What a surprise: A Goat Simulator 3 ad with leaked GTA 6 footage has been taken down

A Goat Simulator 3 advert has been issued with a takedown notice by Rockstar Games' parent company Take Two Interactive, after it was revealed that the advert featured footage from the massive GTA 6 leak that occurred earlier this year.

Which, y'know, was always going to happen.

The trailer, framed as an interview with an NPC called Shaun discussing his work on Goat Simulator 3, featured a segment in which Shaun referenced other games he'd been in, at which point the trailer cut to a shot of Shaun in an edited clip from the leak.

It's a very Goat Simulator 3 thing to do, which is to say, attention-seeking and not as funny as developer Coffee Stain North appears to think it is. In any case, it inevitably caught the ire of Take Two's legal department, which has been laying the smackdown on pretty much anyone who shares footage of the leak.

PC Gamer had an in-depth discussion about the GTA 6 leak shortly after it happened, and also picked over what the leaked footage told us about GTA 6 (and also what it didn't). Rockstar issued a statement expressing the studio's disappointment regarding the leak, but stated that it wouldn't have a "long-term effect" on the game's progress.

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.