Grand Theft Auto 6 maker confirms source code, vids stolen in cyber-heist
- Reference: 1663607535
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/09/19/grand_theft_auto_6_hacked/
- Source link:
It also appears at least some of the material was leaked online via a message board.
"Rockstar Games recently experienced a network intrusion in which an unauthorized third party illegally accessed and downloaded confidential information from its systems, including early development footage for the next Grand Theft Auto," the company said in a [1]September 19 securities filing. "Current Rockstar Games services are unaffected. We have already taken steps to isolate and contain this incident."
[2]
The biz said work on Grand Theft Auto 6 (GTA 6) will continue as planned and that the game's development and release schedule should not be affected.
[3]
[4]
Rockstar Games issued a similar statement [5]via Twitter , expressing disappointment and promising an update on the situation soon.
The hacking incident occurred nine years after the September 17, 2013 release of the previous iteration of the GTA franchise.
[6]
On Sunday, an individual claiming without substantiation to have participated in [7]the recent Uber hack and posting under the screen name "teapotuberhacker" published screenshots of game source code to [8]a discussion thread on gtaforums.com titled "GTA 6 (Americas) leak - 90+ .mp4 footage/videos."
The posts – since altered by moderators – included a screenshot of a Python build script named GTA6.py, a screenshot of GTA5 C++ source code, links to source code copied to paste.ee, and a gofile.io link to download the purloined videos, among other evidence of the compromise.
[9]
Screenshot of GTA 6 developer documentation from the leak ... Click to enlarge
In [10]one of the forum posts , the self-proclaimed hacker wrote, "These videos were downloaded from Slack (employee communications)." Coincidentally, the Uber hacker gained admin control of a Slack workspace during that attack.
UK taxpayers funded Grand Theft Auto V maker to tune of £42m – while biz paid no corp tax and made billions [11]READ MORE
At one point, the supposed thief's post had been edited to include an invitation to an employee of Rockstar Games or Take-Two Interactive [12]to negotiate a deal – presumably based on a promise to withhold the publication of source code and other intellectual property that has not already been made public. That text no longer appears in the individual's post.
Some of the videos were posted to YouTube and [13]removed . But some have been [14]reposted and were available at the time this story was filed. The posted video shows gameplay as a developer would see it, with scenario editor and world editor controls, along with technical analytics for performance monitoring and debugging.
No definitive release date for GTA 6 has been announced but reports suggest the game won't debut for at least another year or two. GTA 5 [15]reportedly cost $137 million to produce. ®
Get our [16]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.take2games.com/ir/sec-filings
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/cybercrime&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YyjmcyFVzkctuCeyAhecDwAAAMo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/cybercrime&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YyjmcyFVzkctuCeyAhecDwAAAMo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/cybercrime&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YyjmcyFVzkctuCeyAhecDwAAAMo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://twitter.com/RockstarGames/status/1571849091860029455
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/cybercrime&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YyjmcyFVzkctuCeyAhecDwAAAMo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/16/uber_security_incident/
[8] https://gtaforums.com/topic/985481-gta-6-americas-leak-90-mp4-footagevideos/
[9] https://regmedia.co.uk/2022/09/19/hacker_posted_image_to_gtaforums.jpg
[10] https://gtaforums.com/topic/985481-gta-6-americas-leak-90-mp4-footagevideos/#elControls_1071949751_menu
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/29/rockstar/
[12] https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/1571532523389308928
[13] https://youtu.be/9GfPx1yAxQ0
[14] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afc_z1ShqJ0
[15] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/gta-v-dev-costs-over-usd137-million-says-analyst
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Should, if anything, enhance their business
I'd guess that these games are built like movies, sophisticated story telling that runs on a highly optimized platform. So leaking the look and feel isn't going to result in a rash of pirated games and actually might enhance their business.
GTA is more than a game, though. Its a cultural icon whether we like it or not so like other cultural entities of similar statue it needs to be preserved in some form for posterity like we do for movies, books, music and so on.
Re: Should, if anything, enhance their business
highly optimized platform
lol.
Umm, no. The majority of games are quite poorly written for the most part, with optimisation left to the last minute by a (relatively) small team. As with many other branches of software these days, the vast majority of engineers on a game will not have the first clue about how to produce optimal code. Add in hundreds of artists and designers who know even less and it's quite frankly amazing anything ever runs at all. Optimising typically involves picking off low hanging fruit until either performance is acceptable, or the game is shipped. 95% of the code is untouched in the process.
The general mantra among non-engineers is: "Don't worry, the coders will fix it."
Here's an example of what we typically had to deal with when optimising: In Age of Conan, the main character's eyeballs were comprised of several thousand triangles. Each.
Re: Should, if anything, enhance their business
The other thing lazy non-engineers say is.... don't worry, hardware is always getting faster.
confidential data for Grand Theft Auto 6 has been stolen.
Gotta take the positives from the situation - realise that moaning about being the victim of a theft, when your game is all about much how fun robbing people is supposed to be is going to sound a little bit conflicted. So go postmodern, and add a task to the game where you have to steal the source code to the actual game you're playing. You could even let the players view some code if they are successful and sit back and laugh as they excitedly post the "top secret game code" containing a Bubblesort function all over the web.
Re: confidential data for Grand Theft Auto 6 has been stolen.
Bubblesort :)
There's a term I haven't heard in decades.
Ooh, so there is potential for some digital preservation of GTA (5 it seems).
This is unfortunate news for the shareholders admittedly but pretty darn good news for keeping fun games alive. Personally I would rather GTA 3 but I suppose it isn't exactly a buffet!
Now that the source is out, they should consider selling licenses to it for personal use (I imagine many individuals will pay much more for the code than the compiled build itself). Perhaps we can get some patchkits going for BSD/Linux ports. OK, now I am dreaming ;)