As reported by IGN, a trove of data from Rockstar has made its way online, with the big ticket items being Grand Theft Auto 5's source code, remnants of canceled GTA5 singleplayer DLC, as well as an early version of GTA6's map that can be loaded into the prior game.

It's unclear how or why the data is making the rounds now, but the consensus appears to be that it was first extracted from Rockstar in the infamous 2022 Lapsus hack that revealed GTA6 to the world.

GTA YouTuber TJGM has a video and a number of posts on X covering the long-rumored Liberty City project. The gameplay in the video comes from a canceled mod, and not the leaked material. The most notable thing TJGM showed off is a map of audio loading zones contained in the leak: The demarcation for coastal ambient audio could be turned into an effective map of the multi-island city. This iteration of Liberty City would have been larger, and possessed a different layout from its most recent predecessor in GTA4.

User affmal on Twitter has been sharing screenshots and findings mostly focused on the Agent Trevor files, which appear to be more intact and substantial than the Liberty City stuff. Affmal has shared a full mission list, and has been loading map and model data into GTA5 to explore. The coolest thing affmal has shown off, for my money, is an underwater base map like something out of Deus Ex.

TJGM has a few posts showing screenshots of an early version of GTA6's map loaded into GTA5, with markers (unclear if from Rockstar for dev purposes or placed by the user) denoting areas like "Alligator Farm," "Coast Guard," and "Disused Theme Park." The map is "very unfinished" according to TJGM, and reportedly dates to 2015. He has three posts showing corresponding locations from this unfinished map and GTA6's trailers side-by-side for comparison.

This is only the latest development in a GTA6 build-up that has been defined by major leaks, and it's possible there is still more to be uncovered in this tranche. GTA6 itself will finally release on November 19, but not on PC. While Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick acknowledged that "the PC platform is becoming more and more important" in a recent meeting, there's still no word on when we can expect the hotly anticipated crime sim on our system of choice.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is coming! Not to us on Team PC, mind: It will eventually, but right now it's a strict console exclusive. Why? Hard to say: Publisher Take-Two Interactive has taken pains to reassure PC gamers that they're very important and loved, but also, y'know, not now.

The latest reassurance to gamers on personal computers came during Take-Two's annual shareholders meeting, held yesterday, during which Take-Two chairman and CEO Strauss Zelnick was asked about the potential impact of PlayStation 5 Pro shortages—ironically, driven at least in part by the looming launch of GTA 6—on the company's plans for releasing the game on PC.

After clarifying that the question is really about "the cadence of PC launches," Zelnick continued, "The strategy of the company is over time, generally speaking, to launch for any platforms for which there's a meaningful audience. But that isn't always the case, and certainly if platforms were no longer viable, we would change that strategy. And I would note that the PC platform is becoming more and more important to our company over time."

So, what does that mean? Essentially, that Zelnick doesn't want to talk about it: GTA 6, for better or worse, is a console exclusive, and that's clearly where the studio's focus is.

Which isn't to say Zelnick's response isn't confusing, but that's something of an ongoing pattern: In May he said PC can account for up to half the total sales of major game releases, but that GTA 6 is debuting on consoles because Take-Two is focused on "serving the core consumer," which apparently does not include PC gamers—those gamers who, you may recall, can account for up to half the total sales of major game releases.

Those struck me as inherently contradictory statements, and saying the PC is "becoming more and more important" when it's clearly already very important doesn't really clear that air. I can understand why Zelnick wouldn't want to just come out and state the obvious reason for holding back GTA 6 on PC—double-dipping—but if he did, we'd at least be able to relax and say, 'Well, yeah, that makes sense.'

Speaking of not wanting to talk about things, Zelnick was also asked about GTA Online during the meeting, to which he reminded attendees that GTA 6 is "a singleplayer experience," and that GTA 5 Online "continues to be a robust business for us" that Take-Two will continue to support. The CEO of Twitch thinks GTA 6 multiplayer will come out next year, but it's not entirely clear whether he's speculating or relaying inside info.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is set to launch on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on November 19. We'll get it someday.

