Rockstar Games recently suffered a data breach where a group of hackers known as ShinyHunters obtained a portion of the company’s financial data. The group then attempted to extort the company for $200,000, but Rockstar refused to comply.
True to their word, ShinyHunters released the stolen information into the wild. As it turns out, there wasn’t anything particularly interesting in there, unless you find the fact that PC players spend less money on GTA Online than even Xbox One players interesting, which I, of course, do.
All we really learned is that GTA Online still makes a lot of money — over $8 million a week, in fact. With this in mind, investors perhaps realised they should put some more money into Take-Two, which caused the stock’s price to spike following the leak.
The Leak Actually Benefited Take-Two
As spotted by Insider Gaming, Take-Two’s stock price was trading at $201.99 as markets closed on April 13. When the markets opened the next morning, the stock price had jumped to $205.79, which equates to an additional $1 billion in value when you divide it out.
The irony here being that ShinyHunters actually made Take-Two $1 billion instead of robbing them of $200,000. Still, Take-Two’s stock price has seen better days; the company was riding high at $260 in October, shortly before the controversial firing of several Rockstar North employees. According to those laid off, Rockstar had engaged in blatant union-busting.
The company will be thankful that the data breach wasn’t as extensive as the one in September 2022, which included source code and assets for Grand Theft Auto 6. The event has been described as “one of the biggest leaks in video game history” and led to the arrest of a 17-year-old hacker in Oxfordshire, who has since been placed on an indefinite hospital order.
Grand Theft Auto 6 looks set to release on November 19, though the release has now been delayed twice as Rockstar scrambles to finish the game ahead of what many believe could be the biggest video game launch ever.
GTA 6 will initially release on consoles before coming to PC later, a common practice for Rockstar releases. Considering how little PC players seem to spend on microtransactions in comparison to console players, perhaps the low prioritisation of the PC port shouldn’t come as a surprise.
