Gaming: Essential Guide: Rockstar hackers release their stolen data, reveal that Rockstar was right to not pay them anything for it

Gaming: Essential Guide: Rockstar hackers release their stolen data, reveal that Rockstar was right to not pay them anything for it

Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Unlock instant access to exclusive member features. Get full access to premium articles, exclusive features and a growing list of member rewards. A day ahead of its self-imposed April 14 ransom deadline, ShinyHunters, the group that breached Rockstar Games last week and made off with an undisclosed trove of data, has released that data to the public. Members of the GTA Forums (via Kotaku) are now tearing through it, and it looks like anyone hoping for significant insights into Grand Theft Auto 6—or any relevant information at all, really—are going to be disappointed. Rockstar said in the wake of the hack that "a limited amount of non-material company information was accessed," and that does appear to be the case. Which isn't to say there's nothing to see here, but it's primarily sales and financials, revealing that Rockstar makes a lot of money through its online offerings. One of the most immediately notable data points reflects a massive imbalance between Red Dead Online and GTA Online: Based on a GTA Forums post by Lexiture and verified by Rockstar Games reporter Ben on X, RDO pulled in average weekly revenues of more than $500,000 per week between June 2024 and April 2026, resulting in an annualized estimate of roughly $26.4 million per year. Not bad! GTA Online, though, earned $9.6 million per week from September 2025 to April 2026, delivering an annualized estimate of just under $500 million per year. Given that, is it any wonder that Rockstar put all its eggs in the GTAO basket, and left RDO to flounder? (It is not.) Also notable, and I think surprising, is how GTA Online breaks down by platform. PC comes in a distant, dead last, pulling in a small fraction of both weekly active users and weekly bookings that come in via console. The PlayStation 5 dominates the scene, with a little under 3.5 million monthly active users and $4.5 million in weekly booking

Source: PC Gamer