rockstar games typically are: The absurd amount of effort and money the studio puts into making them as big and detailed as the mainstream hardware of the day can manage."

As expected, the GTA 6 Extended Look blew up the internet yesterday, and along with reactions to the huge open world, the missions we saw, and the features revealed in the 26-minute video, there's also been a lot of discussion about one element of the game in particular.

Jason.

While everyone seems to enjoy what they've seen of GTA 6's Lucia, especially her murking a guy with a high-heeled shoe and racking a shotgun with one hand, the internet seems a bit split when it comes to the other member of the playable duo.

After past memorable Rockstar characters like Niko, Michael, Franklin, Trevor, and of course John and Arthur from the Red Dead Redemption series, a lot of the reactions to Jason have been less than enthusiastic.

"I feel like half this [subreddit] could voice-act Jason better than whoever this is," one Reddit post is titled.

"The voice did not feel smooth at all and in my opinion the character felt very bland," kebualen19

Commented in another post that is simply titled "Jason's voice."

"He seems heavily sedated," said Final-Tower6331.

Our own website commenters, when they had something to say about Jason, weren't too keen on the lad.

PC Gamer commenter Cephelapoid said "I don't know the voice actor, and I don't mean to be rude, but it's a total miss for me. Very boring delivery, with little to no emotion. From what we heard it just seems like the character is incredibly dull."

Another commenter, GeraltOfButleria, wasn't a fan either: "Jason's voice actor was a bit of a mumblemouth, really weird choice."

And commenter Truzen: "I wish Jason was a little more flushed out in his [voice acting] as he feels so flat, as opposed to Lucia."

Not everyone was so anti-Jason, however. In a Reddit post titled "I don't agree with the Jason criticism," Low_Mouse_197 writes, "I see some people criticizing Jason as being monotone and kind of dull. To me he seems like an emotionally detached dude who has 'seen some shit' during his military service. It just seems like good characterization for a GTA protagonist… they aren't exactly supposed to be well adjusted individuals, so the fact he seems kind of 'cold' or 'simple' fits very well."

Many Reddit users also point out that this isn't the first time a Rockstar character initially appeared to be a bit boring in a trailer, but changed their minds once they'd played the full game.

"Makes me think of how people hated Arthur when they first saw him in the RDR2 trailers, look how that turned out," said YoursTruly2729.

The PC Gamer team was a bit divided on Jason, too. I thought his character seemed a bit dull in the video and his voice is so distractingly deep that every time he talked I was reminded of Jame Gumb from Silence of the Lambs. "Put the f**king lotion in the basket!" I was left hoping Lucia could dump his ass and date someone else for the duration.

Tim said he liked Lucia but "Jason, on the other hand, felt very generic 2000s videogame dude, remarkable only for his startlingly deep voice. More time with him will hopefully reveal hidden depths."

On the other hand, in our work Slack, Lincoln revealed himself as a J-fan, saying he was "charmed by Jason's dope energy," adding "I like that he's just an archetypal Guy."

"If he's a Wife Guy he can stay, that's how you earn redemption for being Template Man," said Lauren.

Tyler said Jason was growing on him, too, though "His personality is kinda at odds with the things he's doing in the game. He doesn't strike me as a backflip into the ocean kinda guy."

"I went to high school with so many dudes who presented as low energy plainfaced Present Individuals who would do a backflip off a dock in a second given an excuse," Lincoln said. "I know this man."

Ted didn't offer an opinion on Jason either way, but at least finds his relationship with Lucia convincing. "If nothing else, it was so real when Lucia asked which dress he preferred, she clearly disagreed with his pick, he went all 'then the other one I guess,' and she wound up wearing a completely different, third dress. Been there."

What do you think of Jason so far? I whipped up a quick poll so you can share your vote, and please feel free to elaborate more in the comments below.

Florida is a vast and wonderful menagerie. It is home to over a billion species (I didn't research that claim and nor should you), ranging from alligators to snakes to… alligators. Grand Theft Auto 6, I must assume, will be basically like a trip to the zoo with gun crime.

GTA 5, though? It does its best, but the animal quotient is low. In fairness, Los Santos, like its real-life counterpart, was not built to sustain life. But like so many things, this can be rectified through mods.

I have installed DogDog (it's about dogs), which is both a fan-made modification of the videogame Grand Theft Auto 5, and the source of history's most perfect English sentence: "You can summon your favorite dogs in any quantity you desire."

But it undersells itself. DogDog allows you to summon dogs(dogs), yes, but not just them. In addition to a small legion of loyal canines, you can also manifest cats, cows, lions, and—the following is based on the verified personal experience of this reporter—at minimum one chimpanzee.

Combo this dizzy-making new power with one of our previously installed mods, 2gether, and you can patrol the roadways of Los Santos with the entire cast of Homeward Bound at your back while a partying great ape sits on your back like you are a majestic and powerful steed. Which you are. Believe in yourself.

One issue with this—and sorry to be a bummer—is that, yes, there are still gang wars happening and flying cars loose from the surly bonds of Earth. So sometimes, ah, well, look: sometimes bad things happen to the animals. You have to try to walk them out in nature. It's where they belong, I suppose.

The veil between satire and reality has seemed so thin for such a long time now that I find myself double checking every other news post I see just to make sure it's not something from The Onion—sadly it never is. But I guess it could be worse, I could be the one who has to write the satire, I could be the one who has to write scripts for GTA 6.

It's certainly a tall order, especially right now, but if someone's able to do it I'm confident in Rockstar, who should be able to pull off some meta-commentary about the make-believe state of Leonida, based on Florida, and the US at large.

"That’s a question a lot of people ask: how do you deal with satire in today’s world?" Rockstar North's co-studio head, Ron Nelson, tells IGN. "I think there’s always stuff to satirize. As long as humans are humans, other humans will figure out ways to satirize what we do."

Sure, they'll always be people who will satirize the world around them, but the key here is doing it well enough that it doesn't make players' eyes permanently roll into the back of their heads, while also holding up against the test of time. Rockstar surely wants people to play and enjoy GTA 6 beyond 2026.

"We have to be careful that what we’re choosing to satirize is not going to feel dated in a weird way," Nelson explains. "I think those broader things are OK to satirize, but very specific political issues or memes will date fast. Even the way our characters speak, we think about it a lot so that they're not using extremely contemporary slang. Even though our characters are a certain age, they need to feel somewhat timeless."

That probably means we won't be seeing any brainrot or references to the orange man in GTA 6, and you know what? Thank god—sometimes art doesn't need to fully imitate life.

Watching videogame studios try and bob and weave around Grand Theft Auto 6's launch—especially when it was up in the air when exactly it'd come out—is a little like watching a flock of Marios (is that the correct plural noun? A mama mia of Marios?) all trying to dodge the same whomp.

As was the case with the new Fable game, which got punted over into 2027 to avoid debuting among an absolutely rammed lineup. And while Xbox was playing coy about which game it was trying to avoid back then, we've now got some soft, tongue-in-cheek confirmation that it probably was Grand Theft Auto 6, yeah.

Speaking to IGN at Gamescom 2026, Fable's director Ralph Fulton says: "I think the rationale behind moving us out of October, the date that we were in previously, is pretty apparent to everybody. I feel great about that. I mean, I was really looking forward to shipping this game this year. I didn't want to have to do another January 1 speech to the team about ‘this is the year we ship Fable,’ which I'm now going to have to do.

