The weekend saw Rockstar Games suffer quite the network intrusion, which led to the leaking of Grand Theft Auto 6 test build videos. They were plenty convincing already, with industry insiders like Jason Schreier of Bloomberg confirming the voracity of the leaks. While no further confirmation was necessary as it is, we get one from the maker of the game itself.
Rockstar Games issued a public facing statement via its Twitter account. The statement also states that despite the leak, it doesn’t anticipate any disruption to its live game services, nor any long-term effect on the development of ongoing projects. More than likely, the former is referring to GTA Online, while the latter being GTA 6. The company also made a similar statement to investors, adding that it does not foresee this affecting development timelines.
A Message from Rockstar Games pic.twitter.com/T4Wztu8RW8
— Rockstar Games (@RockstarGames) September 19, 2022
In a related development, the identity of the hacker has since been identified. By fellow victim Uber, who was hacked by the same person in around the same time, no less. According to the company, the attacker is affiliated with Lapsus$, the same company who hacked into Nvidia and Samsung networks, among other companies, earlier this year.
Another industry insider, Tom Henderson, who has been keeping up with the whole situation, claims that the hacker in question previously made a number of attempts to directly ransom Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Rockstar Games, as well as sell what was stolen. At some point, the hacker decided that only GTA 5 source code and assets will be sold, while the stuff from GTA 6 is “not for sale at the moment. There was even someone who was tricked into paying an impersonator US$100000 (~RM455250).
Update on the bitcoin purchase – The hacker has confirmed it wasn’t his address and someone has been scammed using his name.
But the fact that someone is willing to hand over $100K like that is… scary.
This feels like it’s going to be a long ride.
— Tom Henderson (@_Tom_Henderson_) September 18, 2022
But back to GTA 6. On one hand, Rockstar saying that the hack will not impact development may be a PR statement. Just as likely, though, is the probability that the source code that the hacker got was not substantial enough to affect development in the long run, if it was indeed obtained. But either way, the game is still a long way away even without this incident that it is way too early to worry about its release being pushed back.
(Source: Rockstar Games, Uber, Tom Henderson / Twitter [1], [2])
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