Those of you thinking of streaming GTA V on PC might want to finish the entire installation process before going live—or you might find yourself at the mercy of your viewers.




Now that GTA V has launched for PC, lots of people are celebrating by streaming the game. Thing is, after you install GTA V and you press play, the first thing on your screen is a Rockstar splash with your key on it. A couple of unlucky streamers happened to broadcast this part of the set-up process, and in doing so, revealed their specific game code to an audience. You can guess what happened next.

Mr. Boss, a YouTuber with over 500,000 subscribers, had his game code stolen under his nose while livestreaming the game:


Similarly, Twitch streamer Kaceytron had her code stolen while thousands of people watched:

Ouch. That sucks! Thankfully, Kaceytron is already playing a different copy of the game. Hopefully Rockstar can help Mr. Boss get back up and running too. Both of these were innocent mistakes, the likes of which are reportedly happening to other streamers, too.

For the rest of us, this can serve as a cautionary tale: it’s probably best to fully boot up the game once to make sure it is working before livestreaming it to an audience. That way nobody snipes your $60 codes and you can make sure everything is functioning properly before going live.