Hackers spill Rockstar’s guts: $500M a year, dying RDR Online, and a $1 million microtransaction
Artis Kenderik
Rockstar has landed in another major scandal: a massive 8 GB archive of internal files has leaked online. Based on what’s already circulating, it includes 25 CSV files covering 2018–2026, tied to GTA Online, Red Dead Online, internal analytics, support systems, and anti-cheat tools. If authentic, this leak is especially damaging — not just numbers, but a look into the company’s internal workings.
The main takeaway from the data is both simple and painful for Red Dead Online fans. The game generated around $507,000 per week, compared to nearly $9.6 million for GTA Online. On a yearly scale, that’s roughly $26.4 million versus $498.8 million — making Rockstar’s decision to scale back support for RDO suddenly very easy to understand.
What else surfaced in the leak:
- GTA+ reportedly has around 870,000 subscribers right now;
- the peak was in January 2026 — over 1.3 million subscribers;
- about 74% of GTA Online’s revenue comes from Shark Cards;
- players from the U.S. spend nearly twice as much as the next nine top countries combined;
- PC turned out to be the weakest platform in both audience and revenue;
- PS5 has the largest player base — around 3.4 million weekly active users;
- in 2020, someone reportedly spent over $1 million on Shark Cards in a single transaction;
In total, the archive contains around 79 million rows of data spanning seven years. The authenticity of the files will likely be confirmed soon, and if so, this could become one of Rockstar’s most damaging leaks in years — not because of a single headline, but because it exposes the company’s business logic, player behavior patterns, and even anti-cheat methods that Rockstar will now likely have to urgently revise.
What surprised you the most in these numbers? Does it change how you see Red Dead Online’s fate?
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