Rockstar Quietly Erased Unannounced Island Names From the GTA 6 Map Poster

Rumor: this story is built on community-spotted details in Rockstar's own store images, reported by talkSport and Notebookcheck. Rockstar has not confirmed or commented on any of it.

Rockstar may have accidentally revealed new GTA 6 map locations — and then tried to un-reveal them.

When the studio unveiled its $399.99 collector's box on September 24, one of the 11 items was a double-sided souvenir poster showing the map of Leonida, the fictional Florida-inspired state where GTA 6 takes place. It was the first official physical map the public had ever seen, so fans did what fans do: they zoomed in.

What they found, according to reports from talkSport and Notebookcheck, was a cluster of four islands on the left side of the map — and two of them had full name labels that Rockstar has never announced: "Sanbars" and "Crude Islands." (Some outlets read the first name as "Sandbars," which may be a transcription difference rather than a real disagreement.) Notebookcheck further reported that fans found partial labels near the top and bottom of the image — one beginning with "Dra" and another with "Beld."

The "Dra" fragment is the one that set the community alight, because the long-running community mapping project — the fans who have been stitching together every frame of footage and trailer into a speculative map for years — had already linked the name "Draper Island" to footage of Port Gellhorn. If the fragment is real, the official poster may have quietly confirmed a fan theory years in the making.

Then Rockstar edited the image. After screenshots of the labeled map spread across social media, the store listing was updated: the name tags on the islands were gone, while the island outlines themselves stayed. Before-and-after comparisons were quickly shared on X, so the removal itself is documented — but Rockstar has not explained it.

Notebookcheck's read on the situation is the most sensible one available: the studio likely wants to show these locations in its own marketing before launch rather than letting a merchandise box do the revealing. It's also possible the labels were placeholders never meant for public eyes, which would explain why only the names were removed and not the islands.

Either way, the damage — if you can call it that — was already done. Screenshots of the original image were saved and shared widely before the edit, so the names are out there in the community's hands regardless of what the store page now shows. Fan reaction has mostly been about the futility of the edit: once a name is on the internet, it's on the internet.

A few things to keep in perspective. The labels reveal almost nothing about the final game — no missions, no gameplay, not even confirmation these places are explorable. And Rockstar has a history of quietly adjusting promotional materials, so this could be a minor course correction rather than a leak response. Treat the island names as intriguing but unverified until Rockstar names them itself.

Still, with eight weeks to launch, this is the pattern Rockstar is establishing: an intensely controlled marketing rollout with the occasional accidental peek behind the curtain. The fans who caught the labels earned their eagle eyes — and the rest of us will just have to wait for November 19 to see if Sanbars and the Crude Islands are real.