"But the rationale for it is absolutely sound. I'm glad that we're avoiding that chaotic window.” For what it's worth, the window itself includes a ton of non-GTA stuff. This summer's been a touch dry on big new releases, but in the wider videogame industry you've got Onimusha: Way of the Sword, Blood of Dawnwalker, two Star Wars games, Marvel's Wolverine, Control Resonant, Gears of War: E-Day, and Phantom Blade Zero all before the year's even out.

But even Fulton cops that, yeah, the big one's the main reason: "We don't run scared of other big games. We're a big game ourselves. We hold ourselves to high standards. I'm happy to go toe-to-toe with a bunch of other games. There's just one that I'm happy to avoid entirely." Fair enough.

Two wrongs don't make a right, but one huge wrong and then a lot of little rights can make it feel better. According to Rockstar North's co-studio head Rob Nelson (via IGN) GTA 6 will be getting this treatment, just a little bit more nuanced.

Think Red Dead Redemption 2's Honor System and then ramp it up a bit. While Arthur Morgan could really game the system, doing the most heinous crimes before working his way back into the good graces of all, Jason and Lucia won't have it quite that easy.

"There isn’t a right or wrong way to play this game, but consistent actions may have an impact in terms of how the world reacts to you and how the narrative plays out," Nelson says. Alongside the classic Wanted Level, players will also have to pay attention to their Criminal Profile.

But here's where the nuance comes in: doing bad things doesn't necessarily count against your Criminal Profile. If you're in a situation where violence is the only logical and safe next step then sure, start shooting, but if you're the aggressor or have even escalated a situation beyond any reasonable amount? NPCs will remember that.

One way to even it out, however, is by Lucia or Jason doing small acts of kindness. Apparently things like throwing your rubbish away in bins or being nice to animals will count in your favour. See, everyone wins when you recycle.

This isn't Rockstar trying to teach its players mortality, I think we all know it's too late for that, but it is an attempt to make Jason and Lucia's actions a little more realistic. "You are playing as criminals on the run, but the narrative is such that it makes most sense for them to do what they need to do while not drawing unnecessary attention (even though sometimes that happens)," Nelson explains.

It's also just a smart move not to be too much of an asshole when walking around the fictional not-Florida, Leonida. Instead of just having to worry about the police coming for you, now some locals will pick a fight if you taunt them too much, or just a little bit. "I think in previous GTA games you were a bit all-powerful,” Nelson adds. “You were the only one with an invisible arsenal hidden away. Apart from the police, everyone would run in terror from you if you started acting out. This world in GTA 6 is not like that."

But if the noise, violence, and trigger-happy locals of Leonida all get too much for you then you'll be able to just head back to your safehouses, which also take something from RDR2 as they act "closer to the camps in terms of how interactive they are and how much they feel like your home."

One of the more confusing elements of the Grand Theft Auto 6 extended look is the fact that it debuted on Netflix, of all sites. Why? While it's harder to pin down the reasons Take-Two went for it, I can at least suss out that Netflix is probably feeling very happy with its end of the bargain.

That's per GamesBeat, which pulled the numbers from Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm. According to them, the average user count on mobile increased by 50% when compared to the past 12 Thursdays—meanwhile, the average web user count went up a stonking 125%.

This was enough of a bump to cause issues for some viewers, though Netflix otherwise held up reasonably well. That's great news for the streaming platform, which has presumably been struggling to keep up with that ever-enshittifying perpetual growth mindset—introducing ads over the past few years, ramping up prices, and toying with generative AI to make those aforementioned ads even more annoying. We can, sadly, expect more of this in the future.

As for what Take-Two got out of it, it's hard to say, given CEO Strauss Zelnick has been tight-lipped on the particulars. It could be Netflix paid a lump sum to the publisher as part of the temporary exclusivity deal, though the kind of payout they'd have to offer Take-Two to get Zelnick interested would be pretty major, given Take-Two's worth an eye-watering $43.5 billion at the time of writing.

Then again, the preview was only Netflix-exclusive for six whole hours, meaning you'd likely only shell out for a new subscription if you were ravenous for more news—or just didn't want to spend an evening dodging spoilers before you sat down and watched the thing yourself. It is, after all, already on YouTube.

Which means that Take-Two had very little to lose by saying "yes" other than consumer goodwill. And given the self-styled "Robin Hood" of gaming (these airquotes are so heavy), Cyberleek, has seemingly grabbed the bag and ran? I'm not sure the front against GTA 6 is particularly unified. Chances are that folks are going to buy this game regardless of what Take-Two does.

Netflix's 26-minute "Extended Look" at GTA 6 is now on YouTube, so if you missed the reveal earlier today because you don't have a Netflix subscription and you don't tend to watch stolen and reposted videos, you can see it now, for free (and guilt free).

The feature contains nearly a half-hour of new footage of Grand Theft Auto 6, and was posted on Netflix earlier today. As Rockstar announced, the exclusive feature would make its way to YouTube six hours later, and now it has. Take a look:

Naturally we were keen to check it out, and came away with some interesting new details about the game, like how character swapping works, the different sorts of activities there are (like racing, kayaking, and scuba diving), and how Lucia racks a shotgun with one hand and is thus proven to be the cool one of the duo.

You can check out all our observations here in our GTA 6 reveal liveblog. Morgan also had some thoughts about how the missions looked, we all chimed in on whether our expectations were met, and we published a collection of all the GTA 6 details we spotted.

Of course, Netflix isn't the only one showing off: we've been seeing footage of GTA 6 since last week due to the cyberleek drama, though we're not sure how long that's going to continue.

Alright, we've finally seen some real, official, brand new GTA 6 gameplay. Regardless of any more leaks springing, there's something concrete out there for us to pull apart. I was expecting some disembodied commentary voiceover but it was actually just pure cutscenes and gameplay for 26 minutes. The timeline jumped around a whole lot so Jason and Lucia's story still isn't super clear, but we can still make sense of a bunch of combat and crime features that were included.

It does initially look like a prettier, bigger GTA 5, but there are places where Rockstar has borrowed from Red Dead Redemption 2 to good effect too. Here's all the biggest bits you'll want to know about GTA 6 from the reveal (and yes, some do overlap with stuff we saw from those leaks).

Watch the gameplay reveal here

Major features in the GTA 6 gameplay reveal

Tons of Vice City side activities

What we didn't see in the reveal

More details we spotted in the reveal

Those are all the biggest takeaways that we learned from the gameplay reveal, but here are a bunch more smaller bits that we spotted:

• Pet dogs (of course) for good karma
• Some destructible walls in the drug deal combat scene
• Slow-mo kill cam
• Breaking into a car with a "slim jim" crowbar required a tiny quicktime interaction
• Fridges have a drink selection menu, some with gameplay effects
• Driving navigation has a modern 3D style map view for certain buildings, like Lucia's apartment
• Lots of disguises and wigs for Lucia
• Obligatory car chase plus shooting out the window
• Six total stars for your "wanted" level
• Driving course races and motocross too
• Shooting gallery courses
• Swapping gear and outfits on the fly
• Some melee combat has quicktime events also
• Influencer gags "Chat what do I do?!"
• Wow, that hair tech, seriously
• Body part targeting on enemies

The big gameplay reveal for GTA 6 has come and gone, and I'm surprised by how mixed I am on it.

In some ways, I'm more excited than ever play it. Vice City gives an amazing first impression—I'm already convinced it'll be the special sort of open world that you just want to exist in. Rockstar is packing it full of little activities and human touches that might make GTA 6 a borderline life sim: eating, drinking, sleeping, recreation, hanging out with buds, skydiving, dirt bike racing, and store robbing (I didn't say the activities were all aspirational). I'm seeing a lot of stuff I want to do.

