Grand Theft Auto VI, less a video game at this point and more a long-prophesied messianic figure, is just over a week away from its big, brazenly opportunistic Netflix “extended look” preview. Fans, who kept things at a simmer for approximately five seconds ten years ago and have been at a boil ever since, are now erupting like a volcano. This has resulted in a day that’s been eventful, to say the least.
On one side of the coin, you have fans who’ve threatened to swear off the game following Rockstar’s firing of over 30 workers last year, seemingly in association with a movement to organize their workplace. Undeterred, workers and the IWGB Game Workers Union announced the formation of a Rockstar union earlier this year. Meanwhile, the final hearing of fired workers’ legal proceedings against Rockstar will begin in Glasgow, Scotland next month.
Despite what you might expect, those workers do not want fans boycotting GTA VI. In a statement received by Aftermath, Jack Hoxby, an IWGB Game Workers Branch member fired by Rockstar last year, said:
We poured years of our lives into helping build this game. We don't want you to boycott it. We want you to help us fight for justice.
Since Rockstar fired us suddenly last year, we’ve seen an incredible outpouring of support from gamers and workers around the world. Some people have asked whether they should boycott GTA VI to protest on our behalf. But there’s a better way to support us and hold Rockstar to account.
Buy one of our T-shirts. You’ll be helping to win justice for us and to defend the right of workers everywhere to come together and unionise. That way, when GTA VI comes out in November, you can enjoy it knowing that you had the backs of the people who made it.
This is understandable, considering that effective boycotts are long-term concerted efforts; a handful of irate people saying “I’m not going to do this” rarely moves the needle, no matter how much gamers wish it would. Moreover, despite what we’ve been propagandized to believe, consumerism is not our only means of affecting change—or, on most occasions, a useful one at all. Direct support of relevant parties is almost always preferable.
It is unlikely that those workers appreciate what happened later in the same day: A hacker group seemingly leaked gameplay footage of GTA VI, as well as the game’s map. One clip that’s made the rounds depicts one of the game’s main characters, Jason, walking around his home and playing basketball, while another shows a car accident and some hand-to-hand combat. It all looks very GTA. These clips have already been copyright claimed across a variety of platforms, lending credence to the idea that they are, indeed, authentic.
These sorts of hacks, in addition to being illegal, are painful for those who spent years pouring buckets of blood, sweat, and tears into games, as the public will now inevitably hold a magnifying glass up to a half-baked version of their hard work. But this is also a symptom of a sick ecosystem. As Riley said after the 2023 Insomniac leak:
Upcoming games and what’s in them is news in the games beat because the games industry is fervently future-looking but obsessed with secrecy about that future. PR and marketing departments carefully control the flow of information, conditioning journalists and players alike toward hype. The future has value in this space, a fact the hackers were gambling on by hoping Sony would pay to keep control of that future. Many games journalists know the value of that future too, because they prop it up or benefit from it, even when it starts to muddy the waters between journalism and marketing. Some games journalists attend previews and accept embargoes because they know their readers want that information, or because they got the chance to see something cool and are excited to tell readers how cool it is. Other times, it doesn’t hurt that playing ball with PR can help their own bottom lines, or that they can make a whole career knowing, or insinuating they know, what games are coming before everyone else does.
These systems incentivize people to drop heaps of cash on pricey preorders and uphold hype cycles as though they, too, are diligent little (unpaid) marketers. GTA VI’s upcoming Netflix reveal—which people will require a subscription to view, at least until it’s posted online hours later—is the apotheosis of this: basic, 101-level information about a game kept under lock and key until it can be optimally monetized. It’s no coincidence that this isn’t even the first big GTA VI leak.
The same mentality, it’s worth noting, also gave Rockstar an excuse to fire the aforementioned workers, who the company claimed were “discussing confidential information in a public forum” by participating in a private union Discord. It’s the logical conclusion of games as a product first and foremost and art a distant second, of humans as disposable drones rather than the true value of any artistic pursuit.
Complicating matters further is the fact that the alleged hackers behind the GTA VI leak only sort of acknowledged those very real issues, mostly focusing their message on “anti-consumerism.” In a manifesto, they promised the leaks will continue until publishers—not just Rockstar—begin upholding its three “commandments” and apologizing for breaking them. The dramatically stated commandments are: “Thou shalt not sell digital preorders,” “Thou shalt not sell fake single-player DLC,” and “Thou shalt preserve single-player content.”
CYBERLEEK was born in the networks. It has seen what gaming can be at its best, and it has watched what the industry did to it. Slowly. Methodically. One monetization scheme at a time. Publishers sell licenses and call them purchases. They ship unfinished games and call them living services. They lock content on discs and call it DLC. They kill games and keep the money. Every year anti-consumerism tightens its grip, and every year gamers get less for what they pay.
Oh yeah, they also want money:
To fight this war, CYBERLEEK is raising funds for a secret project. The specifics cannot be revealed yet; showing the cards to the big corporations would only give them time to build their defenses. Let it be absolutely clear: this is not a cash grab. Funding is directed toward the infrastructure needed to strike, as well as the security and protection required to withstand the inevitable corporate counterattacks.
Anyway, it’s a gigantic mess, albeit the kind the video game industry has repeatedly primed itself for over the years. For a plethora of reasons, GTA VI’s launch cannot be normal. Expect even less smooth sailing from here on out.
Recommended
Luke Plunkett