In a previous life, long before I began making millions writing about videogames professionally, I wrote marketing copy for a finance firm I still don't really understand. Do you know the fine art of embedding payment iframes in customer payment gateways? I did. Once. Do you know the riotous history of the SWIFT international banking system? What about SEPA? No? What a sheltered life you must lead.

My point is this: absolutely nothing is more interesting, cooler, or sexier than finance and banking. We all know it. There was a whole song that was pretty much about just that. And now, I have integrated this glamour into Grand Theft Auto 5. I have installed Realistic Bank System – San Andreas ONE.

Exciting times: I can get into debt now. The thrill of thrills is that San Andreas ONE lets you apply for lines of credit in ways that are fascinatingly reminiscent of real life. GTA 5's protagonists even get actual, meaningful credit scores (based on… something) that impact their eligibility to open new lines of the stuff. Franklin's was 680 (Good), in case you're wondering. That gave him a positive soft eligibility for getting a loan. Yes, this thing has soft and hard credit checks.

Anyway, I got a $30,000 line of credit and set it as my default payment method. Anything I purchased in GTA 5 would go onto the credit card, not my actual money, at least until I maxed the thing out. This was largely immaterial, as in my position as megacelebrity and CEO of Facebook, I am incontinentally rich. But still, nice to have.

The only thing that didn't quite take was the mod's implementation of physical bank branches. I could go in, sure, and mix with the hoi polloi who also wander in to do their banking, but I couldn't actually interact with the teller. In fairness, this might be because of the constant, chaotic churn of my modded Los Santos, which is ever disgorging flaming corpses in and around their desks. I guess it would be sort of hard to work in those conditions.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy said that Grand Theft Auto 6 multiplayer will launch next year, in 2027.

Rockstar hasn't made any official announcement about GTA 6 multiplayer, what's going to happen with GTA Online, or when we can expect the PC version. It's a safe bet that Clancy is not authorized to make such an announcement, but his comment doesn't sound speculative.

"We spent a lot of time talking with Rockstar about their plans, and also helping them think about how they can engage our creators," Clancy told the publication. "You are going to see this big bump with GTA 6, but then an even bigger one next year when they launch multiplayer."

I've reached out to Rockstar and Twitch for comment.

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.

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.”

The fidelity of Grand Theft Auto 6's world makes random violence look considerably less silly than it did when the characters had boxy claws for hands, but Rockstar isn't stopping players from doing what they want in Vice City and its environs.

We know that because we've seen the GTA 6 leaker shoot up a nudist party, murder the residents of a homeless encampment, and beat a delivery driver to death—quite a contrast with the mission-focused gameplay in the official reveal.

A little devil icon in one of the leaked videos did lead us to wonder if GTA 6 would judge us for antisocial behavior, a la Red Dead Redemption 2's Honor system, but the details that have come out since the reveal suggest that 'Criminal Profiles' aren't quite like that.

According to a preview from TGG on YouTube (embedded above), Rockstar doesn't want to punish players for how they play, or create a situation where they have to grind their reputation up to a 'better' level in order to progress.

Here's the short version of what TGG learned on his trip to Rockstar North:

• There are four main Criminal Profile states: Professional, Aggressive, Violent, and Psycho
• There's also a fifth 'shattered' state where the meter cracks and can't be changed; TGG got the impression that this is for players who clearly don't want to engage with the system
• You can turn off Criminal Profile notifications
• Jason and Lucia can have different Criminal Profile states
• Staying in the Professional state is about "restraint and control" and "not killing or injuring anyone unless you have to"

This all aligns with IGN's learnings, but adds a few new specifics. What neither source came away with are specifics about how or how much Criminal Profiles will affect the story—will it lead to different endings, or just slightly change how NPCs interact with us?—but a comment from GTA 6 co-studio head Rob Nelson suggests that we will notice the effects of our actions.

Asked what he's most proud of in GTA 6, Nelson told TGG that it's "the way the whole thing works together."

