Rockstar Games Accidentally Leaks GTA 6 Placeholder Screenshots

Rockstar Games is having a harder time than most developers when it comes to keeping their secrets, well, secret.

An army of eager fans are apparently monitoring the official website like hawks 24/7, so even a minor premature site update cannot slip past the community.

This is exactly what happened when Grand Theft Auto 6 was listed on a new page with empty screenshot placeholders.

Quite often we’ve seen a similar pattern repeat – be it with premature social media posts, website updates or telling entries in the Linkedin CVs of current and former employees. Whenever a bit too much is shared, it makes the rounds among the community, then suddenly disappears; all but confirming that it was indeed true. The latest instance of this hit the official Rockstar Games website.

Update: the new page (https://t.co/LdP9mtohyK) was just taken down, but the code with placeholders remains in the database that was made public yesterday.
Additionally, there are mentions of digital purchases (pre-orders).

R* was likely preparing the website and didn’t intend to… pic.twitter.com/T0VxaDnt3o

— GTA 6 Countdown ⏳ (@GTAVI_Countdown) May 8, 2024

Fans visiting the page noticed a new section when navigating the list of games in the developer’s database of titles. Dedicated to GTA VI, this immediately caught attention as this list is focused on already launched titles. Adding to the interest was the unfinished state of the page, with a section titled “Screens” featuring some empty placeholders that would be highlighted when moused over.

Internet sleuths immediately dived in, trying to learn as much as they could with the ‘inspect‘ function present in most browsers. What we got out of this little slip up is file names and URLs, but no actual images. The best guess based on the unfinished website is that Rockstar is gearing up to release four new GTA 6 screenshots sometime soon.

Rockstar swooped in fairly quickly, locking down the wayward website and setting up redirects so any excited fans wanting to see the strange phenomenon for themselves would be sent to the promotional GTA 6 website with the reveal trailer. However, the code for the site is still discoverable using inspect, and references to digital pre-orders were also found after the fact.

The prevailing theory among fans is that Rockstar Games is gearing up for the next phase in Grand Theft Auto VI’s marketing push, which will include new screenshots and the much awaited pre-order period beginning. Best bets place this sometime very soon – before the Take-Two earnings call on May 16.

All of that is, of course, just speculation at this point. Rockstar Games is known for stubbornly doing things on their own timeline and terms, shirking typical press events and conventions. While launching the pre-order campaign just before an earnings call would be a tactically sound move, it would also be on-brand for them to… simply not do that.

Luckily, we’ll only have to wait a week to find out! Do you think Rockstar is gearing up for a pre-order campaign for GTA 6 with new screenshots, or is this theory too optimistic?