It's been a giant week for video game news. Nintendo announced a release date of 5 May 2023 for the next Legend of Zelda game (now titled Tears of the Kingdom, certainly not an intentional reference to the death of the Queen); we've seen a new God of War: Ragnarok trailer in which The West Wing's Toby Ziegler shouts at Kratos; and we learned that the beloved N64 shooter GoldenEye 007 is finally, finally coming back. But it was all overshadowed on Sunday, when a hacker posted more than 50 minutes of in-development footage from Grand Theft Auto VI, stolen from Rockstar's internal Slack channel. The hacker claims to have possession of the game's source code, too. This is, along with the theft of Half-Life 2's source code from Valve in 2003, one of the biggest data breaches in video game history.

Researchers from Massey University, the University of Tasmania and Stetson University reviewed multiple long-term studies into video games and aggression. They found no evidence of a substantial link between'aggressive game content' and signs of anger or rage later on in childhood. 'Poor quality studies' in the past likely exaggerated the impact of games on aggression, while better quality studies show the effects of gaming are'negligible'. Regulation of violent games also did not appear likely to reduce aggression in real life, suggesting parents shouldn't worry about their kids shooting up virtual enemies. Real-life displays of violence, such as mass shootings in the US, have famously been blamed on video games by some politicians, rather than lax gun regulation and easy access to firearms.