Last weekend, someone hacked Rockstar Games and leaked over 90 videos of the still-in-development Grand Theft Auto 6. Now, the City of London Police in the United Kingdom reportedly arrested the 17-year-old individual responsible for the hack.
BBC and the City of London Police’s Twitter account confirmed the arrest took place in Oxfordshire earlier today. The official statement only says that this 17-year-old individual was arrested “on suspicion of hacking, as part of an investigation supported by the NCA UK’s National Cyber Crime Unit,” but journalist Matthew Keys reports that this is the person who leaked Grand Theft Auto 6 after they hacked Rockstar Games (and possibly hacked Uber as well).
On the evening of Thursday 22 September 2022, the City of London Police arrested a 17-year-old in Oxfordshire on suspicion of hacking, as part of an investigation supported by the @NCA_UK’s National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU).
He remains in police custody. pic.twitter.com/Zfa3OlDR6J
— City of London Police (@CityPolice) September 23, 2022
Further tweets by Keys also claim that this arrest was made in partnership with the FBI, who we knew were investigating the hack. More detailed statements from the involved agencies are expected in the coming hours, and we’ll update this post when those happen. The hacker remains in police custody at this time. Rockstar Games released a statement about the hack on Monday and said that it does not expect “any disruption to our live game services nor any long-term effect on the development of our ongoing projects.”
The leak of Grand Theft Auto 6 stands alongside Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard as one of the video game industry stories of the year. It not only gave us a look at an unfinished version of one of the most highly anticipated video games ever, but spawned lots of discussions about how games are made and revealed and how many players don’t have the most accurate perception of how game development works. In solidarity with Rockstar, many developers have released early development footage of their games, showing incomplete gameplay and visuals.