"We've got a lot of very complicated systems working in an interconnected way," said Nelson. "You can forget it's a game that has been designed to try and work this way. I think it allows you to sort of roleplay as heavily or as lightly as you want to.

"The idea that you have a fair amount of choice now in terms of the way you can approach situations. You can still cause as much carnage as you can imagine. How does that make you feel if it has an impact on certain things? Do you still want to do it? Do you want to do it more? Do you want to do it less? Do you care at all? It's up to you and what matters to you."

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.

Rockstar announced today that Nopixel V is "the next evolution of the GTA 5 roleplay community," which has led to some head-scratching from casual GTA RP followers (like myself), because Nopixel V isn't something you or I can just jump into and play.

Nopixel Studios runs both public and private GTA 5 roleplaying servers, and Nopixel V is the latest version of its modded sandbox. The Nopixel V beta was developed in collaboration with Rockstar, and will be accessible through the Rockstar Games Launcher, but only for invited streamers, a list of whom can be found on the Nopixel website.

"Over time, access [to Nopixel V] will expand, including more phases of invites," Nopixel announced on its Discord server earlier in August. However, "for everyone on nopixel Public and nopixel 4.0, nothing changes."

So, at least for now, it doesn't sound like there's a way into the Nopixel V improv troupe other than being called up from one of the minor leagues. Rockstar's announcement thus focuses not on the opportunity to play Nopixel V, but to watch it being played by streamers.

Those details aren't too surprising once unpicked—streaming and server whitelisting are endemic to the GTA roleplaying scene—but the impending release of GTA 6 contributed to some of the head-scratching. One might expect talk of "the next evolution" of GTA roleplaying to have something to do with the big new GTA game releasing in a couple months, but alas, Rockstar has yet to announce any plans for GTA Online as it relates to GTA 6. (Nor has it given GTA 6 a PC release date.)

It may be a long time before we can go on Vice City escapades with friends, in-character or otherwise, but in the meantime, Nopixel V does sound exciting for the RP scene it concerns.

"Collaboration with Rockstar Games has been an important part of bringing this release to life," the Nopixel team writes. "Since the start of Nopixel V, our teams have worked together to develop new capabilities and refine a set of development tools which have enabled us to push the boundaries of what's possible in Grand Theft Auto 5."

Invited players will start streaming Nopixel V on September 8, and the modders are sharing details about the project throughout this week. Their first post discusses Nopixel V's modifications to the GTA 5 map, which include the addition of 1,000 ownable properties.

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."

One of the most intriguing creative decisions Rockstar made with Grand Theft Auto 6 is reducing the number of playable characters from three to two. Since sequels typically operate on the rule of 'bigger is better', the logical progression would have been to add even more playable characters to the roster.

It turns out that Rockstar did indeed consider this. Speaking to IGN, studio co-head Rod Nelson explained that a GTA with four protagonists was on the table. But Rockstar decided against it due to concerns about spreading the player's attention too thin.

"As the narrative unfolds, we're quite conscious to try and make sure that players have enough time with each character," Nelson explained. "After doing GTA 5, we talked about different ideas of 'Do we have more characters? How do we follow up three characters? Is it four characters now?' But we worried about diluting the amount of player time with each, and therefore player connection with those characters."

This fear of diluting that time spent with each character is also what led Rockstar down the path of two protagonists. "The question became: how do you make players feel like 'I love them both'" Nelson adds. "Chemistry is a notoriously hard thing to do in any sort of entertainment. Either the characters and the actors that embody them have it—or they don't."

Nelson adds that "everyone involved worked at that pretty hard" and believes that the team eventually "got it." Having watched the extended trailer that recently aired on Netflix—the relationship between the two characters was certainly the element that stood out most to me.

For example, there's a moment toward the end of the trailer where Lucia gets beaten up and tossed down a flight of stairs. In the spectrum of horrible things that can happen to a GTA character, this is relatively minor. But I was surprisingly shocked by it, because everything shown up to that point had invested me in Lucia and Jason's relationship—more than I ever felt about any of the characters in Grand Theft Auto 5.