That stuff looks so good it's almost overwhelming, but the bits in between all that—those fragments of story missions—were less impressive. I was hoping 13 years would change the shape of GTA's authored action, but Rockstar is still very much working with the same tools.

In the first mission we see Jason and Lucia doing a drug deal for Boobie Ike, and I bet you can guess what happens: The pair exchange some uneasy words with the buyer, then the deal goes wrong when the cops show up. Our heroes shoot their way out of the building.

A mission shown off later in the video takes place further in the story: Jason and Lucia are more established, taking on a job as security detail for some corpo bigwig. There's some walking, some talking, a speech about a company's new US headquarters, then the party is interrupted by professional killers with guns. The pair shoot their way out of the building.

This isn't just a trend throughout this gameplay reveal. Rockstar missions have had this pattern since the early GTA days: meet a weird new character, talk and drive with them for a while, then shoot 18 people, mission over. It's as if Rockstar believes every story beat has to check off the same bullet points. The format wore especially thin in Red Dead 2's overly long story, so much that I've struggled to replay the whole thing despite loving everything else about it.

My hope is that the majority of GTA 6 can buck this trend, and that today's reveal prioritized action for the sake of spectacle. I want to see quieter moments—missions centered around choices, mysteries, or just having fun. I know it's GTA, but wouldn't the explosions of action be more thrilling if they weren't always expected?

We've got a lot of GTA 6 reading for you today, including a live blog that catalogued details from the reveal as they happened.

Men. What is wrong with them and how can they be fixed?

Philosophers and scientists have asked this for generations, but the problem has only become understandable—and tractable—with the advent of modern technology. They are lonely. Contrary to the popular aphorism, all men are islands, struggling to exist in tempest-tossed seas. I have tried to solve this before, at least for Franklin, Trevor, and Michael, by introducing Pokémon to Los Santos. This did not work, and only resulted in me beating Charmander to death in the street.

The gentlemen of GTA require human companionship, not magical pets. They must find in others what is missing in themselves. They must use the 2gether mod for GTA 5, which allows you to approach random NPCs and adorn yourself with them like they are some kind of boa or backpack. This is what friendship is all about.

The good news is: the people of Los Santos are remarkably pliable. No one objects to hopping on your back, or assuming the lotus position in your cupped hands, and they are utterly unfazed by the chaos unleashed by all the mods I have previously installed: flying cars, ongoing gang warfare, and so on.

To test their quietude, I asked a hiker to nestle himself in my hands as I attempted to sprint through an intersection. He was utterly placid as we were struck by three cars in a row, his murmured 'om mani padmi hum'* unbroken as an expensive German car used our combined mass as a ramp by which it could enter heaven.

It was a true friendship, but it had to end eventually. Satisfied by his invincible tranquillity, I returned him to the nature spot in which I found him. Setting him down, he wandered off into a bush. In the distance, a Winnebago caught the sun as it drifted into the sky.

*He didn't actually say this, but I like to imagine he did.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is finally doing a gameplay reveal (it's definitely a gameplay reveal, right?) and it's going to drop on Netflix first. If you've been cutting back on subscriptions in your life then you're going to have to wait a few extra hours for it to land on YouTube with the rest of us unwashed, unsubscribed masses. Recent events in GTA 6 news have proved that there's simply no possible way to see any information about this thing on the internet before Rockstar wants you to, sorry! Here's when and where you get to watch based on your monthly fee status.

When is the GTA 6 gameplay reveal?

The GTA 6 gameplay reveal premieres first on Netflix at 3 pm Eastern / 8 pm UK time on Thursday, August 27. You can find it listed as "Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look" on Netflix. The gameplay reveal will land on the Rockstar YouTube channel six hours later at 9 pm Eastern / 2 am August 28 in the UK.

What can we expect from the GTA 6 reveal?

We're sure expecting to see some real, officially-sanctioned gameplay. If I don the tinfoil hat for a second I might point out that Rockstar has not said "gameplay" in all this stuff about Netflix. It's been an "extended look" and "debut the next part of the Grand Theft Auto story," in all the official communication. But it's going to be a gameplay reveal.

Rockstar also hasn't said how long this extended look is going to be. Everyone armchair guestimating online seems to be suggesting 20-30 minutes which, yeah, is a pretty safe bet for a single game showcase.

Otherwise, Netflix's mention of the GTA story suggests we're probably going to get some more snippets of Jason and Lucia cutscenes. As these things often go, it'll likely also have flyover shots, a bit of gameplay interspersed, and a lot of voiceover walking us through GTA 6 features like a museum curator for the next evolution in gaming.

The most anticipated game of all time continues to spring leaks. The mysterious Cyberleek, an individual who apparently has access to a build of GTA 6 and has been attempting to profit from it with a meme coin ever since, has released the biggest chunk of the game yet.

This time, it's not just joyrides and beating up random civilians: The 4 minute 38 second clip is all early Lucia story content. This is the first time Lucia, GTA 6's co-lead, has made an appearance in Cyberleek clips, which until today have focused on the other protagonist, Jason.

A message superimposed in the video reads:

"This build is actually recent and the game is not ready at all. Sony and Rockstar are killing your right to own and resell your games and Rockstar is killing their own employees too, the work required to reach gold is way too much for so little time left. Trading volume/price is how CL measures your support. CL will not continue without support. You decide."

It is certainly the most spoilery these leaks have gotten so far, and the escalation seems intentional. Cyberleek seems unsatisfied with the money they're making from the leak spree, and is doubling down on their supposedly altruistic motive while pushing their crypto. Or perhaps Cyberleek can feel the heat of Rockstar's lawyers fast approaching and hopes to squeeze more cash out of the adventure before the book is thrown in their direction.

While you should obviously avoid watching this one if you don't want to know anything about the GTA 6 story going in, I have a feeling Rockstar will reveal a lot more than this about its two main characters during the big Netflix reveal happening tomorrow.

More details about GTA 6's world and mechanics came today in the form of an early preview from youth magazine Dazed, which touched on how food and exercise will affect Jason and Lucia, how character switching works, and Rockstar's dedicated research team embedded in Miami.

It's kind of strange that the state monopoly on violence is the only gang you can start an even slightly lasting beef with in Grand Theft Auto 5. Real-life gangs aren't known for their live-and-let-live attitude, and yet if you stroll around town shooting Ballas and Cartel members, they will adopt a stance of Christ-like forgiveness the second you're out of eyesight. The cops at least will spend a little time hunting you before they give up.

This is what I aimed to fix when I installed Gang Notoriety into my tottering Jenga tower of GTA 5 mods. The pitch is simple: gangs will get sustainably angry with you now, accruing wanted stars much like the cops do until you manage to lose the heat.

To test this new facet of GTA 5's rich simulation, I teleported (I can teleport now) to Grove Street and began shooting.

It sort of worked? The minimap blossomed with a thousand red and orange rings—each denoting a gang member who was very cross with me and ready to do something about it. I got a wanted star, too. Whether that was the gang's wanted star or just regular cops being upset about me shooting people in the street? Hard to say.

But things quickly got weird. Before too long, the assembled Ballas of Grove Street started to lose interest in me and started to gain interest in… each other? They ducked behind cover and started attacking each other, and at some point one loosed a rottweiler, which just seemed rather confused by the entire situation. Meanwhile, the frictionless vehicles of Los Santos continued to wheel all about us, including in the sky.

