On 23 September 2022 British police arrest a 17-year-old in Oxfordshire. Nothing officially ties him to the GTA 6 leak, but the profile recalls Lapsus$.
Sources polygon.com · eurogamer.net
London police announced on Friday 23 September 2022 the arrest of a 17-year-old, picked up in Oxfordshire on suspicion of hacking offences as part of an investigation with the National Cyber Crime Unit. According to Polygon, authorities declined to give further details and did not link the arrest to the GTA 6 leak, which happened five days earlier.
Established: a 17-year-old is in custody over suspected hacking. Not established: that he is the person behind the Rockstar intrusion. Polygon notes, however, that the circumstances resemble earlier arrests tied to Lapsus$, the group Uber believes was behind the attack it suffered the week before. The poster who published the GTA 6 videos also claimed to have hacked Uber. Neither Rockstar nor Uber replied to Polygon.
In March, London had already arrested seven people over Lapsus$, including a teenager from Oxfordshire, Polygon recalls. In April, two teenagers aged 16 and 17 were charged and released on bail. The group is suspected of breaching Microsoft, T-Mobile, Ubisoft and security firm Okta. The FBI and the US Department of Justice are investigating the Uber attack separately; Polygon has approached them.
Four days earlier, Rockstar had confirmed a "network intrusion" and said its next game would suffer no long-term effect. The hacker had also promised further leaks, including GTA V and GTA 6 source code and a test build. No such release was confirmed at that date.
According to Eurogamer, the 17-year-old appeared on 24 September before a London youth court: he pleaded guilty to breaching bail conditions and not guilty to computer misuse, and was remanded to a youth detention centre. The game is called Grand Theft Auto VI and launches on 19 November 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, with preload on 12 November, PEGI 18 and €79.99 for the standard edition. See our release page.
On 23 September, this arrest proves nothing about Rockstar, and it would be unwise to read it otherwise. It does show that the leak did not go without a police response and that the inquiry belongs to a series of cases targeting the same network of young hackers. For players the lesson stays simple: stolen videos are unfinished material, which Rockstar said would not alter the rest of the project.
Sources polygon.com · eurogamer.net
By Solange Rocheval · VI Countdown newsroom, OKALAM Studio