Rockstar Games confirms hack after 'Grand Theft Auto' leak

Video game publisher Rockstar Games confirmed it had been breached after a threat actor, who claimed to be the same individual who hacked Uber last week, leaked confidential data.

Rockstar Games, a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive and publisher of the Grand Theft Auto video game series, suffered a leak Sunday morning when in-development gameplay footage of the next Grand Theft Auto (GTA) game was published online.

The most recent title in the series, 2013's Grand Theft Auto V, is the second bestselling video game of all time with more than 165 million copies sold.

The publisher confirmed the breach Monday in a statement on Twitter.

"We recently suffered a network intrusion in which an unauthorized third party illegally accessed and downloaded confidential information from our systems, including early development footage for the next Grand Theft Auto," the statement read. "At this time, we do not anticipate any disruption to our live game services nor any long-term effect on the development of our ongoing projects."

A Message from Rockstar Games pic.twitter.com/T4Wztu8RW8

— Rockstar Games (@RockstarGames) September 19, 2022

The leak was initially published to fan forum GTAForums by a user with the handle "teapotuberhacker," who claimed to have obtained some of the video footage from an internal Slack channel for Rockstar employees.

The hacker advertised having 90 videos of the unreleased game -- referred to as GTA 6 -- and said they were looking to "negotiate a deal" in order to prevent further leaks. They also claimed to be the same hacker as the actor "Tea Pot," who claimed responsibility for last week's Uber breach, though the claims have not been verified.

In the case of Uber's breach, a threat actor allegedly used social engineering tactics to gain access to Uber's HackerOne, AWS and Google Cloud Platform accounts, among others. Uber tweeted Friday that no sensitive data was compromised in the attack and that law enforcement had been contacted.

TechTarget Editorial asked Rockstar Games for additional information, but the publisher has not responded at press time.

Alexander Culafi is a writer, journalist and podcaster based in Boston.