Rockstar is currently enduring one of its most embarrassing PR episodes in recent memory: With just days remaining before its Netflix-exclusive Grand Theft Auto 6 gameplay reveal, the developer is on the hunt for the cryptopeddler whose 11 leaks of illicit GTA 6 footage over six days seem to imply ongoing access to a playable game build.
While Rockstar and its parent company Take-Two are almost certainly at DEFCON 1 over the historic shitshow, former Rockstar developer Obbe Vermeij says the GTA 6 leaks will ultimately prove to be, well, kind of whatever.
“Calm down everybody,” Vermeij said in a post on X over the weekend. “The leaks are a nothing burger.”
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According to Vermeij, who spent nearly 14 years at Rockstar North as a technical director on every GTA release from GTA 3 in 2001 to GTA 4’s Ballad of Gay Tony expansion in 2010, the recent GTA 6 leaks will likely constitute little more than “a tiny blip” for a game whose sales lifespan, if GTA 5 is any indication, is expected to span more than a decade.
“All that has happened is that some footage has escaped. Slightly ahead of the Netflix thing next week,” Vermeij said. “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.”
The Cyberleek situation, Vermeij says, is “far less consequential” when compared to the biggest “nightmare” he witnessed during his Rockstar tenure: the infamous Hot Coffee incident.
In 2005, the discovery that GTA: San Andreas had shipped with code for a sex minigame that could be enabled through unofficial modification earned the game an Adult Only re-rating from the ESRB. In the ensuing PR firestorm, retailers pulled San Andreas from store shelves until an updated version could be issued, leading to an estimated $50 million revenue loss in 2005 and a $20 million class action settlement in 2009.
Measured against that level of brand damage, Vermeij said in a response to another X user that he figures “there won’t be much damage if any” from the GTA 6 leaks.
Even if Cyberleek does something drastic like leak GTA 6’s ending, Vermeij—who himself once ran afoul of his former employer by publishing a short-lived blog detailing his GTA dev days—doesn’t think it would move the needle much.
“That would suck,” he said, “but people will still play it.”
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