Take-Two wants Windows device IDs for everyone in three Discord servers

What Take-Two filed

Take-Two went to federal court on August 20, 2026, filing DMCA subpoenas in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The targets were Microsoft and Discord, and the compliance deadline was September 4. A DMCA subpoena is not a lawsuit. It is a mechanism that lets a copyright holder compel a service provider to identify an alleged infringer without first suing anyone. It does not need a judge to weigh the merits the way a full case would.

Why Microsoft is involved

Because of GitHub. Take-Two's subpoena states that copyrighted GTA 6 content was posted to Microsoft's GitHub developer platform. Microsoft is therefore in scope twice: as GitHub's owner, and as the operator of the Microsoft account system that ties Windows installs, Xbox profiles and OneDrive together.

The scope is the story

This is what separates the filing from a routine takedown. Take-Two is not just asking who posted the files. It is asking Microsoft for MachineGuid and MSA device identifiers, registration and last login IP addresses, phone numbers, linked Google and Xbox connections, and OneDrive contents. And it is asking for that for every account that communicated in three named Discord servers since June 1. A MachineGuid identifies a specific Windows installation. Requesting them for an entire server population means people who posted nothing, and who may have simply been in a channel where a link appeared, are inside the request.

Being named in a subpoena is not a finding of wrongdoing, and a request is not an order that has been complied with. But the breadth is why this filing drew attention well beyond gaming coverage.

What this means if you were in one of those servers

Practically: Take-Two asked the platforms for data, the platforms decide how to respond, and providers routinely narrow or challenge overbroad DMCA subpoenas. We are not going to tell you what to do about it, and anyone giving confident legal advice about a filing this fresh is guessing. If you think you are affected, that is a question for an actual lawyer, not a gaming site.

The rest of the enforcement push

The subpoenas are one part. Take-Two has also been issuing DMCA notices against YouTube videos carrying the leaked footage, and Rockstar has run takedowns rather than commenting on the substance of the leaks. Through all of it, Rockstar kept the August 27 Netflix premiere of the Extended Look and has not moved the release date.

Why a DMCA subpoena instead of a lawsuit

Because it is faster and cheaper, and it does not require proving a case first. Section 512(h) of the DMCA lets a copyright holder ask a court clerk to issue a subpoena to a service provider for information identifying an alleged infringer. There is no judge weighing the merits, no defendant present to object at that stage, and no need to file a complaint against anyone. That is the trade off it is designed around: a rights holder gets a fast route to a name, and the person being identified generally does not get a say before the request lands. Providers can and do push back on scope, which is where the argument usually happens.

Why the Discord angle is the sharp end

Take-Two named three Discord servers and asked for data covering every account that communicated in them since June 1. That is a population, not a suspect. A server can hold thousands of people. Most of them did not post leaked material; some were plausibly there before anything leaked at all. A request scoped to everyone who spoke in a channel sweeps in people whose only connection is having been present. Combined with MachineGuid values, which identify a Windows installation rather than an account, and OneDrive contents, the request reaches well past what is needed to identify one poster. That is why coverage of this filing ran in hardware and privacy press, not just gaming press.

What Rockstar said, and did not say

Rockstar stayed quiet on the substance for most of it. It kept the August 27 Netflix premiere of the Extended Look, kept paying to promote that date, and issued takedowns rather than statements. It later said publicly that the leaks have been heartbreaking for its team, which is close to the only human note in an otherwise procedural response. What it has not done is move the release date, comment on what the leaked material shows, or confirm anything about how the files got out.

Where this goes

Unclear, and it is worth saying so. Whether Microsoft and Discord comply in full, narrow the request, or push back has not been publicly resolved. Nobody has been publicly identified as CyberLeek. GTA 6 still launches November 19, 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X and S.