18-year old Arion Kurtaj from Oxford, UK, was a key member of the international hacking gang Lapsus$, which, among several cases of cyber crime against tech giants, has been behind the recent leak of the Grand Theft Auto VI video clips, ahead of the official trailer by Rockstar Games. Over the years, Lapsus$ hit big tech companies, including Rockstar Games, NVIDIA, and Uber, with their exploits assessed to have caused these companies about $10 million in losses. In an interesting twist to the case, the Kurtaj was deemed by doctors unfit to stand trial as he is severely autistic, and so the jury in the case was asked to determine only whether or not he committed the acts of cyber crime, and not if he did so with criminal intent.

The judge hearing the case said Kurtaj's skills and desire to commit cyber crime meant he remained a high risk to the public. While on bail from his previous arrest for hacking NVIDIA and UK telecommunication giants EE and BT, and in police protection in a hotel, Kurtaj pulled off his most daring hack of breaching Rockstar Games, using only an Amazon Firestick, his hotel's TV, and a mobile phone. He stole 90 clips of unreleased footage from gameplay of Grand Theft Auto VI. He also broke into Rockstar's internal Slack channel, threatening to leak the game's source code if the studio didn't contact him within 24 hours. He was immediately re-arrested and in lock-up until his trial. Rockstar Games told the court that it cost the company $5 million to recover from the hack, in staff billable hours.

Rockstar Games has officially released a Grand Theft Auto 6 (or VI) trailer that brings together millions of GTA series fans. However, the game will remain exclusive for gaming consoles at launch. On the landing page for GTA 6, there is a note that says, "Grand Theft Auto VI heads to the state of Leonida, home to the neon-soaked streets of Vice City and beyond in the biggest, most immersive evolution of the Grand Theft Auto series yet. Coming 2025 to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S." While the first trailer showed this, we now have written confirmation that GTA 6 is a console exclusive at launch, whenever it happens in 2025.

If long-time GTA gamers remember, the situation was very much the same with the launch of the fifth installment in the GTA series, GTA V, which got a PC port almost two years after the initial release. The GTA V was released in September 2013 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles and got an upgrade to a new console cycle in November 2014 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Only in April 2015 was the game released for Windows-based PCs, as Rockstar took its time to polish the port and make it work with PC gamers' various hardware choices. While we hope to avoid seeing such a big cadence from console to PC port, it will surely take Rockstar some extra time to make a PC version run smoothly.

As the end of the year is getting closer, Rockstar Games has taken to social media to express heartfelt gratitude to its global community of players. The legendary game developer and publisher is poised to celebrate a quarter-century of industry-defining work since its inception in 1998. In a move that has electrified the gaming community, Rockstar Games has announced plans to unveil the first trailer for the next installment in the Grand Theft Auto franchise in early December, on the company's 25th anniversary. The next-generation title is rumored to be called Grand Theft Auto VI (6), following the release of GTA V. In early December, we should see the first official trailer for GTA VI, which doesn't mean that the game is coming anytime soon.

On the contrary, the trailer could serve just to start the hype cycle. Sam Houser, the co-founder and president of Rockstar Games, has posted: "We are very excited to let you know that in early December, we will release the first trailer for the next Grand Theft Auto. We look forward to many more years of sharing these experiences with all of you." Therefore, an official launch date has yet to be set, so the community of GTA players around the globe needs to hold their patience a bit longer.

Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA 6) could go down in history as the most expensive game production ever, with Rockstar Games pooling in anywhere between $1-2 billion. The open-world crime RPG is said to have the biggest map ever in the history of the franchise, with the most content (missions), and room for a vast multiplayer experience teetering on MMORPG. It is said to take gamers back to Vice City, the iconic setting that made GTA globally popular. The big budget could also mean Rockstar could rope in triple-A Hollywood actors to play key characters in the single-player campaign, as well as be playable characters in the multiplayer. Rockstar could also target nearly every gaming platform out there, spanning Windows PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and possibly even handhelds.

A March 23 website domain name registration update by Take-Two Interactive, publishers of the "Grand Theft Auto" franchise, sparked rumors of an imminent "Grand Theft Auto VI" announcement. The registered domain "GTAVI.com" is now a placeholder for what could be an exclusive site for the upcoming chapter in the wildly popular open-world action RPG franchise.

Much has been talked about GTA VI in recent years, such as rumors of the game having the largest open world ever in the franchise, including the ability to transport between the various fictional cities in the GTA universe via fast-travel points at airports. With GTA V, Rockstar introduced the concept of multiple playable characters, each with its unique set of missions, and some interesting joint missions where you switch between the playable characters. The introduction of cities spread across the landmass could only take this concept further.