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GTA 6 prankster comes clean after response to viral 'leak' was "way bigger than I expected"

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By Anthony McGlynn published 18 March 2026

He even used Rockstar's own approach

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GTA 6 characters from trailer 2
(Image credit: Rockstar Games / Take-Two)
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You should take most leaks with a grain of salt, but especially anything visual from a release as locked down as GTA 6. Alas, someone managed to make a convincing replication of Rockstar's upcoming blockbuster, to the point of gaining major coverage, and they've now owned the hoax, and explained how they did it.

Earlier this month, an apparent leak of Grand Theft Auto 6 showing one of the protagonists, Jason, on a bridge passing several vehicles was uploaded to a mysterious and now-deleted Instagram account. The source claimed it was from someone who worked at their studio - the 'my uncle's friend knows someone, honest!' schtick - and naturally, it travelled like wildfire.

It was all nonsense, and its creator, known as tenshi, came clean in a video and adjoining Reddit AMA. "My main goal was to see if I could actually create a believable-looking scene from GTA 6 by recreating everything from the ground up," he states on Reddit. "Honestly, the response was way bigger than I ever anticipated."

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I Tricked the Internet with a Fake GTA 6 Leak (Sorry Rockstar) - YouTube I Tricked the Internet with a Fake GTA 6 Leak (Sorry Rockstar) - YouTube
Watch On

I'll say. It's an impressive piece of work for one person. The setting for his scene is Venetian Bridge in Miami, a smart choice since the game's backdrop is Leonidas, a fictionalized version of Florida that may, indeed, include a version of the same bit of architecture.

"This wasn't just a simple edit," he adds. "I spent months rebuilding a specific fragment of Miami, recreating the UI and spending way too many hours on the post-processing to make it look authentic. I even scrapped my first few versions because they just didn't feel right."

In his video, he goes deeper on his design MO, including how he made it feel like something from a desk at the home of GTA and Red Dead Redemption. "Since we're aiming for that early build look, I'm leaning into Rockstar's playbook and reusing assets," tenshi says.

"I grabbed a truck from GTA 5, but to really sell it, I slapped on a custom Piswasser livery. It's exactly the kind of detail that gets the internet talking." Oh, how right you were. Rockstar has the opportunity to do something very funny here, and it'd be even better if it was part of the third trailer. Until then, this is another reminder - always be wary.

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Ahead of GTA 6, Rockstar-owned GTA 5 RP mega mod FiveM breaks its own Steam record with 200,000 concurrent players

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Anthony McGlynn
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Anthony is an Irish entertainment and games journalist, now based in Glasgow. He previously served as Senior Anime Writer at Dexerto and News Editor at The Digital Fix, on top of providing work for Variety, IGN, Den of Geek, PC Gamer, and many more. Besides Studio Ghibli, horror movies, and The Muppets, he enjoys action-RPGs, heavy metal, and pro-wrestling. He interviewed Animal once, not that he won’t stop going on about it or anything.

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