Though my minimap was still red, everyone had lost interest in me. The Ballas seemed to have become notorious among the Ballas. They all eventually took care of themselves, save the sole survivor, who had quite the wanted level himself, thanks to a previous mod.

I will get back to you when I figure out the moral of this story.

The news cycle this past week has been dominated with Grand Theft Auto 6 leaks, and for good reason, Rockstar studios has sprung a big one, with the self-ordained "Cyberleek" drumming up attention with waves of public manifestos, statements, and a little crypto farming on the side.

In preparation for its somewhat-confusing Netflix-exclusive gameplay reveal tomorrow, Rockstar's finally acknowledged the leaks. Both confirming that they're real beyond a shadow of a doubt (not that there was much doubt to begin with), and trying to salvage some hype.

"We know that many of you have been waiting to hear from us regarding the events of the past week," reads a post to Rockstar's Instagram. "It would be an understatement to say that having videos of Grand Theft Auto 6 gameplay leak in this way has been heartbreaking for our team, and this is obviously not how we intended for you to see the game after all this time.

"We are very sorry that everything has taken as long as it has—from getting the game finished (nearly there!) to sharing more details and official gameplay, and providing the community with everything you want to know."

I'm not sure Rockstar needs to apologise for a videogame taking a long time to make, especially when 13 years have already passed since the last, but I'm a little old-fashioned in that I don't think players are owed much of anything beyond fair consumer practices and, like, maybe getting to actually own the things they buy. It is, however, intriguing that the studio's apologising for that given the whole Netflix thing which, speaking cynically, is essentially a six-hour early access gated behind a streaming service subscription.

I do feel bad for the developers, though—especially given that even those who were unceremoniously fired (in such a dramatic fashion that the then-UK Prime Minister commented on it) still want people to see the fruits of their labour. Take-Two's bottom line has likely barely been dented by the leaks, but if I were a person working on a videogame for years, I'd be pretty exhausted by someone making a circus out of it.

"We are very excited for everyone to see the extended look tomorrow. It has taken longer than we wanted to get it ready, but as with everything we do, we know we need to exceed your expectations, and we are determined to deliver at the level you expect and deserve. While it is unfortunate that the intended game experience may now be impacted by some spoilers, we hope that everyone will wait a bit longer to experience the game for themselves on November 19."

Rockstar ends the letter with a show of thanks: "We want to thank everyone in the community who has reached out with messages of support this past week—your words have meant more to this team than you can imagine. Ultimately, we are making this game for you, and without you, we would not have the privilege of making games."

If you remember, uh, yesterday, then you'll remember how I have recently modded GTA 5 to essentially deactivate friction on all NPC cars. Also, all NPC cars are perpetually, unstoppably in motion. Long story short: they keep accidentally flying and/or exploding.

So I thought what I could do today would be to try to become a professional driver in that world.

I have installed The Getaway (Driver Missions), a mod which lets you dial a new number in your phone in order to undertake road quests. In practice, that means driving to a place, picking a guy up, then driving that guy to another place. At some point in this process you lose the cops.

All well and good, but not overly dramatic. What makes it a lot more hair-raising is every other driver on Los Santos' roads no longer obeys the laws of physics. Even driverless cars are irrepressibly compelled forwards, making it damn-near impossible to actually acquire a car to undertake these missions.

Fortunately, I am a lateral thinker. I simply used my car gun to summon a car directly into a wall. As the unstoppable force met the immoveable object, I was able to get in and go about my business. Sort of. When every car in the game is incapable of stopping but perfectly capable of murder, every single intersection in Los Santos becomes a dance with death.

Even picking up my fare was dicey—as he attempted to get into my car (which was, for whatever reason, an inexplicably snow-covered North Yankton police truck), a taxi cab floated nearby like a leaf on the wind, pancaking a separate pedestrian mere inches from my passenger.

I guess what I'm saying is: walkable urban spaces now.

Take-Two's legal teams seem to be scouring the digital landscape for the identity of one Cyberleek—a leaker that's been making cryptocurrency bank from a copy of Grand Theft Auto 6, releasing footage of a development build to the internet and sticking their tongue out at Strauss Zelnick.

It's been a chaotic mess, and one Take-Two is keen to rectify. The publisher has requested subpoenas from both Microsoft and Discord, the scope of which has some players concerned about the privacy of their accounts.

Specifically in this document, obtained by The Verge, wherein Take-Two is requesting "all identifying information associated with all user accounts that are/were members communicating with the Discord server(s) listed below during the time period from June 1, 2026 to present."

The information includes "the account ID, registration email, registration and last-login IP addresses, phone number, linked connections (Google/Xbox/etc.), any associated device identifiers (MachineGuid/MSA), and content related to Grand Theft Auto ('GTA'), Rockstar or Cyberleek from their OneDrive account."

While I'm not exactly shocked that Take-Two is scouring the internet for the leaker, this does seem like a grim reminder that absolutely nothing you do on the world wide web is anonymous—and if the subpoena goes through, Take-Two could be handed the personal information of thousands.

At the time of writing, the Discord server ! Odyssey has around 5,600 members, while DarkViperAU, a content creator, has over 100,000 members. None of which I would blame for being uncomfortable about Take-Two getting their hands on their personal information, regardless of whether they're in the wrong or not.

Discord's responded to try and assuage those fears for the time being, with marketing director Ryan K. Rigney writing on X: "I can share an update on this: Discord has not yet been served with a subpoena from Take Two. When we do, we'll evaluate the validity and scope before responding."

The subpoena has been approved, just not yet served, as of August 21.

I'll be the first to admit that I have my reservations about enigmatic cryptopeddler / self-appointed anticorporate folk hero / world's most humdrum most wanted suspect Cyberleek. But I can't say their repeated leaks haven't done us all the service of answering our most burning GTA 6 questions—questions like, "If I play GTA 6, how often should I expect to confront someone who's just straight up hanging hog?"

Thanks to Cyberleek's latest illicit gameplay drop, the answer for that particular question is: Quite often, if you're frequenting one particular spot in the state of Leonida.

If you're not picking up what I'm putting down, the title of the most recent GTA 6 leak should help you with that sticky wicket: It's called "nudist_town.mp4," and it consists of the player surveying the uncensored denizens of an in-game nudist retreat—some of whom are, justifiably, unenthusiastic about being creeped on from mere feet away by a dude in work jeans with a pair of binoculars.

And when I say uncensored, I mean uncensored. We won't share the leaked video here for legal reasons, but if you seek it out yourself—it's not hard to find—you should expect to see the full spectrum of human bits and bodies matching every description except "clothed."

It's not exactly a Hot Coffee scenario, however. There's some close-proximity twerking and gyrating happening, but aside from the bared genitalia, there's really not much explicit activity going on as GTA 6 protagonist Jason takes in the scenery. There's just… a bunch of naked people standing around. I guess nudists do just as much aimless loitering as the rest of us.

Perhaps there's a lesson there. But if there is, Cyberleek doesn't appear very receptive: The video ends after they start shooting everyone because one of the nudists got mad at them for creeping too hard. Or at least, they tried to shoot everyone, and in the process dumped most of a magazine into some deck chairs. It seems Cyberleek shoots as well as they drive.

As with their previous GTA 6 leaks, nudist_town.mp4 features the expected QR code directing viewers to the cybercurrency scheme animating this whole operation. But it sounds like Cyberleek has graduated to the "making demands" stage of internet notoriety: The text watermark plastered on-screen throughout the footage says "to show support at least 10 gamers need to show up dressed as leeks in front of Take-Two / Rockstar offices holding game discs during working hours."

