GTAForums user teapotuberhacker has seemingly leaked footage from an early build of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto VI overnight. The alleged leak contains some 52 minutes of playtime over 90 distinct videos. Many clips feature a female lead, which seems to corroborate Bloomberg's July report that the next GTA game will feature a female protagonist. Many shots also feature a landscape that appears reminiscent of Miami, in an apparent callback to Rockstar's 2002 installment, VIce City. However, the setting appears to be in a different town altogether, as in-game signs and police cars bear the name "Port Gelhorn".

The clips jump between active in game playable scenarios, and basic development testing. Physics engine vectors and object names appear throughout the videos, and many NPCs appear less detailed and unpolished compared to the player character. It's unclear when these videos are alleged to have been initially produced. Early work on GTA VI began in 2014, but full scale development likely only began in earnest after the release of Red Dead Redemption II in 2018. If this leak represents recent development footage, the game is likely at least a few years from release.

The leaker joined GTAForums today, and also claims to have in his possession source code and assets from GTA V and GTA VI. He posted several screenshots of the supposed code on that forum, and hinted he may have plans to dump that as well. Only time will tell whether this constitutes actual development footage, but if fake, this would likely constitute hundreds of hours of work to create such convincing forgery.

Source

Additional YouTube links of aggregated footage 1 2

Update: above links are no longer functioning due to complaints issued by Take 2 Interactive, you can find an archived version here

 

[Marc_LFD]

Skip 4 and 5

Some unwise advise.

The story of GTA IV is incredible, and the gameplay is superb whether driving or shooting. As for GTA V, I mean, it's still worth playing if he's a GTA fan.

I didn't really enjoy GTA V although I'm satisfied to be done with it.

 

[MikaDubbz]

I'm most curious at this point about how they'll approach Online. like how exactly do they intend to do that? Do they shift focus entirely from GTA V Online to GTA VI Online? Do they keep 2 teams active for both versions of online? Or do they find a way to incorporate all your already earned content in V Online into VI Online? And not just your properties and cars, but Los Santos as a whole. Could GTA VI Online find a way to merge both maps and your already unlocked and earned content from GTA V Online?

Merging the two maps seems most pleasing to everyone to me, accessible via plane or boat, etc; like you can only go to Los Santos if it's detected that you own GTA V as well on your gaming system. And from there you can import your previous online character and all their properties and cars and whatnot. But of course you wont be able to bring that content over to Vice City, your cars and properties would have to stay in Los Santos so as to not completely break online on day one, and help everyone still feel like they're starting from square one when Online launches for GTA 6 in Vice City.

Not sure if that is the solution, but it does seem like a genuine issue that they'll have to find a way to address that maximizes on profits: how do they keep their current Online scene alive and spending money while moving on to the next gen that will be slower to build up to the amount of money currently being spent in Online for the GTA V version?

 

[tabzer]

I bought GTAV twice and still don't have the motivation to finish the story. Is it worth it?

 

[MikaDubbz]

I bought GTAV twice and still don't have the motivation to finish the story. Is it worth it?

If you're not enjoying the single player story, then you're just not enjoying the story. It doesn't suddenly get mind-bendingly better as it goes on. I'm not gonna sit here and say it was Citizen Kane, but I had roughly the same consistent amount of fun with the story from start to finish. But hey, it wont be for everyone.

 

[BlueFox gui]

she has a HUGE dumpy

 

[Purple_Shyguy]

Looks like shit. Who cares about GTA anymore?

 

[tabzer]

@MikaDubbz

It was kind of fun to play and pretty funny. I think I'm pretty far into it. Just for some reason, I never finished it. I haven't heard anything about the story's conclusion being good or bad.

 

[MikaDubbz]

she has a HUGE dumpy

That's a win in my book. I've said this before, but I'll say it again, when given the option to customize a character, 9 times out of 10, I'm going for a sexy female character so that I can create an avatar that I enjoy watching the back of throughout my time playing the game which could be tens if not hundreds of hours. Certainly beats watching the back of some muscular toned dude in all that time.

 

[VinsCool]

This looks very obviously built from the GTA 5 engine, unsurprisingly, why make a new engine when you can update your current one for a new game.
To be honest, it seems very obvious that it's very early in development in the videos and screenshots, so I wouldn't hold my breathe over it.
The final product will definitely look VERY different than what the leak is showing.

 

[MikaDubbz]

This looks very obviously built from the GTA 5 engine, unsurprisingly, why make a new engine when you can update your current one for a new game.

I mean it's worked very very well for the Super Smash Bros. series. Where the current code goes back as far as Brawl for sure, and I'm pretty sure Melee as well, though I've never seen confirmation on that.

 

[VinsCool]

I mean it's worked very very well for the Super Smash Bros. series. Where the current code goes back as far as Brawl for sure, and I'm pretty sure Melee as well, though I've never seen confirmation on that.

Recycling code is a staple of game development.
Otherwise, it will take decades to get shit build from the ground up each time!
Could you imagine the stress factor? haha
No surprise some games take LONG time to be created, and sequels come at a more regular pace, they simply re-use a lot of what they initially had created, after all.

