There is a conspiracy theory doing the rounds that Cyberleek—the mysterious individual or group currently leaking footage from GTA 6—is actually an elaborate Rockstar marketing campaign.

Let me be clear from the start: I think the theory is bullshit. There are a couple of key factors that destroy the claim.

However, I completely understand why people are having fun with it, because this entire saga feels less like something happening to Grand Theft Auto and more like something happening inside of GTA 6. If Rockstar put this exact storyline into GTA 6, I’d probably accuse the writers of laying the satire on a little thick.

On one side, we have one of the world’s biggest entertainment companies preparing to release the most anticipated game of all time. It will mostly likely end up being the biggest media launch in history.  On the other, we have a mysterious hacker collective represented by a goofy cartoon mascot, issuing theatrical proclamations about corporate greed and consumer rights while simultaneously promoting its own cryptocurrency.

Come on. That is a Grand Theft Auto mission if I ever played one.

There are just enough strange little details to make the conspiracy entertaining and believable. A few things that line up nicely.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has repeatedly said that Rockstar is trying to “do something that’s never been done before” with GTA 6. He was clearly talking about the game itself, but conspiracy theorists have naturally decided that he was secretly announcing the most deranged marketing campaign in gaming history.

Then there’s the footage. Cyberleek has seemingly demonstrated access to a playable build by shooting the word “LEEK” into a wall, but the material released so far has been kind of chill. We’ve seen driving, flying, combat and general open-world exploration, but no huge story reveals, character deaths or ending spoilers. It’s damaging to Rockstar’s carefully planned reveal, but it has also given millions of people a tantalising look at the game without ruining its biggest surprises.

That could be read as evidence of a carefully controlled marketing campaign. It could also mean Cyberleek understands that dropping the ending immediately would piss everyone off, kill the audience’s curiosity and leave considerably less time to promote its crypto scheme. Sometimes the sensible explanation is simply that the person dangling the carrot would prefer not to throw the entire vegetable aisle at us. Hell, it could even be that Cyberleek just doesn’t want to be an asshole to gamers and completely spoil a game that everyone and their grandmother is going to play.

The timing has also been suspiciously useful. These leaks arrived shortly before Rockstar’s major GTA 6 presentation on Netflix on August 27, whipping the internet into a frenzy just as the official marketing machine prepares to start rolling. Cyberleek may have damaged Rockstar’s plans, but it has also handed the company several million dollars’ worth of free advertising.

And then we get to Cyberleek itself, which is where the whole thing becomes almost painfully GTA-like.

The group has its own cartoon character. It publishes grand declarations instead of ordinary messages. Its manifesto is framed around “commandments” covering digital pre-orders, physical media and locked single-player content, making Cyberleek sound like a band of righteous technological revolutionaries fighting a greedy corporate machine.

It then asks people to buy cryptocurrency.

Cyberleek insists this is not a scam or cash grab, naturally, while offering different levels of access and influence depending on how much of its meme coin people hold. That’s the sort of joke Rockstar would write to demonstrate how quickly noble online activism can become another monetisation scheme. The only thing missing is a mission where you manipulate the coin’s price by driving a branded van into a rival crypto exchange or something.

The biggest problem in this theory is that Take-Two has filed genuine DMCA subpoena requests in federal court seeking information from Microsoft and Discord that could help identify Cyberleek. Microsoft and Discord filed the subpoenas on August 20 and requested records related to the alleged infringement. Microsoft has also publicly confirmed that it is working with Take-Two and Rockstar to protect their intellectual property.

For the conspiracy to be true, Take-Two would therefore have to drag two enormous technology companies and a federal court into the ploy.  It would be making legal representations about copyright infringement it secretly authorised, all to maintain a joke. I am not a lawyer, nor a very smart man, but even I recognise that deliberately misleading a court is generally considered a bad idea.

The cryptocurrency creates another enormous problem because real money is changing hands. Sure, if people buy into it and lose their arse in the process, one could argue it’s kind of deserved since they bet on a memecoin being run by a group that is threatening to illegally release a thing they stole. But I’m sure people with money in the game would still be pretty pissed off.

If Take-Two secretly operated or supported Cyberleek while encouraging people to buy a token on the belief that they were funding an independent hacker collective, this would no longer be harmless theatre. It could invite scrutiny over deceptive marketing, fraud and any financial losses suffered by buyers. 

The precise legal exposure would depend on who issued the coin, what purchasers were promised and where they live and about a million other factors. The US Securities and Exchange Commission currently says many conventional meme coins are not securities, so it would be wrong to declare this an automatic securities violation. However, calling something a meme coin does not grant it magical immunity from every other law concerning deception and money.

Take-Two’s share price also briefly dove off a cliff. Reports placed the temporary decline at roughly $2.83 billion in market value, a frankly baffling amount of money. And yet as crazy as it sounds, that’s barely a dent in Take-Two’s total market value. Plus, even the original reporting acknowledged that stock prices move for countless reasons and the leak cannot be isolated as the sole cause. Market capitalisation is not a bill Take-Two has to pay, and much of the value reportedly began returning fairly quickly, so I doubt the executives were crying into a communal bucket. Even so, deliberately engaging in a sketchy marketing plan that ended up losing a heap of stock value is the kind of thing to send shareholders into a frenzy.

Finally, Rockstar employees are reportedly angry and frustrated that their unfinished work is being shown without permission despite all the tighter security introduced after the 2022 breach. Either those people are genuinely dealing with another leak, or Rockstar has decided that upsetting its own developers is an acceptable price for staying committed to the bit.

The clear answer is that Cyberleek probably isn’t Rockstar. There’s too many massive facts standing in the way, although if it does turn out to be Rockstar I guess we’ll have to offer them a round of applause for a genuinely insane marketing stunt. Before then probably watching the equally insane fallout.

But that’s what makes the conspiracy so much fun. It isn’t compelling because the evidence genuinely points towards Rockstar. It is compelling because every new chapter sounds like Rockstar wrote it: a cartoon hacker fighting corporate greed, a revolutionary manifesto compromised by cryptocurrency, an enormous media company sending its lawyers into battle and, finally, a dead man’s switch holding the world’s biggest game hostage.

I swear, if Rockstar doesn’t somehow turn this entire fucking storyline into some DLC down the line, they don’t deserve to be game developers.