Take-Two's 21 September Strike, and Five Vanished Posts

Take-Two Interactive issued a YouTube copyright strike on 21 September 2026 over a video about the previous week's Rockstar file leak. The strike panel is public because the creator who received it posted a screenshot of it. Separately, five of the nineteen posts that mainstream write-ups embedded to document that leak no longer exist, and the ones that are gone are the ones about the Grand Theft Auto VI map. This desk queried the status of all nineteen embedded posts through a public syndication endpoint, opened the strike screenshot itself rather than trusting a description of it, checked the affected channel's own uploads feed, and then examined the one question readers actually want answered about the leaked map files: how old they are. Two of the community's own analysts answered that question on the same morning, eight years apart. The strike panel, read directly CONFIRMED. The screenshot sits at pbs.twimg.com/media/HSupe5zWkAA9hyC.jpg. This desk's editor fetched it and opened it: HTTP 200, content-type: image/jpeg, last-modified: Mon, 21 Sep 2026 08:59:31 GMT, a progressive JPEG measuring 889 by 1200 pixels. It is a YouTube Studio copyright panel, and it reads, verbatim: Copyright strikes1 of 3 strikesYou've received 1 copyright strikeWhat you can doContent removedStrike on 21 September 2026Expires in 90 daysGTA V's Cancelled Liberty City DLCContent removed by Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc A note on that file's size, because two numbers exist for it and both are right. A researcher on this desk recorded a content length of 113,418 bytes for the same path; the editor's own fetch returned 90,891 bytes. That host serves size variants off one path depending on the name and format parameters in the request. The editor's figure is the one printed here, and the reason for the difference is printed with it rather than left to look like a contradiction. Converting the expiry is this desk's own arithmetic: ninety days from 21 September 2026 lands on 20 December 2026. The image's own Last-Modified stamp is 121 seconds before the post that carried it was created, which is consistent with a screenshot taken, uploaded and posted in one sitting. The creator's own account of what was in the video CONFIRMED. Post id 2101960005545001423 is live. This desk's editor re-queried it at 2026-09-24T20:07:50Z: HTTP 200, screen_name: "TJGM_", created_at: "2026-09-21T09:01:32.000Z", favorite_count: 160, is_blue_verified: true. Its text, verbatim as the endpoint returns it: Take-Two are now taking down YouTube videos regarding the latest #GTA leaks. My video only covered a list of files, a visualisation of the data from one of the files using a fan made tool and one cut piece of GTA V dialogue. Nothing regarding #GTAVI. The dialogue is probably the That text ends mid-sentence because the public syndication endpoint truncates long posts and does not return the extended body. This desk could not retrieve the rest and does not paraphrase it. The struck video is gone. TJGM's channel uploads feed answered HTTP 200 and contains no entry titled "GTA V's Cancelled Liberty City DLC". The feed jumps from an upload dated 2026-07-31 to one dated 2026-09-21 and on to one dated 2026-09-23. The removed video's id, upload date and view count are unrecoverable from anything this desk could reach. Five of nineteen posts are tombstoned CONFIRMED. This desk enumerated every post embedded by the two outlets that covered the leak, nineteen in all, and queried each one. Five return a tombstone at 292 bytes carrying the string "This Post was deleted by the Post author. Learn more". The editor re-verified two of the five personally at 20:07:50Z. The breakdown, which is this desk's own count: AccountEmbedded postsDeletedShare TJGM_44100 per cent Mattdek_8112.5 per cent affmalyt400 satincult8100 SpiderVice100 Total19526.3 per cent The pattern inside those numbers is the part worth noticing. TJGM's four dead posts covered an expanded Liberty City layout and low quality renders of the Grand Theft Auto VI map. The single Mattdek_ post that is gone is his one about Grand Theft Auto VI map assets, while his seven surviving posts are all about cut Grand Theft Auto V audio. The material that vanished is the Grand Theft Auto VI material. The text survives anyway, because both outlets' embed fallbacks preserve it in their page source. TJGM, 18 September, now deleted, preserved verbatim in one outlet's markup: This leak also contains screenshots of the #GTA VI map, but rendered in very low quality. The limit on all of this is important and it is printed here rather than at the bottom. X's tombstone says the post author deleted the post. Nothing in the record shows Take-Two demanded, requested or forced those deletions, and this desk does not imply that it did. The only takedown artifact anyone here has seen is a YouTube copyright strike. How old are the leaked map files The single question a reader has about a leaked Grand Theft Auto VI map blockout is how close it is to the real thing, and the answer turns entirely on the age of the files. Two of the most cited people in the community answered that on the same morning and disagreed by eight years. CONFIRMED. @SpiderVice's post is live, created 2026-09-18T06:54:01.000Z, 274 likes. Verbatim, including his own typo: @Mattdek_ Yes, these are from 2015. Yes, 11 years old. The map metadata files inside reveal it. Also just for clarity this isn't a new leak but rather the full package of the GTA V code/build that Teapot extracted in 2022, which bappened to include an early VI block out. @Mattdek_'s post has since been deleted and cannot be quoted from a live source. Its text survives in an outlet's embed fallback, verbatim: A new GTA leak happened where assets of the GTA VI map where found, they're very old assets, stemming from 2023, with what i've gathered, shoutout to the mapping discord Doing the subtraction is this desk's own arithmetic. From 2026, a 2015 dating is 11 years, which matches SpiderVice's own figure, and a 2023 dating is 3 years. The two readings are 8 years apart on the same files. One outlet ran both without flagging the conflict. Its own body copy states that "these blockouts are from over a decade ago", which is consistent with 2015 and inconsistent with 2023, while the article embeds the 2023 post directly beneath. The other outlet gave no date at all and described the material only as "early map assets from GTA 6 that resemble what we have seen in the trailers, but are very low-quality renders". Neither dating is independently checkable and this desk says so plainly. Nobody here has seen the map metadata files SpiderVice cites. Nobody here downloaded, sought or touched the leaked files at all, and no claim in this article rests on their contents. Mattdek_ has deleted his post, so he cannot be asked to show his working either. Neither Rockstar nor Take-Two has dated the assets. What is established, and what is not Established: a Take-Two copyright strike dated 21 September 2026 exists and removed a YouTube video whose title referred to cancelled Grand Theft Auto V Liberty City content. The creator states the video contained nothing from Grand Theft Auto VI. Five of nineteen embedded posts are gone, and they are the Grand Theft Auto VI ones. Two community analysts dated the same files eleven years and three years old respectively. Not established: who asked for the X posts to come down, what was actually in the removed video, what the removed video's reach was, and how old the files really are. This desk's standing record on the legal side of this leak wave is in the four subpoena requests filed in court, and its standing record on how leaked build material should be dated at all is in the ffmpeg metadata piece. Neither supports a firm age for this blockout. With 56 days to launch by this desk's own arithmetic, the safest thing a reader can carry away is that the map images circulating from this dump are old, that how old is genuinely contested by the people who opened them, and that the primary sources for both claims are steadily being deleted by their own authors.