This year’s most persistent thorn in Rockstar Games’ side has returned, and this time the leaker is attaching a dollar figure to its latest threat.
According to Cyberleek, it is holding a complete build of Grand Theft Auto 6, and it plans to make that build public once its cryptocurrency hits a $30 million market cap. The leaker has also offered an alternative: it says it will keep the build under wraps if Take-Two Interactive commits to an on-disc physical release for GTA 6 and issues a public apology.
All of this should be viewed for exactly what it is: an unverified claim made by an anonymous leaker with a coin to pump.
The token is already on the rise
At the time of writing, $CYBERLEEK carries a $6 million market cap, and it has been climbing ever since the leaker made its offer public. That remains far below the $30 million goal, but the trend is heading where Cyberleek wants it to go.
Cyberleek has framed the whole thing as a protest from the very beginning. It objects to GTA 6’s physical edition amounting to nothing more than a code in a box, and it argues that gamers deserve to own physical copies of the games they play.
That position is difficult to accept at face value, given that the leaks have been tied directly to a cryptocurrency the leaker stands to profit from. Strip out the physical media rhetoric and what remains is a large crypto scheme that just happens to have GTA 6 attached to it.
Take-Two believed it was getting close
Earlier in the year, Cyberleek spent weeks putting Grand Theft Auto 6 footage online, including gameplay from early builds, story missions, in-game locations and more.
By late August, Take-Two had seen enough and pursued the hacker. The publisher subpoenaed Discord and Microsoft seeking information on Cyberleek’s identity and location. When the leaker then fell silent for almost a month, spanning all of September, it appeared the company had tracked them down.
That turned out not to be the case. Last week, Cyberleek resurfaced with a fresh batch of leaks, this time featuring nude versions of characters such as Jason. It evidently has no intention of fading away quietly.
A disc release probably isn’t coming from this
It’s very unlikely Take-Two will give in to the leaker’s demands, particularly with launch this near. Handing over both a physical disc and a public apology to the person who has been dumping your unreleased game online would be a big concession to make in one go.
That leaves the situation like this: a $6 million coin, a $30 million target and a publisher with no clear incentive to cave. If Cyberleek isn’t bluffing, everyone else can only wait and see how it plays out.