Obviously, there's plenty more to Grand Theft Auto 6 than just its two protagonists, like its world that's three times the size of Red Dead Redemptions 2's, and the fact it has a more nuanced version of the honor system seen in Rockstar's most recent Wild West adventure. But I increasingly believe it will be that central partnership that defines it over the other GTA games, especially since Rockstar appears to be sticking to the script when it comes to campaign mission design.

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.

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.

After having one too many "wait, I know this song" moments during Netflix's extended Grand Theft Auto 6 preview, I couldn't resist piecing together a playlist of possible songs we'll hear on the in-game radio. After all, who drives around Vice City (or in real life, for that matter) without their favorite jams?

So, just as we've done with possible GTA 6 cars and its map, I've drummed up a playlist of songs we've heard in Rockstar's few trailers and even bundled them all together for you on Spotify. I can't promise they'll all be included on the GTA 6 radio, but they've at least appeared in official footage.

Note: It took me a minute to realize it, but an extended version of the Grand Theft Auto 6 theme from the second trailer also plays in the Netflix video. There's no official upload from Rockstar available though, so I haven't included it in my Spotify playlist.

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 Netflix showcase isn't the only GTA 6 news coming out today. Some YouTubers and streamers were given a special look at the game by Rockstar, and they learned some interesting things from the studio.

Like YouTuber TGG, who says he visited Rockstar North and saw three hours of the game (as spotted by Kotaku). He asked Rockstar about the size of the map and came back with some useful comparisons:

"The map is twice the size of GTA 5's map. Three times the size of Red Dead Redemption 2's map. Vice City itself is twice the size of Los Santos, and Vice City and its surroundings suburbs is 11 times bigger than Los Santos and its surroundings."

Wowza. For those wondering if TGG has the sizes of GTA 5 and RDR2 mixed up there, I think it's the case that RDR2 feels bigger because it's more densely packed and you travel more slowly through it, but GTA 5 has always been bigger overall. And if GTA 6 is twice that, well, that sounds like a landmass Rockstar could build upon for years and years.

I'm most excited about the size of Vice City itself, though—these days Los Santos feels a little too small to meaningfully mimic Los Angeles, but Vice City is looking absolutely massive.

There's a lot more GTA 6 stuff to read today, including a live blog chronicling details from the Netflix stream and my thoughts on the missions we saw live.

Ever since Rockstar opened pre-orders, I've been ritualistically checking every potential avenue for a more substantial look at GTA 6. I can't say the Rockstar-Netflix collab was the route I expected for the next reveal, but the day is finally here, and we've got 26 minutes of new GTA 6 footage to unpack.

It's a lot for any one person to pick apart, but fortunately I work with a bunch of GTA brains and suspect the lot of you reading this are too. I've asked my colleagues to share some of those highlights, but I also want to hear from you—the reader. What do you think of the latest GTA 6 reveal? Have a scroll through our thoughts, and let us know in the comments.

Tell us how you're feeling after the latest GTA 6 reveal

Well, now that you know how Tim feels, what did you think of the GTA 6 reveal? Is it everything you've ever wanted—the stuff your gamer hopes and dreams are made of? Disappointing? Are you still on the fence or cautiously optimistic? Don't be shy, tell us about it in the comments.

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.

Well, I think we all knew we'd end up here eventually, right?

It seems that Cyberleek, perpetrator of the last week's GTA 6 leaks and perhaps the world's least-convincing self-appointed champion of consumer rights, may not have ultimately been encouraging the use of their $CYBERLEEK cryptocurrency for benevolent purposes: As of this morning, it seems the leaker has cashed out on their scheme to the tune of over $200,000 in a rug pull that just about everyone saw coming.

Since their first leaked GTA 6 gameplay video, Cyberleek used the uploaded illicit footage as a platform for users to buy and trade $CYBERLEEK, a token minted on the Solana blockchain. Eventually, Cyberleek allowed viewers to use the cryptocurrency to vote on the subject of their next leak video.

