Earlier today, Rockstar Games revealed the first (official) look at Grand Theft Auto 6 gameplay. And boy, did we get a lot of gameplay! Nearly 30 minutes of footage, all of it captured on a PlayStation 5, debuted exclusively on Netflix. And hidden inside that lengthy gameplay video was a small wink to GTA‘s biggest sickos: Gameplay of the diner robbery, one of the missions leaked all the way back in 2022.
As a reminder, back in 2022, before GTA 6 had even been officially announced or revealed, Rockstar Games suffered a leak. Many, many minutes of early development footage of GTA 6 leaked online via a hacker. It’s rare we get to see early development footage of Rockstar-created games. And in 2022, with no official GTA 6 trailers or screenshots, this massive leak became the only thing fans had to look at until the official first trailer dropped in late 2023. The lack of footage and news, as well as the fact that we rarely get to see this stuff, is why, within minutes of hitting the web, the leaks spread like wildfire. And in particular, a clip of Lucia and Jason robbing a diner became quite popular.
The footage understandably looked rough, as the game was essentially four years away from release. Now, in 2026, we can compare the diner robbery briefly seen in the extended look with what leaked all those years ago. And as you might expect, things look a lot better after four years of development.
The general layout and visual look of the diner is still the same. And the location still has the same name, Hank’s Waffles. We also see the same “Open 7 Days” writing on the window in the front of the diner, too. But the lighting is vastly improved, NPCs no longer look like crash test dummies, and Jason and Lucia look more finalized.
And let’s compare a different angle from the 2022 leak against a screenshot from the big GTA 6 gameplay trailer that went live on Netflix earlier today. You can really see how the basic layout and idea of the diner stayed the same, but it got more detailed and polished up over four years. I really wish we got to see more of this kind of stuff, not via leaks, from big studios as I think it provides a fun and informative look into the wild process of making a AAA video game.
While I imagine Rockstar wasn’t happy about the 2022 leaks (or the leaks that happened last week), I’m so happy that someone at the studio seemingly knew there would be a lot of diehard GTA fans watching the big Netflix reveal. And so they decided to include this tiny little wink toward the 2022 leak while also letting people see just how far GTA 6 has come from the first time fans got a peek at it four years ago.
Now we just have to wait a few more months to actually play the game. Grand Theft Auto 6 launches on PS5 and Xbox on November 19.
