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Rockstar's Aaron Garbut calls 2022 GTA 6 leak 'weirdly invasive' in Bloomberg interview
GTA 6

Rockstar’s Aaron Garbut calls 2022 GTA 6 leak ‘weirdly invasive’ in Bloomberg interview

CONFIRMED

Rockstar North co-head of development Aaron Garbut has given the studio’s most detailed public account yet of the September 2022 GTA VI leak. In a Bloomberg interview with Rockstar leadership published October 14, 2026, Garbut said the leaks felt “like somebody’s wading through your dirty washing”, according to GameSpot, TechRadar and GamesRadar. The timing is pointed: GameSpot notes the interview landed the same day leaker CyberLeek posted fresh GTA 6 gameplay, five weeks ahead of the November 19 launch.

Garbut's 'weirdly invasive' remarksCONFIRMED B GameSpot, TechRadar and GamesRadar quote Bloomberg's October 14 interview
Alleged 2022 hacker in court November 9RUMOR B GameSpot hedges with 'reportedly' and names no filing or source
2022 breach via Slack phishingRUMOR C GTAVice.net summarising Bloomberg, not verified against the original
'Heartbreaking' said in the Bloomberg interviewDEBUNKEDquote traces to an earlier Rockstar statement per Vice, not to Garbut
Rockstar 'broke its silence' on the 2022 leakDEBUNKEDRockstar acknowledged the leak in 2022, per TheGamer and Bloomberg's own reporting

What we know

Garbut’s comments are consistent across three outlets reporting on the Bloomberg piece. GameSpot, TechRadar and GamesRadar all quote him describing the 2022 leaks as “really weirdly invasive” and “quite hard to deal with on an emotional level”. The “dirty washing” line is the one most outlets lead with.

The context is a four-year-old wound. On September 18, 2022, around 90 unfinished GTA VI development videos were posted on GTAForums by a user going by “teapotuberhacker”. Bloomberg reported at the time that the footage was authentic, citing unnamed people familiar with the game’s development. Rockstar confirmed it was real shortly after, as TheGamer recalls.

What is new is not the acknowledgement but the detail. TheGamer characterises Garbut’s remarks as the first time the studio has described the emotional toll on staff. TechRadar’s account of the Bloomberg interview adds a practical consequence: after the 2022 hack, Rockstar moved to a five-day in-office policy, citing security.

GameSpot also flags the awkward coincidence. Bloomberg’s interview went live on the same day CyberLeek posted another gameplay leak. GameSpot gives GTA 6’s release date as November 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. RockstarSpy does not link to, host or describe the contents of leaked footage.

What is rumored

Close-up of the glowing red tail fin light of a yellow vintage Stanier car parked under a full moon with palm trees in the background.
Close-up of the glowing red tail fin light of a yellow vintage Stanier car parked under a full moon with palm trees in the background. Image: Rockstar Games, official Grand Theft Auto VI screenshot

Two claims are circulating alongside the interview. Neither is confirmed.

First, GameSpot reports that the alleged 2022 hacker was tracked down by Rockstar and Take-Two and will “reportedly” face court on November 9, 2026, ten days before launch. GameSpot is a major outlet, but the court date carries a hedge and is not tied to a named filing or official statement in the coverage we reviewed. Treat it as unverified until a court record or a Take-Two statement surfaces. We will not speculate on the identity of the person involved.

Second, GTAVice.net, a fan-news site summarising the Bloomberg report, says the 2022 attacker reportedly got into Rockstar’s internal Slack through phishing. This is a second-hand summary. We could not check it against the Bloomberg piece directly, so it stays at grade C.

A third claim, pushed by the aggregator tech-insider.org, says Rockstar issued a formal statement calling the leaks “heartbreaking” and asking fans to wait for launch, with the site asserting that Vice, The Verge, Engadget, the BBC and Kotaku confirmed it. We could not verify that any of those outlets reported this, and the site’s framing is misleading. See below.

What we don’t know yet

Two male characters lean against a green classic sports car on a beachfront with modern high-rise buildings in the background.
Two male characters lean against a green classic sports car on a beachfront with modern high-rise buildings in the background. Image: Rockstar Games, official Grand Theft Auto VI screenshot

The “heartbreaking” quote is doing a lot of work in headlines this week, and most of it is wrong. Garbut’s Bloomberg quotes, as carried by GameSpot, TechRadar and GamesRadar, do not include the word. Vice attributes “heartbreaking for our team” to a separate Rockstar statement from August 2026, an apology about footage leaking ahead of the Extended Look. Garbut’s “dirty washing” remark, by contrast, explicitly concerned the September 2022 hack. We have not confirmed it against Rockstar Newswire.

Also unknown: whether Rockstar or Take-Two will comment on the CyberLeek material, whether any legal action is under way against current leakers, and how the 2022 attacker gained access. The Slack phishing detail is plausible but unverified on our end.

What it means

A bald character in grey clothes stands outside the Electric Fang Tattoo parlor at night beside a motorcycle under red neon signage.
A bald character in grey clothes stands outside the Electric Fang Tattoo parlor at night beside a motorcycle under red neon signage. Image: Rockstar Games, official Grand Theft Auto VI screenshot

Garbut’s language is unusually personal for a studio that normally communicates through Newswire posts. The “dirty washing” framing recasts the 2022 incident as something closer to a burglary than a marketing problem, and the five-day office mandate TechRadar describes shows the breach changed how the studio operates.

The interview also reads as a message to the current moment. With CyberLeek posting new material on the same day and launch five weeks out, Rockstar leadership chose to talk about how leaks feel from the inside rather than how they affect sales. Whether that lands with the audience sharing clips is another question.

For now the actionable intel is narrow. Garbut’s quotes are solid. The court date, the phishing vector and the “heartbreaking” statement all need a primary source before they move up the board.

Follow every development in one place on our GTA 6 Leaks Tracker.

Marcus Reed

Marcus Reed runs the GTA 6 desk at RockstarSpy. His beat is everything attached to the next game: release windows, launch details, official trailers, platform plans and the steady drip of leaks that fills the gap between Rockstar announcements. He treats every claim as a question of sourcing first. A Take-Two earnings call or a Rockstar Newswire post gets reported as fact. A datamine or a tipster with a mixed record gets labeled as such. When a story shifts, he updates the piece and says what changed rather than quietly rewriting it. Readers should always be able to tell what is confirmed and what is still talk.