GTA 6 Step Aside, GTA 4's Unexpected Return Has Gamers Hyped

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Promotional GTA 4 artwork of Niko Bellic pulling on fingerless gloves, with a black and white background of a Liberty City bridge.

Published Mar 31, 2026, 6:00 PM EDT

Lee D’Amato is a writer born, raised, and based in Queens, New York. With collective thousands of hours in games like Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, Elden Ring, and The Legend of Zelda, he's now writes game features, guides, and reviews for Screen Rant, but has covered a wide range of topics, including ancient history, affordable travel, and overall health.

Grand Theft Auto 6 fans are occupying the wait by digging deeply into the rest of the franchise, and one of them seems to have found some compelling cut content. With the new release still several months away and nary a word about that elusive third trailer, many fans have taken the time to look back at previous entries in the series.

One fan, who goes by janmatant on the GTA Forums, claimed to have gotten their hands on an Xbox 360 dev kit used by Rockstar North (via Rockstar Intel). They say it contained a partially playable test build of GTA 4, including a ton of cut content that never made it into the final build, which they promptly uploaded to the internet and set the wider GTA fandom loose in.

This GTA 4 Leak Is A Treasure Trove

Everything in the leaked test build

Players immediately took to the allegedly leaked test build of GTA 4, seeing what cut content they could discover and sharing it online. One person discovered a working ferry modeled after New York's real-life Staten Island Ferry, and would've worked much like the in-game trains.

GTA 4 developer Obbe Vermeij confirmed on X (formerly Twitter) that ferries were considered for GTA 4, but ultimately scrapped because the devs worried they'd cause too many issues with collision and pedestrian/vehicular AI. They do, however, appear briefly in GTA 4's debut trailer.

Other users found a series of assets that appeared to reference a zombie mini-game, including several character models and what look like power-ups. According to Vermeij, this was likely "an experiment that didn't work out. There were a lot of those."

Still others found differences in cutscenes: characters referring to the "FBI" before it was changed to the fictionalized "FIB"; different takes used for certain voice lines; alternate camera angles or additional dialogue. Some lines had not yet been added to the game, and instead used placeholders. Fans also discovered minor differences in character and vehicle designs that appeared to have been changed before the final release.

Who Needs GTA 6? GTA 4 Is Dominating The Conversation

The perfect way to kill time

While GTA fans anxiously cling to any shred of news about the upcoming installment, many have taken to revisiting the earlier games to occupy their minds in the meantime. GTA 4 really is the perfect candidate if you're looking for something different; 5 is far too recent in most diehard fans' memories, and San Andreas has the same setting as 5.

With things like graphical overhauls for GTA 4, players can now revisit Liberty City in a whole new way. But honestly, I've recently preferred to revisit the game in its original, unaltered state. There's a kind of late-aughts charm to it that hasn't reached the nostalgic fever pitch of things like 16-bit or PS1-style graphics yet, and it's been a delight to get lost in.

The recently discovered test build scratches that same itch. The ambitiousness of the working ferry, the inclusion of a zombie mini-game, the cars, music, and fashion — it's all quintessentially 2008, and quintessentially GTA 4. I can think of no better way to kill time before Grand Theft Auto 6 is released.