Rockstar Bans Social Media Comments While GTA VI Leaks Spread

In the days following this week Celebration Grand Theft Auto VI leaks, investigations have revealed more information about the party behind the hack. Instead of a single person, at least two people — possibly linked to a larger hacking group — appear to be behind the big weekend Fracture. And while Rockstar Games is shutting down its social media accounts to fight back against the spread of leaked content, the hackers are now likely to be investigated by the FBI.

On September 18th, a user popped up on the GTA forums and posted over 90 videos showing early development footage of the next Grand Theft Auto game, probably GTA VI. The footage included early glimpses of the Vice City game environment, as well as police pursuits, gunfights, and seemingly two main characters. In the days since the leak, Rockstar Games and its parent company Take-Two Interactive have attempted to remove the leaked footage from the web. Rockstar released a statement on Sept. 19, indicating the catastrophic leak was the result of a hacker “illegally” gaining access to the studio’s network.

Now we know that GTA VI Hacker wasn’t a single person, but probably at least two different people. in the a new post on the GTA forumsThe site’s staff shared the results of their investigation into the leaker, stating that based on the posting behavior and IP address data, they believe that at least two people shared the TeaPotUberHacker GTA forum account that published the leaked data.

According to the staffers’ update, they don’t believe the account was stolen but instead shared between the two hackers known as “Teapot” and “Lily.” GTA Forum staff notes that Lily has been active on Telegram, but that they do not believe that Lily “currently possesses any of the hacked materials they claim to possess” and warn against interacting with them.

The transportation app company Uber, which was also recently hacked, issued a “security update”. Earlier this week, responsibility was blamed on a hacking group called Lapsus$. It has been claimed that Lapsus$ also “violated Microsoft, Cisco, Samsung, Nvidia and Okta, among others” this year and is now behind it too GTA VI Leak. Uber says it is working with the FBI and the US Department of Justice to help with the investigation. It is currently unknown if Rockstar is also working with the FBI.

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In the meantime, while the leaked footage and screenshots continue to spread across the internet, Rockstar has apparently taken action by suspending its social media accounts. If you look at that latest tweet and Instagram posts, you will notice that they are closed to comments and replies. This is believed to be an attempt by Rockstar to slow the spread of the leaked materials, as some fans would likely use the answers below GTA Online-related tweets to share content from the leak.

kotaku has reached out to Rockstar for comment on the investigation and its newly suspended social media accounts.