Rockstar hacked again, says it won’t impact players or GTA VI

Rockstar has once again been targeted by hackers, although the company is downplaying the impact it will have.

Over the weekend, cyber extortion group Shiny Hunters, which has previously targeted the likes of Microsoft, Pornhub and Ticketmaster, posted on its dark web site that it had breached the Grand Theft Auto VI maker and threatened to leak company data unless a ransom was paid by April 14. In response, Rockstar has confirmed the validity of the breach to news outlets but claimed it won’t affect the company or its customers.

“We can confirm that a limited amount of non-material company information was accessed in connection with a third-party data breach. This incident has no impact on our organization or our players,” a Rockstar spokesperson told Kotaku.

Given that statement, it wouldn’t appear that any data on players or GTA VI has been compromised, but rather, more administrative information. This would be quite different from a 2022 hack of Rockstar in which significant early development footage of GTA VI was leaked, over a year before the first trailer of the game was revealed. Since then, Rockstar has only released one more cinematic trailer, although we still haven’t seen actual official gameplay footage.

As it stands, GTA VI is set to release on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on November 19 following a delay from last autumn. That said, many are still skeptical it will even make that date, given the project’s long gestation period. The last GTA game, GTA V, launched in September 2013 and has received steady updates to its lucrative GTA Online multiplayer mode ever since.

Image credit: Rockstar Games