By doing so, Cyberleek claimed viewers would be supporting "a secret project" to fight for a generic slate of consumerist talking points, and that the funding would be "directed toward the infrastructure needed to strike, as well as the security and protection required to withstand the inevitable corporate counterattacks."

If that doesn't pass the smell test to you, you aren't alone: As their leaks continued and Take-Two's legal manhunt intensified, Cyberleek's pleas for support became increasingly desperate—and increasingly corny, as public sentiment steadily soured on their compulsive crypto hucksterism.

That skepticism was apparently well-placed, because it looks like Cyberleek finally cashed out on their scheme early this morning. As spotted by user Vice Cit on Gtaforums.com, a series of transactions occurred starting today at roughly 3:27 am EDT, resulting in one $CYBERLEEK trader earning an estimated $270,000—and tanking the token's value for everyone else.

To understand what exactly happened here, let me offer some context about the token itself. It was minted by a walletholder on the Solana blockchain 12 days ago, and after its minting, the walletholder—presumably Cyberleek themself—placed the initial supply of the token along with an amount of an another cryptocurrency into what's called a "liquidity pool" on the Raydium platform, making that walletholder a "liquidity provider," or LP.

When currencies are traded through a Raydium liquidity pool, transaction fees are charged which are then split between its LPs. Which means that, by encouraging viewers to buy and trade tokens from that liquidity pool, Cyberleek was generating profits for its LPs.

Unsurprisingly, it was the same walletholder that initially minted the $CYBERLEEK token that initiated a fee collection transaction from the Raydium liquidity pool early this morning, receiving over $200,000 of $CYBERLEEK that they had accrued in transaction fees. That walletholder then immediately cashed out all that $CYBERLEEK for alternative currencies, which were quickly squirrelled away into a handful of different wallets.

In the aftermath, the value of $CYBERLEEK has plunged by roughly 40% for anyone who made the questionable choice to acquire any. But that's not Cyberleek's problem anymore. They're sitting on a nice new chunk of change (which they'll presumably need for their eventual legal fees, if you can count that as a "secret project").

For the rest of us, let this be a valuable lesson: Don't listen when a weird onion on the internet says to buy his special secret money. Not again, anyway.

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.

We've got more Grand Theft Auto 6 details to chew on, and this time not from a vegetable. An interview in magazine Dazed has revealed a bunch of details about the design of GTA 6, including how character swapping between protagonists Jason and Lucia works.

We'll get straight into it. Here are the most notable details from the interview:

1. Exercise and diet

Dazed says that food will affect Jason and Lucia's weight, and "exercising visibly builds and tones their muscles." Playing for long periods without sleeping will also impact their appearance.

Rockstar has played around with these life sims systems in past games—most recently in Red Dead Redemption 2, where Arthur could gain or lose weight based on his diet. GTA hasn't had systems this granular since 2004's GTA: San Andreas, in which CJ could gain weight and lose it through working out.

2. Character swapping

The way GTA 6 handles multiple playable characters will differ from GTA 5. The Dazed preview notes that you can "choose to either play as a couple, or go off and cause chaos independently." They described a scenario where you can cruise along the highway as Jason, then swap to Lucia in the passenger seat to "scroll on the in-game phone."

That sounds, to me, like GTA 6 will have a dynamic 'couple mode' for open world roaming—in keeping with this being a love story—but missions themselves might be solo or together.

3. Rockstar's team size

According to Dazed, Rockstar has massively expanded its team and resources to get all the details in GTA 6 right. The studio has more than doubled in size since Red Dead Redemption 2. It has an office in LA dedicated to the pedestrian NPCs that fill the open world. It also brought in over 50 real world street artists to help design the murals for GTA 6's version of Wynwood, Miami's outdoor art galleries, and there's a team of actual race car drivers handling the vehicle physics.

