Strauss Zelnick, CEO, Take-Two
Scott Mlyn | CNBC
Take-Two Interactive shares fell more than 2% early Monday after the company suffered a network intrusion where a third party illegally accessed footage of the new Grand Theft Auto videogame.
A user called “teapotuberhacker,” who is also claiming responsibility for the recent hack at the rideshare company Uber, posted more than 90 videos of GTA VI in its early development stage to an online forum. The videos reveal details like the location, the main characters and other central features of the game.
Take-Two Interactive owns Rockstar Games, the studio behind the best-selling GTA series. Rockstar confirmed the leak in a statement posted on Twitter Monday.
“We are extremely disappointed to have the details of our next game shared with you all in this way,” the company said in the statement.
The leaked videos were originally posted to an online message board called GTAForums, and the site now features a banner on its homepage instructing users not to share links to the copyrighted materials.
Analysts from Jefferies said the leak is one of the largest in recent memory, but they do not believe it will ultimately hurt game sales.
“It’s a PR disaster, possibly sets back production, and hurts morale,” they wrote in a note Monday. “However, based on what we see, the game is further along than many believe and won’t impact game reception/sales.”
CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report.