 

[LainaGabranth]

You have to wonder what in-house turmoil led the leaker to leak this. With the loss of some of their top developers in recent years, stories of development hell, etc, all signs point to an unpleasant work environment.

As for the leak itself, a female protagonist is a welcome change at this point, but I hope they don't sacrifice the series' trademark edge to the cult of wokeness. GTA needs to be edgy. There's no other way it can work.

I dunno, GTA is too safe nowadays. It claims to be social commentary but it's moreso pessimistic without anything of value behind it. They don't have anything of value to say besides showing a bunch of really fucked up characters in fucked up situations, which just isn't interesting anymore. At the end of the day most people pretending to be invested in GTA "not going woke" are just gonna get mad if it doesn't punch down at minorities enough for their liking, and if it says anything other than abject patriotism you guys'll just sperg out. I don't think Rockstar actually cares that much about appeasing you guys lmao.

 

[LainaGabranth]

Recycling code is a staple of game development.
Otherwise, it will take decades to get shit build from the ground up each time!
Could you imagine the stress factor? haha
No surprise some games take LONG time to be created, and sequels come at a more regular pace, they simply re-use a lot of what they initially had created, after all.

Seriously, what fucking moronic game company would go "Yeah, I know we made this tech for years, and we know it inside and out, but let's just throw it out and make something totally new from scratch?" People do not know how game dev works when they talk about "old engines" like it's a complaint against the game and I wish they'd just stop talking.

 

[eduall]

Please stop with this! It's spoilers for the game and ruins the surprise for all of us

 

[Marc_LFD]

I bought GTAV twice and still don't have the motivation to finish the story. Is it worth it?

Not really, it felt like a chore to me.

But you might as well just to form your own opinion.

 

[MikaDubbz]

Recycling code is a staple of game development.
Otherwise, it will take decades to get shit build from the ground up each time!
Could you imagine the stress factor? haha
No surprise some games take LONG time to be created, and sequels come at a more regular pace, they simply re-use a lot of what they initially had created, after all.

Oh yeah, it wouldn't even make sense to keep rebuilding a game like Smash from scratch. I genuinely wonder if bits of Smash 64's code are baked deep inside Ultimate. I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case, but if it were started over, it was probably just once with Melee, and everything has just evolved from the code of that game.

Hell we're over 5 years between a new core Zelda title, and the next title is reusing so many assets and code from the game before it. Can you imagine how much longer we would have to wait if they needlessly restarted all of this next game's code from square one?

 

[Marc_LFD]

Please stop with this! It's spoilers for the game and ruins the surprise for all of us

If this is genuine we'll see a trailer of it sooner or later.

Big Butt GTA

 

[VinsCool]

Seriously, what fucking moronic game company would go "Yeah, I know we made this tech for years, and we know it inside and out, but let's just throw it out and make something totally new from scratch?" People do not know how game dev works when they talk about "old engines" like it's a complaint against the game and I wish they'd just stop talking.

Not only that but like, if you have code that works, why even make it again, it's there! lol
The reasons to recycle code are plentiful, and the most obvious one is just that, if it works, then use it again and you're good to go!
It saves time, energy, and also possibilities to make a mistake and rewrite something incorrectly, among other things.
We're humans and make mistakes all the time, so no point making the same mistakes again, if they were fixed in the existing codebase!

 

[MikaDubbz]

I do get where the complaints come from on these matters, especially when companies like Bethesda keep reusing code for years and years, and that code was buggy from the very start. It makes the entire process look bad, but that's just a side effect of the process, if you reuse code, it means keeping the good with the bad. But if you're a good dev, you'll deal with that bad at some point so that you only keep the good. Bethesda's code is so damn buggy, that frankly untangling the web of errors to get back to a polished state might be more time consuming than to build an entire new code from scratch, but that's also very time consuming, so instead they just keep doubling down and allowing for the bugs to compound on each other. People are putting up with that, but eventually if they don't properly address the issues in one way or another it will start to cost them interest in their games.

 

[VinsCool]

Oh yeah, it wouldn't even make sense to keep rebuilding a game like Smash from scratch. I genuinely wonder if bits of Smash 64's code are baked deep inside Ultimate. I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case, but if it were started over, it was probably just once with Melee, and everything has just evolved from the code of that game.

Hell we're over 5 years between a new core Zelda title, and the next title is reusing so many assets and code from the game before it. Can you imagine how much longer we would have to wait if they needlessly restarted all of this next game's code from square one?

A good example is the Pokémon games, a lot of the engine was recreated from the ground up for the Gen 3 releases, and they've been pretty much re-using a lot of it in each new games released since.
Unsurprisingly that is how they have been able to push new games at a fast rate, even with dev crunch and shit.
Just look back to the first game, it took many years and was still full of bugs, it was a miracle they even managed to "finish" it!
Imagine re-making an engine for a new game? absolutely nuts. They can do it, sure, but that would be incredibly painful, and time consuming.
At a certain point one person would stand up and say, "Look, we've coded that same function 3 times now, can we just load up the previous game and copy-paste its code instead?"
Obviously, recycling the code is perfectly fine, and I would encourage doing this if that's always a good option.