Take-Two Files Subpoenas for Microsoft and Discord to Release Records to Find GTA 6 Leaker - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 21 August 2026 / 8,349 Views
The parent company of Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar Games, Take-Two, has filed multiple subpoenas in federal district court asking Microsoft and Discord to release records as it looks to find out who the leaker of several GTA6 gameplay video that have been spread online.
"The copyrighted material includes but is not limited to audiovisual content, artwork, images, dialogue, or other creative elements," reads the subpoena filed with the Southern District Court of New York on August 20 (via Kotaku).
Take-Two, through its counsel of record, has submitted a sworn declaration confirming that the purpose for which the DMCA subpoena is sought is to obtain the identity of an alleged infringer or infringers, and that such information will only be used for the purpose of protecting Take-Two’s rights…"
The petition is asking for Microsoft to send Take-Two user data by September 4 needed to identify the leaker. This includes "all internal Microsoft business records and investigative records associated with Microsoft’s internal investigation of the ‘cyberleek’ persona sufficient to identify the user(s), person(s) and/or entity/ies associated with that persona."
It continues, "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; and for those accounts, provide any associated device/telemetry records where one or more of the tool/file artifacts below were present on the system. For each returned account, provide: 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."
Discord has been given the same deadline to provide records related to "all user accounts that are/were members communicating with the Discord server(s)" that involve CYBERLEEK," "CINEMATICROCKSTAR," "Surfer24k™ (+ replacement handles cyberleek_west, surwest)," and more.
It isn't known who the leaker is that released the Grand Theft Auto VI gameplay footage.
Rockstar is set to release an extended look into Grand Theft Auto VI will premiere on Netflix on August 27 at 12:00 pm PT / 3:00 pm ET / 8:00 pm UK. It will also premiere on the Rockstar Games YouTube channel and Grand Theft Auto VI official website later the same day at 6:00 pm PT / 9:00 pm ET / August 28 at 2:00 am UK.
Grand Theft Auto VI will launch for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on November 19.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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I thought it was physical games’ fault?
That comment somehow made my day.
It was me
I'll tell Cersei.
Gonna be funny if the leaker is actually just the North Korean government and Take Two wont be able to do anything about it lol
Most likely North Korean or Russian, he seems downright ballsy, even released a video where he shot his name into a wall with bullet decals, to prove he had the actual game and not just video footage. I don't think he would be that ballsy if he was in a country with an extradition treaty with the US. The 2022 GTA leaker in the UK got an indefinite stay in a mental hospital after all, after being deemed too autistic to stand trial, you'd have to be pretty dumb to do a leak this big without being in a safe country.
he wouldn't be that stupid considering what happened with the other hacker. He must know they can't reach him.
To be fair, if this was trully a foreign attack, wouldn't the most damaging thing to do be to just leak a torrent of it?
R* needs someplace to spend their billions.
All this is going to do is ruin their Netflix grift, which is a good thing. Only people who are going to go look at this are piraters which aren't that many people. People who want to play the game aren't going to want to have it spoiled so they won't even look for this. Obviously Take two has to get something like this under control which is why the subpoenas are going out. If they're able to contain the leeks, even if they can't full on stop them, this ends up being a minor buggaboo in terms of how the game will sell in the long term.
This happened to TOTK a few years ago and sales for that game did just fine.
I always find those hack the games are losers . They say it's for physical and yet they scam people out money . Gamers this generation have become so whiny that they complain more than they play videogames which is sad
I thought the leaker was on the dark web.
seriously, what is the damage here?
There are two parts here. You have the Nebulus victim which is the hype for GTA 6. Although hard to quantify, you could argue that it damages Rockstars hype cycle for the game.
But the actual victims here are media outlets like Gamespot, VGC, IGN, etc.
They have to sign NDA's with Rockstar to so they do give out information early in exchange for early access to the game and Rockstar themselves.
A leaker has just given out all the information the NDA's covered, so that puts media sites at a disadvantage.
Well for starters the leaked footage did some damage to the hype for the game, it appears to be a somewhat older build the leaker hacked, because it appears to be running at a 30 fps target with frequent framerate drops below that, and I doubt the up to date build would be that unstable this few days before release. There are now people panicking thinking the game is 30 fps only with no higher framerate mode and with drops even below 30 fps.
Then there is the financial damage, their stock lost like $14 a share, over $2 billion in market capitalization, in the immediate aftermath of the leak, though the stock has now bounced back to $242 , $4 below it's pre-leak price of $246, in after hours trading on Friday. Also they had sold a big gameplay deep dive of the game to Netflix, and Netflix may be wanting a partial refund now due to no longer being the ones to show people the first gameplay of the game.
That's false. What happened on the stock market was just a regular day there, these fluctuations are constant and in no way reflect what's going with the game. After all, what truly matters is the long-term performance of their stock. Secondly, anyone who is at least a bit knowledgeble about tech and games was already aware that the game would most likely be capped at 30fps. And looking at the amount of RT, pedestrians and the scope of the map it's no wonder why.
It's obvious it will be 30fps. All Rockstar games at launch have been 30fps. 60fps won't be till.nectbgen for consoles.
