It's no GTA 6 leak, but fans have discovered a treasure trove of hidden GTA 4 assets and an unfinished zombies mode in an Xbox 360 dev kit

Grand Theft Auto IV cutscene screenshot of Niko Bellic on a motorcycle.
(Image credit: Rockstar Games)

  • A thrifted Xbox 360 has been revealed to be an old Rockstar Games dev kit
  • The console features a pre-release version of Grand Theft Auto 4 and 120GB hard drive full of unreleased assets
  • Some assets included cut content, including an apparent zombies mode

Fans have uncovered a collection of hidden Grand Theft Auto 4 assets on a second-hand Xbox 360 that turned out to be a Rockstar Games development kit.

User 'janmatant' shared their find on the GTA Forums fan website, revealing that they purchased the console from a boot sale in Edinburgh, Scotland, for £5 (roughly $7), the same city where developer Rockstar North is located.

Images posted on the forum show the thrifted white Xbox 360 with a sticker on the top that reads "Rockstar North Ltd" and features the Rockstar Games logo, but its the content 120GB hard drive that has GTA fans going wild.

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"HOLY. s**t. Something big has dropped," one user said after the janmatant's post.

After some investigation, it was discovered that the hardware appears to contain a 2007 pre-release version of GTA 4, along with a treasure trove of unfinished and unreleased assets that have now been uploaded to the Internet Archive.

Alongside ferry assets that appear to have been cut from the main game but were used in cutscenes and trailers, fans have also uncovered different radio stations and songs that are different from the release version, as well as unused weapons like a revolver, a silenced pistol, unfinished animations, and beta versions of character models.

But the biggest discovery is what appears to be an unfinished zombies mode, which featured specific pickups and assets like bloody police bodies and a hospital gurney.

As Kotaku reports, Obbe Vermeij, a former Rockstar Games developer who worked on GTA 4, has since said that he doesn't remember much about a zombies mode in a post on X / Twitter, and suggested that it was an "experiment" by a team of artists and other devs "that didn't work out.

"There were a lot of those," Vermeij added.

It'll take fans a while to completely pick apart the 120GB worth of content, but at least they'll have something to keep them occupied while we wait for Grand Theft Auto 6, which launches on November 19, 2026, for PS5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S.

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Demi Williams
Contributor

Demi is a freelance games journalist who helps cover gaming news at TechRadar. She's been a games writer for five years and has written for outlets such as GameSpot, NME, and GamesRadar, covering news, features, and reviews. Outside of writing, she plays a lot of RPGs and talks far too much about Star Wars on X.

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