We'll see how that goes, I guess. Considering a YouTuber was arrested mere months ago for trespassing on the Rockstar North office premises, my expert advice would be to be normal instead. But hey, in the meantime, full dong confirmed.

Sometimes happiness isn't a new thing, you know? Sometimes it's about wringing novelty out of what you've already got, finding a new perspective on old things and enjoying them to their fullest.

It is in this spirit that I have not installed a new mod in GTA 5 this week, but used an old one to set a constant and unstoppable momentum on every NPC car in the game. Also, I turned friction off. Specifically, I used the Enhanced Native Trainer that I installed in order to spawn the anti-air truck from the very first mod I put into GTA 5. Turns out there's a whole bunch of stuff in here!

It's really quite wonderful. Los Santos has gone from a humdrum facsimile of Los Angeles to an unforeseeable carnival of movement. Vehicles, newly loosed from their obligations to the ground, now waft lazily through the air. Standing on the balcony of Franklin's home, you can watch them gyrate on the skyline like lightning bugs.

Sometimes you try to cross the road and get vaporised by a transit van travelling at a fraction of the speed of the light. That does also happen sometimes.

It's great fun, though. But I have a confession: originally, I set every car to travel at maximum speed, a setting which was great laughs but made the game functionally unplayable. I have since set them to around 15. I don't know 15 of what, but the setting is 15. The maximum setting was 100, so it's quite a bit lower. It just means all the same chaos that was happening at max speed still happens, just in a way that you stand a hope in hell of navigating.

Welcome to Los Santos, the most airborne little city on Earth.

Rockstar is currently enduring one of its most embarrassing PR episodes in recent memory: With just days remaining before its Netflix-exclusive Grand Theft Auto 6 gameplay reveal, the developer is on the hunt for the cryptopeddler whose 11 leaks of illicit GTA 6 footage over six days seem to imply ongoing access to a playable game build.

While Rockstar and its parent company Take-Two are almost certainly at DEFCON 1 over the historic shitshow, former Rockstar developer Obbe Vermeij says the GTA 6 leaks will ultimately prove to be, well, kind of whatever.

"Calm down everybody," Vermeij said in a post on X over the weekend. "The leaks are a nothing burger."

According to Vermeij, who spent nearly 14 years at Rockstar North as a technical director on every GTA release from GTA 3 in 2001 to GTA 4's Ballad of Gay Tony expansion in 2010, the recent GTA 6 leaks will likely constitute little more than "a tiny blip" for a game whose sales lifespan, if GTA 5 is any indication, is expected to span more than a decade.

"All that has happened is that some footage has escaped. Slightly ahead of the Netflix thing next week," Vermeij said. "90% of future players don't spend their time on the internet looking for video snippets. They don't have the time and don't want spoilers."

The Cyberleek situation, Vermeij says, is "far less consequential" when compared to the biggest "nightmare" he witnessed during his Rockstar tenure: the infamous Hot Coffee incident.

In 2005, the discovery that GTA: San Andreas had shipped with code for a sex minigame that could be enabled through unofficial modification earned the game an Adult Only re-rating from the ESRB. In the ensuing PR firestorm, retailers pulled San Andreas from store shelves until an updated version could be issued, leading to an estimated $50 million revenue loss in 2005 and a $20 million class action settlement in 2009.

Measured against that level of brand damage, Vermeij said in a response to another X user that he figures "there won't be much damage if any" from the GTA 6 leaks.

Even if Cyberleek does something drastic like leak GTA 6's ending, Vermeij—who himself once ran afoul of his former employer by publishing a short-lived blog detailing his GTA dev days—doesn't think it would move the needle much.

"That would suck," he said, "but people will still play it."

GTA6 leaker Cyberleek is still at it, even as his digital wanted level is skyrocketing to never-before-seen heights. His latest, two-minute clip was shared to the Gaming Leaks and Rumors subreddit. The post has already been removed, and, to keep my job, you've got to find the clip on your own. It shows protagonist Jason assaulting two gas station attendants before crashing a sports car.

I guess there's more to it than that: The clip shows the interface for filling up at a gas station. While the cars need gas now, refueling is a bit seamless and gamey⁠—it appears you just press a button at the pump and it's taken care of instantaneously, though the options are greyed out in this clip, perhaps because of Jason's wanted level. Multiple commenters also pointed out that GTA6 is boasting a shockingly lavish progressive damage system for vehicles.

Cyberleek then goes in the station and leaps behind the counter to brutalize and rob the attendant, incidentally demonstrating the swiftness of Florida justice as sheriff's deputies immediately rock up to ruin Jason's day⁠—though he did already have a two-star wanted rating before adding assault with a deadly weapon to his rap sheet, and the previous leak hinted that the car he stole may have a tracker in it. There's no stopping Jason, though, as he rockets away to do the same at another gas station before having a high-speed collision with a truck, which is shown in slow-motion.

In addition to Cyberleek's usual mascot watermark entreating viewers to "Show support, buy $Cyberleek," the anonymous leaker also has a watermark promising to show gameplay at a strip club if his cryptocurrency reaches a $3 million market cap. To tease this, the final shot of the video is a cut to Jason entering a grungy rural strip club.

And I gotta say: I'm a crypto and GTA hater, this is the first one of these I've watched, the vid is all washed out like the HDR settings are messed up, Cyberleek plays like a middle schooler whose parents aren't home, and the clip still got me weirdly excited for GTA6?

I think it's because the southern swamp chic of it all just reminds me of True Detective season one, the closest I'll get to a desolate, neo-noir Louisiana outside of Norco, and that's a very different sort of game. Jason isn't a nihilistic and off-putting supersleuth Matthew McConaughey, but I can squint and pretend. The "Sunday Bumday" poster outside the strip club really got to me: Rockstar's UK is showing, we don't call them that over here!

Another seemingly legit GTA 6 video surfaced today via Cyberleek, this time showing a couple minutes of high-speed driving through Vice City. The clip (which we can't link here, but you can probably find it quickly with some web searches) begins with protagonist Jason ditching a pickup truck and carjacking a "Truffade Thrax," a fancy sportscar that just happens to already contain a driver.

After throwing the car's owner into the street, Jason speeds off, taking us from the Vice City airport through some busy streets downtown, onto the highway, and then into an industrial area. It's not the most eventful trip: the player has a wanted level for jacking the ride but isn't caught and barely even causes any damage along the route.

There also aren't a metric ton of new details to pore over, but we did spot a few interesting things to note.

Drivers struggle

You know the drill. Put your elbow through a car window, open the door, drag the driver out into the street, hop in, and speed away. But it looks like in GTA 6, drivers don't just passively let you gank their whips. In the leaked video, we see Jason struggle with the driver—with the leaker probably having to mash a button—before they can be liberated from their ride.

We noticed the new stamina system in the original leak video, and wrestling with drivers drains Jason's stamina meter—so it probably won't be a great idea to try it if you're fully depleted.

Traffic cameras

Good timing, with all the concern about Flock cameras. As Jason speeds away in the stolen car, there's an icon briefly shown in the middle of the highway: three small connected circles. He passes it, we see the HUD briefly indicate that it saw him, and he immediately enters a red zone and gains two wanted stars.

Gotta be a highway traffic camera identifying the stolen car. As soon as he's out of the red zone, the wanted stars vanish again.

Lojack

When Jason enters the stolen car, we see the gas and engine meters we first noticed in the earlier leak, but there's also a red pin icon. When the player stops the car for a few seconds, the pin begins to blink.

