This week we’ve seen already seen a leak from Epic announcing the arrival of Grand Theft Auto 5 before the official reveal. Around the same time, a further leak has been posted claiming to be about the games following this. The responses range from outright acceptance to blanket denial and we’ll look into each possibility here.
To begin with the source is unverified, the poster has claimed that they received it from a friend over Discord and doesn’t know where they themselves got it from either. The account is also only 4 months old, and only has a handful of comments to its name. Most of these are in the last month and every one appears to relate to Epic Games.
The inclusion of GTA 5 comes after the leak that announced that game as the next freebie and might be being used to validate it. The first leak by Epic Games Store Twitter account came on May 12th, so a post on the 14th could have easily used this information. There is a however a Facebook post in Thai from May 13th that seems to corroborate this news, but it also makes it clear that these are just rumours and has no idea if the information was actually genuine, while also coming after the May 12th GTA leak.
Has Epic spilled the beans? Free Games during the MEGA Sale
Comments in the post do point out that the first three games; GTA 5, Civ 6, and Borderlands are all published by Take Two Interactive (the parent company of both 2K and Rockstar). The publisher is known to have good relations with Epic Games, going so far as to give Epic a one month head start against Steam for Red Dead Redemption 2 sales - so a beneficial arrangement could have been made between them. Civilization 6 is also releasing a major New Frontier Pass on the 21st (the same day as the next free game is due), so it does make sense for Take Two to want to see more people in the base game.
The post mentions an Epic Games sale, but the MEGA Sale event was known about at the time of the leak. The dates do match up with the weekly giveaways during the sale though, so it’s again quite possible the leak is authentic.
Another comment talks about the composition of the image, declaring it to be fake due to the unrecognised font and a background style previously unseen on the Epic Games Store. We can’t say one way or another if this breakdown is accurate or not, though a reply to that comment also makes the valid point that Epic gave away the premium edition of GTA 5 while the image shows the standard edition - an oversight yes, but there’s no way to know if it was missed by Epic themselves or a forger creating a hoax.
Overall, it’s hit and miss about the information provided. It could be a hoax, or a leak. It was posted after the reveal of GTA 5 (a confirmed leak) so the inclusion of that doesn’t prove anything, but then again, we don’t know for sure. It’s out there but there’s absolutely zero proof that it’s real or fake. The only thing we can really say is that if Civilization 6 is given away on May 21st we can accept the rest as truth.
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