The young British hacker behind the September 2022 leak has been ordered to stay in a secure hospital with no time limit. Rockstar told the court the hack cost it $5 million.
Sources bbc.com · eurogamer.net
The GTA 6 leak case reached its legal conclusion on 21 December 2023. According to the BBC, Arion Kurtaj, 18, from Oxford, was given an indefinite hospital order. He is described as a key member of the Lapsus$ gang, already behind attacks on Uber and Nvidia. Eurogamer confirms he will stay in a secure hospital until doctors judge him no longer a danger.
The technical detail is almost absurd. Per the BBC, Kurtaj was under police protection in a Travelodge hotel, on bail for other hacks, with his laptop confiscated. He still managed to breach Rockstar using an Amazon Fire Stick, his hotel TV and a phone. He stole 90 clips of the unreleased game, then threatened on the internal Slack to release source code if Rockstar did not contact him within 24 hours. He then posted it all on a forum as TeaPotUberHacker.
Kurtaj has severe autism. Doctors found him unfit to stand trial, so the jury only had to decide whether he did the acts, not whether he meant to commit a crime. His defence argued that the trailer's success showed no serious harm. The judge replied that there were real victims. Rockstar told the court the hack cost it $5 million, plus thousands of staff hours, according to the BBC. The same reporting says he expressed an intention to return to cybercrime as soon as possible.
The game's schedule was not visibly derailed by the leak: the first trailer came out in December 2023 and a second in May 2025. GTA VI is due on 19 November 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, with preload on 12 November. Prices and editions are on prix.html.
For readers, it closes a saga that began in September 2022, which we followed through to the arrest of a teenager in Oxford. On the technical side, it is a reminder that even a studio of this size can fall to poorly protected internal access. The stolen footage was still not the final game, as Rockstar has always stressed.
Sources bbc.com · eurogamer.net
By Daniel Jasner · VI Countdown newsroom, OKALAM Studio