Take-Two Drafts Microsoft and Discord Into GTA 6 Leak Fight

Take-Two Interactive asked a New York federal court on August 20 to force Microsoft and Discord to identify who posted GTA 6 leaks. The publisher, which owns Rockstar Games, wants names, emails, login IPs, phone numbers, linked Xbox accounts and Windows device IDs produced by September 4. Clips from an alleged playable build have spread for more than a week under the name CyberLeek, and Grand Theft Auto 6 is still due on November 19 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S.

The papers do not treat Microsoft as a console partner first. They treat it as the company that runs GitHub, OneDrive and the login trail that can unmask a Discord user. Whole chat servers sit inside that ask, including a community tied to a well-known Grand Theft Auto creator who says he had nothing to do with the footage.

Microsoft and Discord Face a September 4 Deadline

Dale Cendali and Joshua Simmons of Kirkland and Ellis filed two Digital Millennium Copyright Act petitions in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Take-Two said under oath that it wants the identity of an alleged infringer or infringers, and that the data will be used only to protect its rights. The copyrighted material, the filing says, includes audiovisual content, artwork, images, dialogue and other creative elements.

A DMCA subpoena is a records tool, not a criminal charge. The company is asking the court clerk to compel platforms to name users so Take-Two can decide whom to sue. GamesIndustry.biz later reported a similar ask aimed at X. CNET noted the August 20 papers were petitions for issuance, not a finished order served on every target.

Emails, IPs and Windows Device IDs

MachineGuid is a Windows value created when the operating system is installed. Tom’s Hardware, citing Microsoft’s own support notes, said it usually stays the same unless the OS drive is replaced, which is why a publisher would want it. The Microsoft attachment also asks for telemetry where certain “tool/file artifacts” appeared on a machine, though the exhibit Tom’s Hardware reviewed did not list those artifacts.

The Xbox Partner Must Also Hand Over Records

GTA 6 launches on Xbox in November, and Microsoft is the platform holder for that SKU. The same week as the filing, Xbox chief technology officer Scott Van Vliet said his company was helping the rights holder, not fighting it.

We are working closely with Take-Two and Rockstar Games to support efforts to protect creative works and intellectual property.

— Scott Van Vliet (@scottvanvliet) August 21, 2026

“We are working closely with Take-Two and Rockstar Games to support efforts to protect creative works and intellectual property,” Van Vliet wrote on X on August 21. That line sits next to the Microsoft subpoena filed August 20, which is aimed at Microsoft as GitHub’s service provider, not as the operator of Xbox. Take-Two still wants OneDrive files and Xbox accounts tied to Discord users, plus “all internal Microsoft business records and investigative records associated with Microsoft’s internal investigation of the ‘cyberleek’ persona.”

The GitHub hook is a single repository, zyrexdz/cyberleek-leak-research. Take-Two IP paralegal Alex Aviles sent a takedown notice to GitHub’s copyright address on August 19 and wrote that the repo “must be completely disabled, there are no remedies to rectify this clear case of infringement.” Tom’s Hardware checked the page on August 22 and found it still public, with nearly 500 stars and more than 30 forks. Rights holders use GitHub’s content-removal request process for that first cut. The subpoena is the step that asks who stood behind the account.

Which Discord Servers Did Take-Two Name?

The Discord petition does not stop at the CyberLeek handle. It asks for identifying information on all user accounts that were members of, or communicating with, listed servers from June 1, 2026, to the present. Eurogamer reported that some users fear the sweep could touch memberships that run into the hundreds of thousands. That figure is a worry about server size, not a census Take-Two published.

THE THREE NAMED SERVERS

• Ødyssey.gg: Guild ID 1517326120867991592. The Microsoft filing calls it a cheat community and the “operator’s home.” Decoding the ID dates the server to June 19, 2026, eighteen days after the records window opens.
• ! Odyssey: Guild ID 1127436882800816149, listed as a public brand guild at discord.gg/odyssey.
• DarkViperAU: Guild ID 268280696601051136, described as an editors’ server. The same ID math dates the server to January 10, 2017. The CyberLeek Discord account decodes to January 10, 2019.

Named handles in the papers include CYBERLEEK, CINEMATICROCKSTAR and Surfer24k, plus replacement handles cyberleek_west and surwest. Tom’s Hardware flagged a drafting snag: the Discord petition lists 1517326120867991592 as a user ID for Surfer24k and as the Ødyssey.gg server ID. The Discord server membership records demand still reaches anyone who talked in those rooms after June 1, not only the people Take-Two has already labelled.

A YouTuber’s Chat Server Was Swept In

Matthew Judge, the Australian creator who works as DarkViperAU, is the clearest bystander in the file. IGN noted his YouTube audience when the petitions landed. The filing describes discord.gg/darkviperau as an editors’ server. Judge said that description is wrong, and that the leaked clips were not in his rooms.

I don’t know anything. That isn’t my editors discord. There aren’t even any clips of the leaks in either of my Discords.

Matthew Judge, DarkViperAU, posting on X, August 21, 2026

Being named is not an accusation of theft. It is a demand that Discord attach emails, IPs, phones and device IDs to everyone who used those servers in a ten-week window. Discord marketing director Ryan K. Rigney wrote on August 24 that the company had not yet been served. “When we do, we’ll evaluate the validity and scope before responding,” he said. Filing in Manhattan and handing papers to Discord are separate steps. Until service happens, Discord has no duty to dump the member list.

