Rockstar Breach Shows GTA Online's $499M Revenue Engine

Rockstar Games is reportedly generating more than $1.3 million USD per day from Grand Theft Auto Online, according to data surfaced through hacker group ShinyHunters’ recent leaks. ShinyHunters released the hacked files on April 13 after Rockstar declined to pay a ransom, exposing internal analytics that players had long speculated about.

The leaked archive contains 78.6M records from breaching Rockstar’s Snowflake data warehouse. The data also showed that Red Dead Online is earning significantly less than GTA Online, accounting for approximately $26.4M per year, in contrast with GTA Online’s around $498.8M yearly revenue.

Rockstar Games has confirmed the breach to Kotaku, stating that the incident has “no impact on our organization or our players.”

GTA Online Revenue Gap With Red Dead Online Confirms Rockstar's Shift

According to the leaked data, during a comparable tracking period, Red Dead Online generated an average of $507.19K per week, against GTA Online's $9.59M. That is a revenue gap of roughly 19 to 1.

This revenue gap now shows why Rockstar stopped support for Red Dead Online, while doubling down on GTA Online during investors’ calls. Platform data from the leak adds further context to the company’s business model that prioritizes console-native launches.

PS5 led all platforms with 3.47M weekly active users and $4.49M in weekly bookings. On the other hand, PC recorded the lowest bookings at $264.2K despite around 894.6K weekly active users. Console GTA Online players not only outnumber PC players but also generate spending at a significantly higher rate per user.

Take-Two and Rockstar generally do not break down GTA Online revenue separately, but their earnings reports consistently identify the title as one of the primary contributors in net bookings and GAAP revenue. Now the leaked data confirms that Rockstar's GTA Online live-service operation has sustained record revenue for more than a decade after launch.