GTA 6 trailer leak leads to investigation at YouTube

After the official Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer was leaked last year, an investigation was reportedly launched at YouTube into the circumstances behind the leak.

As I'm sure you all probably remember, the trailer for Rockstar Games long-awaited next chapter in the Grand Theft Auto saga (can we call it a saga?) ended up leaking online before it could be officially posted.

"From what I can gather, YouTube has investigated employees breaching their contractual agreements on two different occasions in the past 18 months due to employees accessing content on the backend. Following today (and presumably SGF) [Summer Game Fest], we'll see a third investigation fairly soon," Insider Tom Henderson wrote on Twitter on May 30.

Henderson later wrote an article on his site, Insider Gaming, about the two different investigations that are happened as a direct result of leaks. While the first one refers to a leak that happened to YouTuber KSI, who found that over $10,000 had been redeemed in Amazon gift cards prior to a video even going live, the second investigation happened in direct response to the leak of the official Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer that happened in December of last year.

"Of the time I'm aware of, YouTube's second investigation happened soon after the GTA 6 leak, which, admittingly, could have just been a wild coincidence. After all, it has now become common knowledge among those in the industry that many gaming leaks do come from unlisted, scheduled, or private YouTube videos - and maybe the investigation was already ongoing at this time. Nonetheless, the result probably resulted in disciplinary action for one or more people," Henderson wrote.

What this suggests is that several major leakers who have popped up out of the blue in the last year or so all have access to the backend of YouTube, meaning all their information comes directly from official sources that they shouldn't have access to. It'll be extremely interesting to see which leakers vanish in the coming months, and which continue to report on new games.