Daily Clips Kept Coming After the Filing

CyberLeek surfaced around August 17 and 18, nine days before Rockstar’s planned Netflix showcase. The clips are watermarked and, in one plane sequence, the player shoots the word “LEEK” into a wall. Push Square treated that as proof of a live session, not a stolen trailer. Mashable counted 16 gameplay clips and three map shots by August 26, including a four-and-a-half-minute Lucia Caminos prologue posted after Rockstar finally spoke.

The persona framed the dump as a protest against digital-only, code-in-box sales and preorders before reviews. Take-Two’s own first-quarter call undercuts the leverage in that demand. Digital distribution was 98% of GAAP net revenue in the quarter that ended June 30, 2026, with physical retail and other channels at 2%. A disc-at-launch fight is aimed at a publisher that already sells almost everything as a download.

Dexerto, The Verge and Forbes all reported that CyberLeek used the same moment to push a meme coin. Wallet-by-wallet fee tallies circulating on X are unverified here, but the commercial overlay is not a secret: the leaks kept a token in the feed. Impersonators also moved in. A Telegram channel using the name promised a downloadable “playable build” to tens of thousands of subscribers, while the actual persona has posted clips and map files, not an installer. Some torrent packages that appeared under the same branding carried infostealers and remote-access tools, which is the ordinary second crime that follows a famous leak.

CyberLeek referred to Arion Kurtaj, the teenager behind the 2022 Rockstar breach, as “our colleague” in a Telegram note. There is no public proof of a working link. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier reported on August 21, via Eurogamer, that Rockstar still did not know who the new leaker was or how the footage got out. Tom’s Hardware separately noted a confirmed April intrusion by the group ShinyHunters, a different event, with a ransom clock that is not the same as this August dump.

The Last GTA 6 Leak Ended in a Hospital

Rockstar has been through this before, and the last time ended in a British courtroom, not a DMCA clerk’s stamp. In September 2022 a Lapsus$ affiliate stole early Grand Theft Auto 6 footage from inside the company, posted in Slack as an attacker, and put about 90 clips on a fan forum more than a year before the first trailer.

HOW THE LAST LEAK WAS CLOSED

1. September 2022: Arion Kurtaj, then 17, breaches Rockstar, steals early GTA 6 clips and about 200 GB of other studio data, and threatens a source-code dump unless staff contact him on Telegram.
2. August 2023: A London jury finds he carried out 12 offences, including Computer Misuse Act counts, blackmail and fraud. He is ruled unfit for a standard trial because of autism, so the jury decides acts, not intent.
3. December 21, 2023: Judge Patricia Lees imposes an indefinite hospital order. BBC News reports Rockstar put recovery at $5 million plus thousands of staff hours. Sky News cited $1.5 million in outside help and a “huge loss of marketing opportunities.”
4. July 2026: PC Gamer, citing BBC correspondent Joe Tidy, reports Kurtaj has left hospital and is in prison awaiting a retrial listed for November, the same month GTA 6 launches.
5. August 19, 2026: Take-Two’s Alex Aviles sends GitHub the CyberLeek repo notice.
6. August 20, 2026: Two DMCA petitions are filed in the Southern District of New York against Microsoft and Discord.
7. August 24, 2026: Discord’s Ryan K. Rigney says the company has not been served.
8. August 26, 2026: Rockstar publishes its first public letter on the new leaks.

The 2022 case was a police investigation that reached a named teenager who kept hacking from a hotel TV and a Fire stick after his laptop was taken. This year’s tool is platform identity. If Microsoft and Discord comply, Take-Two gets a stack of emails and device IDs. It still has to turn those into a person it can sue, in a country that will hear the case, before November 19 makes the footage ordinary marketing residue.

Preorders Held While the Footage Spread

Rockstar stayed quiet for a week, then posted on August 26, the day before its Netflix booking. “It would be an understatement to say that having videos of Grand Theft Auto VI gameplay leak in this way has been heartbreaking for our team, and this is obviously not how we intended for you to see the game after all this time,” the studio wrote.

pic.twitter.com/KGqoxFqYho

— Rockstar Games (@RockstarGames) August 26, 2026

The letter apologised for how long official gameplay had taken, said the team was “nearly there” on finishing the game, and asked players to wait for November 19 even if spoilers had landed. The extended look still premiered on Netflix at 3 p.m. ET on August 27, with the same video due on YouTube and Rockstar’s site six hours later. By Friday morning, August 28, public talk on X had already slid off the court papers and onto that official cut, frame-rate chatter and map size. One recurring comparison was blunt: Rockstar’s own edit made the leaked sessions look like a rough build.

THE LAUNCH THAT HAS NOT SLIPPED

• Release date: November 19, 2026, on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S.
• Standard price: $79.99 in store listings; Take-Two’s earnings materials round the standard edition to $80.
• Preorders: Opened June 25. CEO Strauss Zelnick told analysts on August 7 the title had an “exceptional start to preorders,” then warned they remain cancelable and “we just don’t know how it will translate into sales.”
• Company bet: Fiscal 2027 net bookings reiterated at $8 billion to $8.2 billion, about 20% above fiscal 2026, with GTA 6 named as a main driver. First-quarter bookings were $1.39 billion. Grand Theft Auto V has sold in over 230 million units.

Zelnick called the Netflix booking a first-of-its-kind partnership and part of Rockstar’s marketing plan, not a substitute for the console launch. Take-Two shares still dipped about 2.1% on the preview day, according to market notes that put the stock near $228.50 around 1 p.m. ET. The identity hunt now has a calendar: September 4 for records, November for Kurtaj’s retrial, and November 19 for the game that both leaks and the official tape have already shown in pieces. Microsoft can be the Xbox partner in public and GitHub’s records desk in court on the same week. Discord can wait on formal service. The people inside those three servers, Judge included, do not get that choice if the clerk’s papers arrive and the companies comply.