GTA 6 Leaks ‘Far Less Consequential’ Than Hot Coffee, Ex-Rockstar Dev Says

A former Rockstar North technical director has told anxious GTA fans to relax, arguing that the wave of CyberLeek footage flooding social media this month is nowhere near as damaging as the infamous “Hot Coffee” scandal of 2005. Obbe Vermeij was at Rockstar during the Hot Coffee scandal, the infamous situation involving a hidden sex mini-game left inside GTA San Andreas that became a full-blown political controversy in the mid-2000s, and his read on the current situation is blunt: the Cyberleek footage doesn’t come close. Vermeij, who worked at Rockstar North between 1995 and 2009, posted his comparison on X as leaked clips continued to surface daily.

“I was there during Hot Coffee,” Vermeij wrote, referring to the scandal involving a sex mini-game accidentally left inside GTA San Andreas, adding that “it was a nightmare for management [Rockstar’s New York offices] but didn’t affect us [Rockstar North] much.” He went on to say “the current leaks are far less consequential than [Hot Coffee] was.”

CyberLeek’s Daily Drip of GTA 6 Footage Since August 18

The comments arrive amid an ongoing leak campaign by a hacker or group operating under the name CyberLeek. With Rockstar’s own Netflix reveal just a few days away, Vermeij chimed in on CyberLeek’s leaks, which have put GTA 6 footage online almost every day since August 18. Clips have shown protagonist Jason across driving, combat and flight sequences set around the game’s fictional Leonida Keys.

Vermeij dismissed the panic around the material. He wrote: “Calm down, everybody. The leaks are a ‘nothing burger.’ As a marketing strategy, R* is trying to keep the game under wraps longer than other publishers. All that’s happened is that some footage has leaked slightly ahead of the Netflix thing next week. 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.”

On the mood inside the studio itself, he was more measured. “I imagine the teams are a little annoyed, but not more than that,” he added. He rounded off his post by predicting “GTA 6 will be phenomenal and sell for the next 15 years or so,” calling the leaks “just a tiny blip.”

Hot Coffee: The 2005 Scandal That Pulled San Andreas From Shelves

Vermeij’s benchmark is not a small one. He referenced a controversy surrounding a hidden minigame in the 2004 Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas that included a sex scene, over which Rockstar and Take-Two eventually settled a lawsuit. The discovery of the unlockable “Hot Coffee” content triggered an Adults Only rating from the ESRB in the United States, retailer pulls and congressional scrutiny at the time.

By his own account, that episode is a useful benchmark: Hot Coffee triggered congressional hearings, AO ratings, and pulled copies from store shelves, while a leaker posting gameplay clips is a very different category of problem. Vermeij’s own role placed him closer to Rockstar North’s Edinburgh studio than to the New York executives who bore the brunt of that fallout.

Take-Two’s September 4 Deadline for Discord Over CyberLeek

While Vermeij plays down the leaks, Take-Two Interactive is treating them as a legal matter. On August 20, lawyers from Kirkland & Ellis urged the Southern District of New York to issue a subpoena under the DMCA clause that allows unidentified copyright infringers to be unmasked without a lawsuit, with the filing giving Discord until September 4 to turn over CyberLeek’s identity. Microsoft and GitHub have also been named in related requests over the leaked material.

Take-Two subsequently subpoenaed Microsoft, Discord and GitHub over “stolen content,” and the legal action confirmed that at least some of the material shared by CyberLeek is legitimate. That confirmation gives extra weight to a leak campaign Rockstar has so far declined to comment on publicly.

Bloomberg: Rockstar Staff ‘Frustrated and Exhausted’

Not everyone close to the studio shares Vermeij’s shrug. According to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, Rockstar’s internal teams have been well aware of the ongoing leaks, which have caused employees at Rockstar to feel “frustrated and exhausted” over the situation, prompting the studio to denounce the leaker and declare an “all hands on deck” search for the source.

Part of that frustration stems from history repeating itself. Rockstar introduced major changes to its security policies after a 2022 GTA 6 leak, requiring employees to return to the office five days a week from 2024 while restricting outside access to work tools, servers and game builds. Those measures were meant to prevent exactly this kind of breach.

Read also: GTA 6 Leak Report on CYBERLEEK ‘Dead Man’s Switch’ Retracted as Fake

None of this has shifted Rockstar’s promotional calendar. The Netflix “Grand Theft Auto: An Extended Look” presentation is still set to premiere on August 27, ahead of the game’s November 19, 2026 launch on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. A PC version remains unannounced.