A history of GTA 6 trailer "leaks" and rumors

Now Rockstar has officially told us when a GTA 6 trailer is coming, we look back on all of the fake leaks and rumors from over the years

The news has finally been made official. Rockstar has announced that the GTA 6 trailer will drop in December after rumors swirled for the past couple of days. If you didn’t believe it would really happen this time then we don’t blame you, as it’d be far from the first time rumors have been abound only for nothing to materialize.

This has been happening on a consistent basis for so long that we thought it would be fun to cover every time a major rumor or “leak” popped up claiming a GTA 6 trailer was imminent over the past few years.

The first fake GTA 6 trailer

YouTube

Right now, I want you to make a guess at when the first one of these rumors popped up. How many years after GTA 5 did it take? It must’ve been at least a few years, right?

Well no, it was 2015.

This terrible fake trailer, unfortunately, doesn’t exist online anymore, but it showed what it claimed was “in-engine footage” of a car driving around a city, followed by a claim that it was coming in 2017 – it is also where the fake logo with the “VI” in the style of the Vice City logo originated.

People immediately recognized this as a fake trailer, partly because the footage used was simply demo footage of a game engine called Dream Engine, but also because the first version of it misspelled “Rockstar” before being updated, but it did kick up a discussion in the gaming community of when a real trailer could be expected.

2019 GTA 6 rumors

Thankfully it would take a while before another rumor got started, as we jump forward to December 2019, and this one made some bold claims.

Appearing on Pastebin – a reliable source if ever there was one – this person claimed to have been in contact with a tester for GTA 6. The main claim was that the game would be released in 2020 on the yet-to-be-revealed PS5 and the next Xbox (believed to be named Xbox Scarlett at the time).

The claims get even more specific though. Among the details listed were:

• The map is 40 times larger than GTA 5
• It features San Andreas, Liberty City, Mid-West, and Vice City all on one map
• The main story lasts 100 hours and 140 missions
• The game is 226GB big
• Sony paid for one month of PS5 exclusivity

Strictly speaking, all of those could be confirmed when the real trailer drops next month, but I wouldn’t put any money on it.

2020 GTA 6 trailer rumors

Microsoft & Sony

We didn’t have to wait much longer for the next fake leak, as we hit March 2020 and finally introduce 4chan into the conversation.

At this point, both Microsoft and Sony had revealed the specs for their new consoles and for some reason, people jumped to the conclusion that this meant GTA 6 was on the horizon. No doubt fuelled by the 2019 post, one 4chan user – who some claimed was a trustworthy source, as they had leaked correct information about Red Dead Redemption 2 – made a classic green-text post about an “imminent” trailer for the game.

They claimed that on March 20, 2020, Rockstar would change the profile pictures on all their social media accounts to the number six. Then, five days later on March 25, they would drop the trailer.

While nothing happened on those dates, just a few days later on March 27, a mysterious Twitch account named “GTAVI” appeared with a 48-hour countdown timer, after which a rather well-made fake GTA 6 trailer aired. It was debunked immediately though, so nothing really came of it.

2021 GTA 6 trailer rumors

Now we roll forward once more to August 2021, when voice actor David Jackson kicked up a fuss by posting on Facebook that he had turned down the role of “police chief Captain Mclaine in the new Grand Theft Auto series.” Immediately people started speculating that this was GTA 6, but no proof of confirmation one way or the other ever materialized, and it could have easily been a new GTA Online character instead of someone from the sequel.

More rumors popped up in September 2021 about a trailer, but all of them didn’t have much concrete evidence, and while a GTA trailer did drop in October, it was just for the trilogy of remakes that was released later that year.

However, that trailer triggered the most incredible series of mental gymnastics you will ever see that convinced fans a new trailer for GTA 6 was coming very soon. Deep breath, and here we go.

In the trailer, Vice City protagonist Tommy Vercetti is riding a motorbike with a license plate that reads “ICSLV”. Vice City has long been speculated to be the setting of GTA 6, so fans interpreted this to mean “Vice City is coming soon,” with the “LV” standing as the Roman numeral for 55. So the assumption was that the GTA 6 trailer would be dropping 55 days after the one for the remake trilogy.

Let’s all just pause for a moment to take that in.

Now let’s move on.

2022 GTA 6 trailer rumors

Rockstar Games

With all that excitement over, we can finally cross into 2022, where we only get as far as February before it happens again. This time a Rockstar insider by the name of Tez2 appeared to report that a trailer would be released in 2022 and that it wouldn’t just be a CGI trailer, but one that shows work-in-progress in-game footage. Nothing came of it, but it’s still worth mentioning.

This happened multiple times in 2022, but none of them are really worth talking about in depth. Twice in May, people claiming to be insiders came forward to claim a trailer was coming soon, but then nothing happened, and in June one leak account even posted a screenshot of what they claimed was the start of said trailer, but once again, it wasn’t true.

This kept happening until October 21, 2022, which was the day many believed to be the day the trailer would finally drop, due to it being the 25th anniversary of GTA 1’s release. It didn’t help that plenty of YouTubers and influencers confidently parroted this idea with no proof or knowledge whatsoever – surprise surprise, nothing happened.

2023 GTA 6 trailer rumors

Rockstar Games

As we cross into 2023, more and more of the rumors start to point towards what we now know is the truth. Whether these people were just making lucky guesses or had real information we can’t say for sure, but a lot of chatter started to point to the real GTA 6 trailer dropping in either November or December of 2023, with most also speculating about a 2024 release.

Before we hit the present day though, we have one more stop of people getting worked up into a frenzy over nothing. October 26, 2023, was the date in question, and it came from none other than our old friend 4chan. This time a man who claimed to have a wife who works at Rockstar said that Oct 26 was the date to look out for and even described a few details of the game, including the speculated name of the protagonists, Jason and Lucia.

The big day came and you’ll never guess what happened.

Nothing. Nothing happened.

In a way, it was nice that we got one last hurrah of everyone’s expectations being built up and dashed away before Rockstar’s official announcement, and I’m sure we can look forward to another month of rumors before December’s trailer finally arrives.