This looks like a vehicle recovery system like Lojack, so possibly if you steal a car with one of these devices and don't keep moving, cops might show up at your location, even if you don't currently have any wanted stars.

Rude business names confirmed

I was starting to think Rockstar has matured. In earlier GTA games it seemed like every business was a rude pun—STD Contractors, Spitroasters Meathouse, BJ's Market, Camel Towing, Gruppe Sechs, etc—but apart from a building in an earlier leak that had the word BALLER on the side, I hadn't seen any rude business names in these leaks. In this latest video, the driver speeds past a number of trucks, billboards, and signs, and they seem mostly restrained: Juice Loose, Mattress Madness, Juicy Joes.

But then I spotted a rental truck company called "Truck-U" and beverage truck for a drink called "Sitzpinkler," slang for someone who sits while peeing. The bus that passes early in the clip is also numbered "420." Same old Rockstar.

It's cool that the little road reflectors actually work

Rockstar gets made fun of for the Red Dead Redemption 2 reactive horse testicles thing, but I'm a sucker for finicky little details. Not specifically horse testicle related details: I am content with the reflectors that make it easier to see lanes at night actually reflecting your headlights in GTA 6. It's a little thing that does a lot to make the freeway driving look believable.

(Although if your local freeways are anything like mine, you might agree that the most believable thing would be for most of the reflectors to be missing for some reason, meaning that during a nighttime downpour half the cars in front of you are straddling lanes. GTA 6's roads might be a little too well-maintained.)

Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reports that some Rockstar employees are feeling "angry" and "frustrated" that, despite submitting to strict security measures following the 2022 hack that revealed Grand Theft Auto 6 to the world—namely the abolishment of remote work—a leak has once again sprung.

Someone going by the name "Cyberleek" has been posting new GTA 6 gameplay clips every day for the past few days. The leaker may even have access to a build of GTA 6, though it's unclear if it's the full game or only a portion.

Meanwhile, the official GTA 6 reveal is still scheduled for next week, and will still air exclusively on Netflix for the first six hours.

It's unlikely that the leaks will have any measurable impact on GTA 6's sales. It's already sold an "unprecedented" number of preorders, according to Take-Two. I doubt the Netflix reveal will be harmed, either: The circulating gameplay clips make it slightly less of an event, but the leaker's low-quality, watermarked videos have only whet my appetite for the proper reveal.

It's easy to find similar sentiments around the internet: "I was a little hyped for GTA 6 but after the leaks I'm even more hyped than ever and can't wait for the extended look," says one poster.

One thing I like about the existence of the leaked footage is that it offers a more realistic view of GTA 6 gameplay than we're likely to see during the highly-polished official reveal. The leaker's clips make the game look impressive, especially the flyover of Vice City, but the footage is the opposite of carefully-staged.

At one point, for example, the leaker momentarily struggles to exit a river, freestyle swimming into a concrete embankment for a few strokes before the walking animation kicks in. I don't know of any game that entirely avoids that kind of minor jank, but it's not something you're going to see on Netflix.

But I'd be frustrated too if my work were being shown off so shoddily, especially after jumping through hoops to satisfy corporate security measures.

Worse, Rockstar recently fired more than 30 employees on the basis that they were discussing work matters in a private Discord channel which they had been using for labor organizing. Whether that was a harsh reaction to a genuine security lapse or "one of the most blatant and ruthless acts of union busting in the history of the games industry" will be argued in court next month.

There is nothing to connect those ex-employees to this week's leaks, and I can only imagine the nuclear-grade facepalming they've been doing as an anonymous leaker goes wild while they were fired for a private Discord conversation that didn't leak anything.

Which isn't to say that Cyberleek is likely to escape consequence: Rockstar is presently trying to track them down, and has filed subpoenas with Microsoft and Discord related to the videos. One perpetrator of the 2022 Rockstar hack is currently in prison awaiting a retrial after being held in a secure hospital since 2023.

In the end, I expect that Cyberleek will determine that the clout and crypto gains were not worth it, but it remains to be seen how good they are at running from Rockstar's figurative black helicopters. (Or maybe literal black helicopters, knowing Rockstar.)

You might think that Grand Theft Auto 6 leaker Cyberleek, who is currently the target of what I'm sure is a five-alarm manhunt now being conducted by Take-Two and Rockstar, might want to step back into the shadows a bit—keep their head down and hope it all blows over, and all that. But no. In fact, they seem to be taking the opposite approach to their newfound notoriety, because they are now selling ads.

A new "contact" tab on the Cyberleek website says the leaker is "raising funds through community support and strategic partnerships." But not through a typical ransom demand, as is sometimes seen in these sorts of things: "Instead, Cyberleek offers premium advertising space and exclusive content opportunities."

From the website: "Sending a Monero payment enables secure contact via Session messenger for deal negotiations. Options include purchasing ad placements (such as video watermarks) or requesting custom-made gameplay footage tailored to specific brands (including sexual content). All pricing, terms, and deliverables are discussed privately over Session."

Credit to Cyberleek for having a pair, I guess, but this seems like a bad idea (for them) from at least a few angles. First, who's going to take them up on the offer? Slapping your product name on the next Grand Theft Auto 6 video leak is the equivalent of painting a shiny red target on your forehead: I am not a lawyer but there is zero doubt in my mind that people who are—and especially those who are the expensive sort of lawyer that Take-Two has on speed dial, in great numbers—could find a multitude of ways to turn that into some sort of accessory culpability. I can't imagine a faster or more effective way to turn your brand untouchably toxic than by connecting it to this gong show.

The price of the program is also astonishing. It costs a "donation" of 400 Monero XMR, which currently converts to, roughly, $164,730. That's right, one hundred sixty-four thousand, seven-hundred thirty dollars. And for that, you get not an ad, but a message from Cyberleek, which is presumably when the ad buy negotiation actually begins.

That really makes the whole thing feel like a lark, but as the saying goes, it's a crazy ol' world. If even one person decides they want to give this a shot, that's a pretty sweet payday.

On top of all that ridiculousness, this is also just a tremendously risky move for Cyberleek. Opening the door to external contact is begging for trouble. Remember when Valve tried to nail the hacker who made off with a pre-release copy by offering him a job? Selling ads is an invitation to exactly that sort of action on the part of Take-Two and/or any number of US law enforcement agencies, and while I'm sure Cyberleek thinks they're too smart to fall for that sort of thing, that's exactly what everyone thinks before they fall for it.

Not that I'm concerned about Cyberleek's welfare here. If anything, I'm fascinated by the sheer brashness of a guy who's going out of his way to rub his stuff in the face of one of the most powerful game publishers in the world, on the eve of its greatest triumph. I just feel compelled to say it as a matter of principle: This is a bad idea. But hey, if Cyberleek ends up getting busted because of it? I'm not gonna lie, it'll be pretty funny, too.

I've been trying to convert Grand Theft Auto 5 into GTA 6 using mods for about a week now, and I've learnt a lot. For instance, most things will die if hit by a car at more than the speed of sound.

But I've also learned this: Los Santos is a lonely city. GTA 6's core is the Bonnie-and-Clyde love story of its protagonists, but Franklin, Michael and Trevor are insular men. They cruise the sun-drenched highways with no one in the passenger seat. I needed to change that. I needed to give them companions. I needed them to be the very best, like no one ever was.

I installed Pokémon Go GTA Edition.

