Roughly two minutes of gameplay footage and the entire map for Grand Theft Auto 6 have allegedly been leaked, but what is the footage from, and how old is it? The answers to those questions will determine whether the videos fans are now combing through represent unfinished works in progress or something that more closely approximates what players can expect from the final game. As people debate whether the new leaks make the game look good or not, there’s reason to believe the footage is at least over a year old.
Prominent leak podcaster NateTheHate posted on ResetEra that the GTA 6 footage was more than a year old, and a look at the files’ metadata suggests the clips may be even older. A discussion over on GTA Forums surfaced that the videos were encoded with a 2023 build of FFmpeg. But as admin Spider-Vice pointed out, that doesn’t mean the videos were necessarily created in 2023. They could have been made later using the older version. The build the footage was from could also have been older and not encoded until later.
Signs that the footage is likely old, including speculation around some of the fonts and UI elements looking like they were potentially placeholder assets, should be a relief to the fans who haven’t found the leaked gameplay very impressive-looking. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to leak GTA 6,” wrote one user on X last night in a tweet that later blew up. “lol Anyway is this looking good?? Kinda looks mid though.” Another claimed, “They over hyped this shit by being so silent so we expected more and then the leaks gave us a glimpse of how mid it is.”
Some of the disappointment in certain quarters of the online reaction comes down to the quality of the footage, which was not great to begin with and is rapidly degrading as it gets recaptured and reposted across various social media platforms while Take-Two issues DMCA takedowns. Some of the quality issues could also be due to which media players people are using to view the footage and share screenshots from it. “This post will probs be taken down BUT the leaked clips are in HDR and it seems a lot of people don’t have their media players set up to properly handle tonemapping HDR to SDR, that’s why it’s looking extremely washed out in screenshots posted around,” wrote GTA modder Ash R.
The alleged leaks may be useless for trying to get a clue as to the overall level of visual fidelity and polish that will ultimately be on display in the most anticipated game launch ever, but they have at least appeared to confirm some additional information about the gameplay itself, including a sixth star for the Wanted system and gas meters for cars.
