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Grand Theft Auto VI leaks seem to have becoming something of a quarterly event. This last round was even juicier than most, and if it weren’t for the rampant cease-and-desist orders being issued by Take-Two in response to the footage being shared, we’d suspect the whole thing was little more than a publicity stunt ahead of the game’s release later this year.
Among the items that surfaced in the recent gameplay footage release was a zoomed-out image of the game’s map. That’s a solid find for anybody who’s enthused about the upcoming installment in Rockstar’s iconic heist franchise, but it’s pure gold for a subset of that fanbase that has been working diligently since the earliest leaks to crowdsource a map of the game world.
Perhaps even more impressive than the amount of work the community has put into the map is just how accurate their speculation was. On top of that, it appears to confirm a theory we’ve been following for quite some time: There’s going to be an actual, honest-to-goodness asphalt race track in GTA 6 for the first time in the franchise’s run.
We’ve written about this effort before. This project caught our attention largely because of the possibility of Sebring International Raceway being represented within the game world (as “Gellhorn International Raceway”). If the new leaked map is to be believed, the in-game raceway abandons Sebring’s real-life configuration outside of the start/finish and front/back straightaways. Instead of Sebring’s awkward, improvised road course, we appear to be getting something that more closely resembles a modern, technical race track.
As you might imagine, the leaks have set off a new flurry of activity within the mapping community, with many looking to resolve the differences between their original layout and what has been revealed. That effort has been complicated by the fact that the leaked map is fairly zoomed out, and lacks the detail necessary to fill in many of the missing areas.
We may yet learn more about GTA 6 before the week is out. The game’s “extended look” trailer debuts Thursday, Aug. 27th on Netflix.
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Byron is an editor at The Drive with a keen eye for infrastructure, sales and regulatory stories.
