After a tumultuous weekend, Grand Theft Auto studio Rockstar Games has confirmed that hacker group ShinyHunters breached its cloud servers. As part of the cyberattack — the second to affect Rockstar in just three years — ShinyHunters plans to release stolen company data online, a move that could potentially throw a wrench in the hotly anticipated launch of Grand Theft Auto 6. Rockstar Games confirmed the data breach in a new statement shared with games publication Kotaku. “We can confirm that a limited amount of non-material company information was accessed in connection with a third-party data breach,” the statement reads. “This incident has no impact on our organization or our players.”
ShinyHunters’ hack, first reported by cybersecurity publications The CyberSec Guru and Hackread on Saturday, April 11, targeted Rockstar’s Snowflake servers via AI-powered analytics platform Anodot. Hackers reportedly infiltrated Anodot’s systems using authentication tokens to bypass safeguards. Because of this, hackers’ unauthorized access likely looked legitimate to Rockstar security.
ShinyHunters demanded a ransom from Rockstar in a message shared Saturday, giving the studio until Tuesday, April 14, to meet their demands. “Rockstar Games, your Snowflake instances were compromised thanks to Anodot.com. Pay or leak. This is a final warning to reach out by 14 Apr 2026 before we leak, along with several annoying (digital) problems that’ll come your way. Make the right decision, don’t be the next headline.”
ShinyHunters, a group of English-speaking hackers the BBC says are “thought to be in their teens,” are responsible for more than just last weekend’s Rockstar cyberattack. The cybercriminals are reportedly behind the prolific Ticketmaster attack back in 2024, and have a history of targeting prominent tech corporations like Microsoft and Cisco. At the time of writing, neither ShinyHunters nor Rockstar has addressed the nature of the stolen data. It’s worth noting, however, that Anodot is utilized to monitor internal spending. This could mean that the data comprises company financials or data related to players’ in-game spending.
Grand Theft Auto 6 is currently expected to launch on November 19, 2026, following two controversial delays.
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