4. Expect to see a variety of Florida Men

Per Dazed: "Players can expect encounters with virtual iterations of Florida Man, the cultural archetype-turned-meme known IRL for wrangling alligators, drunken antics, and literal grand theft auto."

5. On music

Regarding GTA 6's music, senior vice president of narrative Ruper Humphries told Dazed:

"We love Miami music, particularly Miami bass, going through to more recent Miami artists like Kodak Black and Sexyy Red. We were also really interested in how the hip-hop scene in Miami exists in house parties in Overtown, clubs like Booby Trap on the River, and then high-end places on South Beach where bottles can cost thousands of dollars. We needed characters who could take us through those worlds."

6. Jason and Lucia's backgrounds

The preview notes that Jason is ex-military and a drug runner. Lucia is an amateur fighter (as seen in trailers) fresh out of prison.

7. Choices

Dazed suggests that player choices or behavior will affect Jason and Lucia's relationship in ways that "cut much deeper than Rockstar’s previous titles or 'honour' systems."

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.

Listen, I know the last week of GTA 6 leaks have let us all—except the employees of Rockstar—enjoy a bit of collective mania. But as time goes on, I'm beginning to suspect that the mysterious leaker who's been using their illicit GTA 6 footage as a vehicle for their personal memecoin scheme might have ulterior motives.

As Take-Two's subpoena-seeking effort to track down the leaker intensifies, Cyberleek seems to be responding to the increasingly obvious writing on the wall by leaning even harder into the crypto cornball act. In a fresh pair of GTA 6 gameplay uploads, the world's most wanted allium has descended to a new low of sheer saucelessness as they seek additional funds for their alleged "operational costs."

As with Cyberleek's previous leaks, their two newest GTA 6 videos—one showing protagonist Jason puttering around a nightclub, another capturing an evening bike ride at a Vice City beach—prominently feature a text screed and QR code directing viewers to the website where they've been able to "support" Cyberleek's "effort" (i.e. give them electronic crime money).

The watermark's latest iteration, however, indicates Cyberleek isn't enjoying the scrutiny that comes with using the highest-profile game leak for peddling cryptocurrency.

"Stop the hate. Channel that energy into protests. Not at those actually fighting for you," Cyberleek writes. "CL is taking huge risks in this battle. Leeks are free and donations cover operational costs, using crypto is the only way."

Cyberleek has repeatedly claimed to be "fighting for gamers" throughout this debacle, but so far hasn't provided any explanation as to how they intend to do so beyond writing a generic manifesto and urging viewers to stand outside Rockstar' offices while holding game discs. Because gamers are mad about the disc thing, see. They're just like us.

Don't worry, though: They've insisted that the funds raised by promoting their $Cyberleek token will go toward a definitely real, not-at-all suspect "secret project." Presumably, that project involves movement-critical objectives like 'being paid a bunch of money' and 'surviving the impending legal fees.'

As for the leaks themselves, the latest videos—which you can track down easily enough if you're inclined—are pretty mundane. In the nightclub clip, Jason doesn't do much other than watch women idly hit vape pens, engage in a perfunctory spasm on the dance floor, and exchange some limp greetings with a dancer.

The beach clip is the more impressive of the two: The density of NPCs and environmental detail is striking, and both the wave and lighting tech looks—in a word—gorgeous. There is a moment where a cluster of people walk out of the ocean as though doing so was indistinguishable from strolling down a sidewalk, but I'll let that slide.

Evidently, Cyberleek didn't get the immediate reaction they'd like from using those two leaks to tell the masses that they really gotta fork over some more cash for real please it's my birthday. They've since posted a third leak video—making this the most they've uploaded in a 24 hour period since their leaks began—with yet another new watermark treatment.

"People are confused," Cyberleek's on-screen text reads as Jason enters an in-game used game store. "This is not about actual discs. It is about ownership. Resale rights still matter—even in a digital-only era."

Notably, today's third upload doesn't feature the usual inclusion of Cyberleek's mascot character and an instruction to "trade $Cyberleek." We'll see how long that lasts.

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!