Picture this: a game that launched in 2013 is still printing money at a rate most businesses could only dream of. That's exactly what leaked data from hacking group ShinyHunters appears to confirm about GTA Online, and the numbers are genuinely hard to wrap your head around.
The breach started on April 11, when ShinyHunters claimed to have exploited a cloud server software vulnerability to access private Rockstar Games files. Rockstar confirmed the data breach shortly after, though it downplayed the situation, telling Kotaku that only a "limited amount of non-material company information" had been exposed and that it wouldn't impact the company or players. Then the data dropped anyway.
What the leaked numbers actually say
Fans on GTA Forums, specifically user Lexiture, started combing through the files and posting verified figures. Kotaku confirmed on April 13 that the numbers being shared publicly match the leaked data. Here's the lowdown on what the figures show for the period between September 2025 and April 2026:
- Average daily revenue: $1,319,322
- Average weekly revenue: $9,592,109
- Minimum weekly revenue: $4,799,298
- Maximum weekly revenue: $27,889,761
- Annualized estimate: ~$498.8 million per year
That peak weekly figure of nearly $28 million is worth pausing on. That's not a typo.
For comparison, Red Dead Online's numbers cover a longer window (June 2024 through March 2026) and tell a very different story: an average of just $507,193 per week, with an annualized estimate of roughly $26.4 million. GTA Online is outearning Red Dead Online by nearly 19 to 1 on a weekly basis. The key here is that this gap almost certainly explains why Rockstar quietly wound down active development on Red Dead Online years ago.
The platform breakdown is full of surprises
Beyond the headline revenue figures, the leak also includes a platform-by-platform breakdown that's worth looking at closely.
PS5 alone accounts for nearly half of total weekly bookings despite having roughly 42% of the active user base. PC, by contrast, has close to 900,000 weekly active users but generates only $264,273 in weekly revenue. That's a massive gap in spending behavior between console and PC players, and it goes a long way toward explaining why Rockstar is launching GTA 6 on consoles first this November before bringing it to PC.
GTA Online console player lobby
The 4 percent rule
Here's the thing that makes all of this even more striking. According to data surfaced by Twitter user @PLTytus, only around 4 percent of GTA Online's active player base is actually spending money on the game. That tiny slice of the audience is generating close to half a billion dollars a year.
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None of this data has been officially confirmed by Rockstar Games. While multiple sources believe the leaked files are authentic, Rockstar has not verified any of these figures on the record.
Separately, data in the leak appears to show that between 2014 and 2024, Rockstar made over $5 billion from Shark Card sales alone. Shark Cards are the premium currency bundles players buy to top up their in-game GTA$ balance, and they've been a fixture of GTA Online's monetization since the early days.
What most players miss when they see these numbers is just how concentrated the spending is. A massive free-to-play-style economy built on a paid game, sustained almost entirely by a small fraction of dedicated spenders, running for over a decade. That model has worked extraordinarily well for Rockstar and parent company Take-Two Interactive.
With GTA 6 set to launch its own online mode, investors and analysts are watching these figures closely. If even a portion of that revenue transfers to the new game, the financial upside is enormous. Keep an eye on gaming news as more details from the leak continue to surface, and check out the latest reviews and coverage as the GTA 6 launch window approaches.