Pokémon Go GTA Edition turns (stay with me) GTA 5 into Pokémon Go. The streets become denuded of people and filled with Geodudes, Charmandi, and Pikachu. Maybe. I never actually saw Pikachu. There was a Squirtle, though.

I'm fairly certain that only Trevor can do the Poke-hunting, or it is possible that some previously installed mod has broken this one. Either way, out he went on Franklin's motorbike, on the prowl for new best friends. In what news reporters might call 'drive-bys' I captured for myself a Geodude and a Squirtle.

But some Pokémon resist friendship. For instance, Charmander, who broke free of my pokeball and began to curse at me in a thick eastern European accent, just like in the anime. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that my encounter with Charmander was not a happy one. We came to blows in the road, and the last I left him he was burbling face-down in the tarmac having taken a powerful yet precise right hook to his snout. Don't worry everyone, he's just fainted.

As the Grand Theft Auto 6 leaks continue to flow, Take-Two Interactive has begun the hunt for the people behind them. A Kotaku report says the GTA publisher has filed subpoenas with Microsoft and Discord, requesting user data and records of accounts that were involved in sharing the leaks.

Take-Two "has submitted a sworn declaration confirming that the purpose for which the DMCA subpoena is sought is to obtain the identity of an alleged infringer or infringers," the filing states.

Both Microsoft and Discord have until September 4 to provide data including "business records and investigative records associated with Microsoft’s internal investigation of the ‘cyberleek’ persona sufficient to identify the user(s)," and on the Discord side, "all identifying information associated with all user accounts that are/were members communicating with the Discord server(s)" connected to the leaks.

Well, it was bound to happen. It's all fun and games until the lawyers show up, as the saying goes, and there was never any question that Take-Two was going to unleash its full range of resources on tracking down the leakers and inflicting whatever punishments our shareholder value-driven society will allow.

Leaking short bits of video from a game we all know is happening might seem like small potatoes compared to all the actual crimes that are happening around us every day, but have no doubt, this is serious. To paraphrase a well-known line from a popular show, you never mess with the money: Nintendo destroyed a man's life because he sold ROMs for the Switch, and it's reasonable to assume Take-Two will be at least that aggressive in protecting GTA 6. It does have a history of that sort of thing, after all.

I think the great likelihood is that Cyberleek's days of anonymity are numbered. PC Gamer editor Tyler Wilde dug up some clues about the leaker's identity shortly after the leaks began, and that's entirely without the weight of an expensive legal team and the US justice system behind him. Given the resources Take-Two can bring to bear, and the seeming brashness of the leaker, I wouldn't be surprised if this one is wrapped up relatively quickly.

For now, though, Cyberleek is still doing their thing. The latest GTA 6 leak landed earlier today, dispelling speculation that the leaker had already been caught and giving us two minutes of a supercar driving through the streets of Vice City. It's extremely impressive visually, but in terms of gameplay, well, it's definitely GTA.

Take-Two's market cap also took a $2.8 billion hit in the wake of the leaks, which sounds like a lot but really isn't: The company's total market cap currently sits around $45 billion, and the share price has bounced back to roughly where it was when all this started.

The internet is burning with speculation regarding the recent GTA 6 leaked footage, particularly as it appears to have been sourced from someone playing an actual build, rather than leaked video from Rockstar itself.

While we've been pouring over the videos and pulling out some of the juicy in-game details for ourselves, I've also seen some discussion regarding whether the footage was captured from a PC version of the game.

Putting aside the dubiousness of "I have devs in my DMs," I'd say this is probably likely to be correct, as others have suggested. It's either that, or the leaker has access to a console devkit—which seems less likely than a development build that runs on a PC being passed around behind the scenes.

The problem is, the idea that a PC build exists doesn't really tell us much. It'll be being developed on PC, of course, as that's the platform on which most games are made.

And while a PC release of GTA 6 hasn't been officially announced, there's no doubt that a retail PC version will appear at some point. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said that the console release would be "serving the core" first, so it looks like us PC gamers will still have to wait. Just like we did for GTA V, and Red Dead Redemption 2, and... you get the idea.

What would really get me jumping up and down, though, would be an idea of the specs this particular build was running on. Some of the footage shows some reasonably fancy lighting, and areas with surprisingly long draw distances, as do the official trailers to date.

So what I really want to know, alongside the rest of the PC gaming public, is what sort of hardware we're going to need for smooth frame rates when the PC version eventually rears its head. Will a budget graphics card suffice? Or are we going to have to break out the RTX 5080s and RTX 5090s to push the graphics sliders up?

From the footage I've seen so far, it looks like the game is running at more like 30 fps than 60—although video frame rate conversion being what it is, that might not necessarily be the case. At what settings, though? I've got literally no idea. It looks pretty good, I know that much.

I'd say that given the scope we've seen to date (and Rockstar's tendency to push the boat out for PC releases), we're probably in for something with a relatively scalable low end, and a demanding range of graphics options at the top for the well-heeled gamer. Graphics card prices are ridiculous right now, haven't you heard?

Again, though, this is mostly guesswork. Because there's not much to do right now but guess.

As things currently stand, what we can glean from this footage in regards to PC is "this was probably captured on one," despite some of the leaps in logic I've seen elsewhere. Yes, I am fun at parties. Join me next week for another dissertation on how PC hardware prices are likely screwed for the next few years, and my take on the dubious existence of one Mr. S. Claus.

Another day has dawned, and the mutual embarrassment of the games industry and gameplaying public continues: The enigmatic Cyberleek has uploaded yet another short video of leaked GTA 6 gameplay, marking the fourth consecutive day of GTA 6 leak releases. And based on their latest threat, the cryptopeddling leaker intends to keep that streak going.

As for what the latest gameplay leak reveals: Well, it looks like Grand Theft Auto. Titled "hypercar.mp4," the video—which we won't be sharing, but can be sought out without much effort—consists of GTA 6 protagonist Jason jacking a high performance sports car and driving at high speeds along Vice City's surrounding highways for roughly two minutes.

The footage is fairly thin on new mechanical revelations: While carjacking, it seems like Jason has the ability to mash a button to more quickly and forcefully pull the driver from the vehicle in exchange for stamina—and, presumably, a higher chance of the crime being noticed. We also see further evidence of the visual ID mechanics present in earlier leaks, as icons appeared to indicate both the stolen vehicle and Jason's appearance were tied to his wanted level once the crime was reported.

Additionally, after escaping the wanted level he accrued with the car theft, we see a reappearance of a blue police awareness indicator as Jason passes a patrol car while speeding through traffic on the opposite side of the highway, reinforcing the sense that the player will more easily draw police attention based on how conspicuous their actions are.

Shortly afterwards, Jason drives through an area that's outlined with a red border on the minimap, immediately gaining a two-star wanted level. It's not clear why, and the wanted level drops as soon as he drives back out of it. We can only speculate, but it's possible the highway passed over some sort of high security area.

Otherwise, the footage isn't particularly remarkable. The driving physics seem like they'd be familiar to anyone who's spent time driving in GTA 5, though it's still not clear how recent of a game build these leaks are being captured from. The most striking thing on display is its demonstration of GTA 6's lighting tech: Throughout the video, the light cast by the hypercar's headlights reflects believably off puddles, roadsigns, and reflective markers, providing impressive contrast and visual texture as the landscape blurs by.

And, as we've come to expect, the video is also a vehicle for Cyberleek's cryptocurrency push, urging viewers to "show support" by buying their bespoke gamer currency. It remains unclear how, exactly, we're meant to believe that buying cryptocurrency empowers the fight for gamers' rights, but you can put whatever text on the internet you want, I suppose.

