A data breach carried out by hacking group ShinyHunters has reportedly exposed internal Rockstar Games financials, and the numbers paint a vivid picture of just how dominant GTA Online remains as a live-service revenue machine. According to reporting by Kotaku, the leaked data suggests Rockstar is pulling in more than $1 million every single day from the now 12-year-old multiplayer title.
For anyone tracking the games industry, this isn't entirely shocking - GTA Online's Shark Cards and in-game economy have long been understood to be a massive earner for Take-Two Interactive. But having concrete figures attached to that success puts the scale of it into sharp relief. Few live-service games, let alone ones from 2013, are still generating this kind of daily revenue.
The contrast with Red Dead Online tells an equally telling story. The leaked data reportedly indicates that Red Dead Online is performing significantly worse by comparison - a finding that lines up with Rockstar's apparent decision to wind down active development on that game years ago. Despite a passionate community, RDO never reached the cultural saturation that GTA Online achieved, and these numbers seem to confirm that gap extends well into the financial side of things.
What this means for GTA 6
The timing of this leak adds extra context heading into GTA 6's anticipated release window. Rockstar is still printing money from a game that's been out for over a decade, which raises obvious questions about how aggressively the studio will push its next online ecosystem. With that kind of baseline revenue still flowing in, the pressure to launch GTA 6 Online in a polished, feature-rich state will be enormous - players will expect it to eventually eclipse or at least match what GTA Online built over its long lifespan.
It's also worth noting that data obtained through illegal breaches carries caveats. The figures circulating come from ShinyHunters, a group with a history of high-profile hacks, and Rockstar has not publicly confirmed or commented on the specific numbers reported by Kotaku. The data should be understood as unverified, even if it broadly aligns with what analysts have long estimated.
Rockstar has not publicly responded to this latest breach at the time of writing. The studio was previously hit by a significant leak in 2022 when early GTA 6 footage was stolen and posted online, so this marks another unwanted spotlight on the company's internal operations during a critical period ahead of what could be the biggest game launch in history.
