The GTA Leaks Could Change Everything, But They Won't

thegamer.com:

As I’m sure you’re aware, GTA 6 leaked over the weekend. For some reason, it took Rockstar over 24 hours to confirm and then begin to take down the leaks, by which point anyone who wanted to had already seen them, either through downloading them personally or just looking on social media. Now that the dust has settled on GTA’s leaks though, it’s worth looking at how things could change from all this and, more importantly, how things probably won’t.

The scale of these leaks is unprecedented. Usually when things leak, it’s often just a YouTuber breaking their embargo to act like a big shot. It’s often stuff journalists know but have agreed not to report on, then when a YouTuber ‘breaks the story’ they become a bastion of good reporting, before going back to their usual content of reading out someone else’s work on camera. We saw this happen recently. These leaks are annoying for devs, sure, but it’s info they were just about to make public anyway. TheRealInsider’s downfall was telling us the Assassin’s Creed names three days before Ubisoft planned to tell everyone.

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If leaks ever are journo side, it’s usually “this game will/won’t be in today’s Nintendo Direct”, or “this game has been delayed”. The big leaks, such as gameplay footage and the like, are almost always either from influencers or closed alpha/beta tests. It feels like journalists and YouTubers are positioned against each other, but we don’t need to be. There are a lot of great content creators doing fantastic work in a space that allows for unique and personal media. But there’s also a bunch of people who claim to be the ‘real’ journalists, sitting in gifted Cyberpunk 2077 chairs and sipping