Leaks of major games before their release have become almost routine in the gaming industry, but in the case of GTA VI, the story is now taking a legal turn: Take-Two, the parent company of Rockstar and the game's publisher, has petitioned a U.S. court to order Microsoft and Discord to hand over a long list of details about users suspected of leaking the game, in an attempt to identify the person behind videos from the game that were leaked and posted online in recent days.
At the center of the case is a user known as CyberLeek, who claims to possess a complete, working version of GTA VI. Several videos from the highly anticipated title were posted over the past week, the latest on August 21. Take-Two is now turning to the courts in an attempt to uncover the individual's identity.
A still from the second GTA 6 trailer
(Photo: Screenshot)
Seeking a digital 'fingerprint'
On August 20, the company filed two applications in federal court in New York for subpoenas under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA. One is directed at Discord and the other at Microsoft, with the information sought going far beyond a name or email address.
According to court documents, Take-Two is seeking information from Microsoft including IP addresses used when the accounts were registered and during their most recent logins, phone numbers, connections to Google and Xbox accounts, OneDrive content and device identifiers. Both subpoenas set Sept. 4 as the deadline for providing the requested information.
The company is also seeking the MachineGuid, an identifier generated by Windows when the operating system is installed that can serve as a kind of "fingerprint" for the computer. While an IP address can change and can also be concealed using a VPN, this identifier generally remains constant even if some of the computer's hardware components are replaced.
The request, however, is not limited to the three accounts suspected of being involved in the leak. According to an exhibit filed with the court, Take-Two is asking Microsoft to provide the identifier for every account that belonged to or communicated on any of three Discord servers from June 1, 2026, through Monday. This means that if the request is granted in full, the information handed over could include details about a significantly larger number of users, not just the person behind CyberLeek.
The three servers named in the documents are Ødyssey.gg, a server called "! Odyssey" and the DarkViperAU server. In documents submitted to Microsoft, Ødyssey.gg is described as a community focused on game cheats — tools or software that allow players to cheat in games — and as a server from which, according to the documents, the person behind the leaks operated.
The request to Microsoft is also connected to GitHub, the code-hosting platform owned by the company. In fact, the legal request identifies Microsoft as the service provider for GitHub, rather than as the operator of Xbox or OneDrive.
One day before filing the court applications, on Aug. 19, Take-Two sent GitHub a takedown request for a repository called zyrexdz/cyberleek-leak-research, alleging that it infringed its copyrights. The company demanded that the repository be disabled entirely, arguing there was no other way to remedy the infringement. At the time of the original report, the repository was still public and had accumulated nearly 500 stars and more than 30 forks.
The leaks continue
The legal proceedings come as Take-Two and Rockstar attempt to maintain control over information released about GTA VI, with every new video or detail from the game quickly becoming a major online event. CyberLeek, for his part, claims this is not simply a matter of several videos coming into his possession, but that he has a complete, working version of the game.
In one of the videos posted, he apparently taunted Rockstar by shooting at a wall in the game so that the bullet holes formed the word "Leek" — a reference to the vegetable and a play on "Leak," which also inspired his username. It is important to note, however, that the claim cannot be independently verified, nor is it possible to know for certain which version of the game came into his possession.
Alongside the leaks, CyberLeek also published a manifesto attacking the model of preorders for games distributed exclusively digitally. He argued that preorders are a relic of the era of physical copies, when securing a copy in advance made sense because of limited inventory, and that the practice is no longer justified when the product is a digital file.
This is also not the first cyber incident to involve Rockstar in recent months. In April, the hacking group ShinyHunters claimed to have breached the company and threatened to publish confidential information if its demands were not met.