What is clear is that Cyberleek doesn't intend to stop: The trademark globs of roaming watermark text, URLs, and QR code that have graced each of these leaked videos now features the threat "HIGHER MARKETCAP = MORE LEEKS." While that's in line with the thin anti-corporate veneer that's accompanied Cyberleek's previous works, it's worth noting that Take-Two has actually lost roughly $2.8 billion in market cap this week as its share price has fallen over the last few days. Whatever gets more people looking at your coolguy onion mascot, I guess.

One of the biggest stories this week has been of the enigmatic, self-described consumer hero Cyberleek, who's also using this whole debacle as a way to advertise and pay for their cryptocurrency. Which is probably fine and normal and not at all a concerning spectre lingering around one of the biggest games of the year.

Anyway, you'd think Take-Two and Strauss Zelnick might be feeling hot under the collar about all of this, and you'd be partially right. As spotted by Insider Gaming, Take-Two's market price (the price of one share) was around $248 before the leaks. Fast-forward a couple of days, and that same market price dropped to a low of $233.

This hit Take-Two's market cap (share price, times the amount of shares) to the tune of billions—around $2.83 billion in two days. An astronomical amount of money by any stretch of the imagination, a huge devaluation that's… actually not even much of a sweat, really.

See, Take-Two's overall market cap was still over $43 billion and, by virtue of how stock markets tend to shift and fluctuate, not even that much of a rare occurrence. On August 6, the market price dropped to a measly $229, for instance, before spiking back up to $242 the next day.

And while the overall market price between August 18 and 20 does trend downwards, it's already rising back up. At the time of writing, said market price has recovered to $241, with the market cap rising from that $43 billion total to almost $44.9 billion—just $1 billion within its previous number.

Look, while I don't think anyone at Take-Two's exactly happy to be losing a couple billion dollars in market cap to some guy peddling cryptocurrency with a full copy of their next big thing, what feels more noteworthy is the fact that a leak of this scale has mostly just pinged off the videogame giant's armour.

It's a humbling reminder of the sheer amount of money that gets poured into videogames at this scale—humbling or perhaps distressing, given the size of the industry tracks precious little to its security.

The US Army's 3rd Infantry Division has confirmed that it is indeed offering a four-day pass in November to soldiers who reenlist for at least two years, so they can play Grand Theft Auto 6 when it comes out.

The "Special Reenlistment Incentive" memo is dated July 28, and came to light via the US Army WTF! Moments account on Instagram. It states, quite explicitly, that "any soldier who signs a reenlistment contract between 1 August 2026 and 14 November 2026 will be authorized for a special four day pass. This special pass is specifically designated to coincide with the highly anticipated release of the videogame Grand Theft Auto 6."

As a lifelong civilian, that struck me as odd. I know the military has sometimes struggled to meet recruitment goals (although apparently it's doing pretty well these days, perhaps or perhaps not the sort of thing that happens when people can't afford groceries anymore), but would the Army really leverage GTA to convince its people to stick around for a few more years?

Well, yes. "The idea was to have a unique incentives program that connects to what soldiers are interested in," Lt. Col. Angel Tomko told me. "The command team, in conjunction with the career counselor, wanted to get soldiers excited to reenlist. The command team thinks eligible soldiers are more aware that they are in their window for reenlistment and engage their leadership and the career counselor earlier to see available opportunities.

"The battalion has a new career counselor who approached unit leadership with an idea for an updated creative incentives program to reach FY27 reenlistment goals. Eligible soldiers must reenlist for a minimum of two years, up to six years."

Tomko said the GTA 6 offer is not Army-wide, but rather a program unique to the 3rd Infantry Division, of which the 9th Brigade Engineer Battalion is a part. It also seems to be quite successful: Tomko said there are 130 soldiers in the battalion who are eligible for the incentive and so far 20 have chosen it.

And apparently, this is novel but not unusual. "Reenlistment incentives are routine for the US Army to reward our soldiers," Tomko said. "We want to retain the best talent and it’s a credit to the creativity of the career counselor within the organization to develop this unique opportunity surrounding the launch of this popular videogame."

Based on reactions to the report on social media, it's fair to say that some find the idea of using a popular videogame to keep the ranks filled a bit distasteful. And fairly so: Four days in exchange for two years (or more) hardly seems a good deal, especially during a time of what often feels like aimless American adventurism.

And it can feel downright predatory when taken in the context of, for example, this ABC report on military recruitment, which throws a disheartening light on the imbalance between high school kids with few opportunities and a massive, savvy organization who knows how to target them: "Among the recruits and prospective recruits interviewed, only two said they knew what a secretary of defense is, and neither could identify who currently holds the position."

At the same time, it's likely that at least some of those 20 who took advantage of the offer were planning to reenlist anyway, and are just opting for the GTA 6 pass because, hey, why not? More to the point, unlike the new recruits interviewed in that ABC report, soldiers eligible for the offer are already in the Army: They may not know who the secretary of defense is either, but they are at least hip to what's in store.

Regardless of the reactions elsewhere, Tomko said the response to the incentive program among soldiers has been extremely positive.

"The heightened interest in the press does not change the purpose of the program: to reward dedicated soldiers for service to their nation," Tomko explained. "Every soldier who is eligible for this program is already serving, already trained, and already fully qualified. Reenlistment incentives are a longstanding part of Army retention, and units often tailor them to their formations in ways that build morale and spark early conversations about career options.

"Soldiers who reenlist often have multiple incentive options depending on their Military Occupational Specialty, service needs, and eligibility, and range from time off, to money or duty location of choice. This specific incentive is for all soldiers in 9th Engineer Battalion and is an administrative bonus layered on top of standard reenlistment incentives."

The US military has a history of using videogames as part of its recruitment efforts. The America's Army shooter series debuted in 2002, almost 25 years ago—perhaps not coincidentally, just months after the start of what's now referred to as the Global War on Terrorism. In 2018 the Army launched its own esports team, which operates as part of its "Marketing and Engagement Brigade based at Fort Knox," and in 2020 it began a Twitch channel for game streams. That endeavor had a rough start, but the Army's esports org remains active, and continues to stream.

You ever think about how weird cars are, as a concept? It's like sharing public space with enormous bullets piloted by random members of the public. If our car-centric urban world did not exist and you tried to pitch it, whole-cloth, you'd probably be laughed out of the room. You want to give people their own ballistic missiles, are you mad?

This is what I thought as I pulled the trigger on a pump-action shotgun and sent a mid-size family sedan careening into the side of a police helicopter.

Today's GTA 5 mod—installed in an attempt to either turn the game into a PC version of GTA 6 or break it entirely—is Vehicle Cannon, which turns whatever gun you are wielding into a horrible nozzle of limitless automobiles. In place of bullets, guns now emit vehicles at speed, bringing great devastation to the land and possibly crashing your PC.

Combined with a mod menu that I forget the provenance of, which lets me float from location to location like a militarised Christmas spirit, it makes you, more or less, god. There's probably a part in the Bible where god shoots cars at people. I don't know.

I'll be honest, I'm still working on justifying how this will make GTA 5 more like GTA 6.

But you gotta give me this: it's very fun. The unparalleled chaos of launching a freeway's-worth of cars into the streets of Los Santos is tremendous. It also makes you something like a single-person artillery unit wreaking havoc on your foes at great distance. It makes me a little nostalgic for the days when Rockstar leant deeper into the potential for havoc that its open worlds embodied. Alas, now its protagonists are all egos and emotions.