The GTA 6 leak's soundtrack dates it to 2025, not an old 2024 build

The most repeated reassurance about the GTA 6 gameplay that has been leaking since August 18 is that none of it really counts, because it comes from an old build — 2024, possibly 2023. The footage's own audio argues against the earlier end of that range. One of the clips plays "Sports Car" by Tate McRae, a single that did not exist until January 24, 2025.

Metadata dates a file. A licensed song dates the world.

The 2023–2024 figures came out of the video files themselves. Insider Gaming reported that metadata suggested 2024 or earlier, and people picking through the uploads found an ffmpeg encoder build from late 2023. That is a weaker clue than it sounds. An encoder version dates the tool that wrote the file, not the moment the footage was captured, and nobody updates a working ffmpeg install on schedule.

Music is a harder constraint, because a song has to exist before a radio station can play it. "Sports Car" was released on RCA as the third single from Tate McRae's So Close to What. Everything else fans have catalogued from the clips is older: Coi Leray's "Players" from 2022, SG Lewis's "Impact" from 2021, French Montana and Swae Lee's "Unforgettable" from 2017, and a deep bank of catalogue tracks — Tom Petty, Wang Chung, Glen Campbell, the Pointer Sisters, Blue Öyster Cult. Kotaku's Kenneth Shepard ran through the running list this week. Only one track in it sets a floor, and the floor lands in 2025.

Two honest limits on that. Labels routinely hand licensees a master weeks or months before the public release, so the true floor may sit slightly earlier than January 24 — earlier by weeks, not by two years. And a leaker running an actual build could in principle have received a later audio update on top of older capture. That second possibility cuts the same direction: it would mean the material in circulation is current, not archival.

Why the build's age is the whole argument

January 2025 sits three months before Rockstar's May 2, 2025 statement moving GTA 6 off its fall 2025 target, and about ten months before the November 2025 announcement of the current November 19, 2026 date. Footage from that window is not a discarded prototype from another era of the project. It is the game partway through the same development cycle it is still in.

That is doing quiet work in every conversation about what the clips show — the row of six wanted stars with four unfilled, the icons suggesting police track your clothing and vehicle separately, the fuel and engine readouts on the car, the small negative marker that appears after Jason kills a man who had stopped fighting back. "It's an old build" has been the standard reason to file all of it under maybe.

There is a check on the calendar. The Extended Look premieres on Netflix on August 27 at 3 p.m. ET and reaches Rockstar's YouTube channel at 9 p.m. ET. If the HUD in Rockstar's own footage carries the same six-star row and the same vehicle strip, the age of the leak stops mattering entirely — the leak will simply have shown them first, and the music will have been the part that gave away when.