It’s not fun for developers when trailers leak early for their games, but I imagine even less so when your studio has something new to share as rarely as Rockstar does. The studio planned to premiere the first GTA 6 trailer tomorrow morning. People were so excited about it that thousands were sitting around in the livestream chat 24 hours ahead of time to get hyped about the game. Then, earlier today, the full trailer leaked onto X with an ugly crypto watermark glazed over the center of the screen.
This forced Rockstar’s hand: The leaker’s account was suspended, but rather than let that pixellated, partially obscured version of the trailer circulate for the next 12 hours, Rockstar went ahead and posted the official trailer on YouTube early. It’s a good trailer, but some Rockstar employees are annoyed that their big reveal was moved forward by a leak, and I can’t blame them.
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“This fucking sucks,” wrote Rockstar senior gameplay animator Javier Altman on X. “I was hoping to watch this for the first time tomorrow along with my fellow teammates and coworkers. I feel we deserved that moment,” he wrote in a follow up.
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Graphics programmer Angel Ortiz is holding off on watching the trailer until he can see it with the people “who worked so fucking hard to make it happen.”
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Rockstar senior programmer Connor was a little louder with their disappointment. “FUCKING SERIOUSLY???” they wrote.
“Sorry for the rage,” Connor continued in a followup, “but the trailer leak is just so disheartening. I was really looking forward to watching the premier with everyone. A lot of people were.”
Development operations director Alex Menasche expressed a similar sentiment, but chose the visual medium of emojis:
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Senior gameplay designer Phil Beveridge shared the trailer, adding it “would have been nice to do this with all of you at the same time.”
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Still, many Rockstar devs are taking it on the chin and basking in the excitement all the same, even one developer who worked on GTA 6 for years before moving on to Infinity Ward.
Several other devs are sad it “had to happen this way,” but are still psyched the first glimpse of their work is finally out in the wild.
“Sad that it came out this way, but couldn’t be more excited to be working on an amazing project with amazing people,” wrote associate game systems engineer Zara Naveed.
“Shame it had to be released like this, but so excited to finally get to show off what we’ve been cooking,” wrote AI/gameplay programmer Matthew Rennie.
Even though Rockstar’s marketing event didn’t go as planned, it must feel good to finally lift the veil on a super secretive project you’re proud of—like a big satisfying sigh after a long day. I sympathize, but years down the road, most of us are going to forget this happened. Millions of people are going to watch this trailer as they wait over a year for GTA 6, and the unimportant detail of its early arrival will fade into the background.
GTA 6 is set to release on PlayStation and Xbox in 2025, but no PC date was announced, which has us expecting another Red Dead Redemption 2 situation where the PC version comes later. You can also read PC Gamer’s reactions and observations from the trailer.
