Most of you know that the highly anticipated GTA 6 trailer went live on YouTube on December 5, 2023. But did you know that it was leaked hours before it was officially scheduled to premiere? That’s right, the trailer was posted to ‘X’ (previously Twitter), leading to Rockstar officially posting the trailer on YouTube early.
The unexpected GTA 6 leak was expected to have a huge impact on Take-Two and the entire development team behind the GTA 6, but it looks like it’s not really the case, at least according to Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick who spoke to IGN about the leak during an earnings report made by the company.
“It’s amazing when the trailer announcement is huge news, and then we were very gratified when the trailer broke the internet…so we couldn’t be happier or more excited,” Zelnick said.
In terms of the leak, that’s always disappointing for the team, but ultimately, I don’t think it hurt us.
Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two CEO
It’s easy to see why he said what he said to IGN considering how successful the release of the Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer was. Not only did it become the most viewed videogame reveal on YouTube in 24 hours, but it broke multiple other YouTube records to go down in history as one of the most successful trailer releases. It’s still going strong with over 174M views on YouTube at the time of writing this.
Who’s going to tell him about the mental toll of the leak on its team, though?
It’s easy for Zelnick to put on the corporate hat and talk sweetly to the media for him and his company’s reputation but no amount of PR training can undo what a leak of this caliber has done to everyone who worked — and are still working — tirelessly to get this game in the hands of players.
In fact, the initial reactions of the Rockstar devs to the leak paint a completely different picture. A lot of them took it to X to show their disappointment, and they all made it very clear that the unfortunate leak of GTA 6 took a huge toll on the team’s mental.
Graphics programmer Angel Ortiz said he was going to hold off on watching the trailer until he can see it “with the people who worked so f*cking hard to make it happen.”
Rockstar senior gameplay animator Javier Altman’s X post, which has since been deleted, said, “This f*cking sucks.” It was followed up by, “I was hoping to watch this for the first time tomorrow along with my fellow teammates and coworkers. I feel we deserved that moment.”
Rockstar Games’ senior programmer Connor also showed his rather immense disappointment with a loud, “F*CKING SERIOUSLY???” X post. “Sorry for the rage, but the trailer leak is just so disheartening. I was really looking forward to watching the premier with everyone. A lot of people were,” he added in a follow-up.
I can dig into a dozen other posts by folks on the GTA 6 dev team to show how Zelnick’s statement couldn’t be any further from the truth. The folks over at PCGamer have a dedicated piece highlighting all the reactions of Rockstar devs, so go check it out if you want to know how it feels to watch something that you worked on not getting the right treatment it deserves.
A lot of these posts, especially the ones that garnered a lot of interaction, have now been deleted or have been asked to be taken down by the company, but you can only run, but not hide from the internet.
I am disappointed, though not entirely surprised about the response from Zelnick about the GTA 6 trailer leak. Guess I am just too used to corporate CEOs talking whack on matters they should probably keep quiet about. You know, like the Ubisoft CEO saying how he thinks it’s okay to charge $70 for Skull & Bones, which has mixed expectations after a lackluster playtest and huge delays.
As for the GTA 6 release date, the only thing we know for now is that it’s slated to launch on PlayStation 5 and Xbox sometime next year. Let’s hope there are no delays, so I don’t have to write a story about another tailor-made PR response from the company’s CEO on the delay.
