Who is behind the GTA VI leaks: the Cyberleek manifesto and the coin beside it

Published: 2026-08-19

Within a day, the leak that began on 18 August stopped being merely a leak. A third clip followed the first two — the group itself called it the “Taser video” — and the material now travels with a manifesto: a list of demands addressed to publishers and presented as a fight for players’ rights. A cryptocurrency token travels with it too.

Three demands

The group calling itself Cyberleek has framed its demands as three points, and addressed them to publishers in general rather than to Rockstar alone:

1. End digital pre-orders — a game must not be sold before release and before independent reviews are out. Pre-orders of physical editions remain allowed.
2. Ban “fake single-player DLC” — content present in the game at launch but unlocked only through an additional payment.
3. Provide an offline fallback for single-player games, so that a purchased game keeps working after its servers are shut down.

The group additionally demands a public apology from publishers and promises to target those who break these rules.

The demands themselves are not new: consumer organisations and the signatories of the Stop Killing Games campaign argue publicly for review-first pre-orders and for the preservation of purchased games. What is new here is the method — the demands are backed by someone else’s unreleased material.

A memecoin beside the manifesto

Alongside the manifesto, the group is promoting a token of its own. Both outlets and the Stop Killing Games campaigners — whose arguments the manifesto largely borrows — have pointed this out. The images circulating with the clips carry a call to buy that token.

We take no position on what happens to the token or how it ends for the people who buy it. But the fact that a campaign “for players’ rights” comes bundled with the sale of a cryptocurrency is reason enough not to take the group’s statements at face value, including its statements about its own motives. A declared absence of self-interest and the sale of one’s own asset sit badly together.

How this differs from 2022

This is not the first GTA VI leak. In September 2022 more than ninety internal video files were posted to GTAForums; a court found a then seventeen-year-old member of the Lapsus$ group responsible. That case was straightforward extortion: the publisher refused to pay, and the material was dumped in full.

This time the shape is different. No money is demanded directly — instead of a ransom there are demands aimed at the industry, while funds are raised through the sale of a token. The form has changed; the substance has not. Someone else’s unfinished work is still being used as leverage.

What happens next

Rockstar has not answered the demands and is taking publications down under DMCA — which says something about where the files came from, and nothing about how the game is built today. The group claims it still has material left.

The contents of the clips become checkable on 27 August, when Rockstar shows extended gameplay itself for the first time: what is known about the showing and when it starts is covered in the 27 August extended look.