Rockstar confirms 'GTA VI' footage was leaked, says work will 'continue as planned'

American video game publisher Rockstar has confirmed the Grand Theft Auto VI footage leaked online over the weekend had been stolen from its network.

According to The Verge, the user, "teapotuberhacker," who posted the gameplay had claimed that they also carried out an attack on Uber that occurred last week, but their actual involvement is still unclear. In a statement shared on Twitter, Rockstar said, "We recently suffered a network intrusion in which an unauthorized third party illegally accessed and downloaded confidential information from our systems, including early development footage for the next Grand Theft Auto."

"We are extremely disappointed to have any details of our next game shared with you all in this way. Our work on the next Grand Theft Auto game will continue as planned and we remain as committed as ever to delivering an experience to you, our players, that truly exceeds your expectations," they added.

Currently, details about how the "network intrusion" occurred are slim, but Rockstar says it will "update everyone again soon."

According to Tech Crunch, the trove of data, which PCGamer discovered via a GTAForums post by the alleged hacker themselves, contains some 90 videos of clips from the game, with debug code and interfaces running and helping back up the veracity of the claims.

Various clips from the leak depict male and female protagonist characters, which fits with other reports about what to expect in the forthcoming game. They also show gameplay taking place in a Miami-analog fictional city; again matching early reports about what GTA 6 will bring to the franchise.

Reportedly, GTA 6 has been under development since 2014 hence it's reasonable to expect development snapshots to be from various builds over the years.

Earlier this month, Tech Crunch said Rockstar rolled the credits from GTA 5 and GTA 5 Online on its website, titling the page Thank You, which many took as a sign that they were winding down active development on the title. (ANI)