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UPDATED 12/7, 9:14 p.m. ET: Although it won’t arrive until 2025, Grand Theft Auto VI is already breaking records.
As pointed out by Variety, the video game’s trailer racked up more than 93 million YouTube views within the first 24 hours of its release, making GTA VI YouTube’s most-viewed trailer launch of all-time. The previous record holder for a non-music video debut was set back in August, when Mr. Beast released his viral video “Every Country on Earth Fights for $250,000.” That visual garnered 59.4 million views on its first day.
“The Grand Theft Auto series has been at the epicenter of entertainment for decades and we expect the YouTube community and its creators to reach new heights for years to come with Grand Theft Auto VI,” Leo Olebe, global head of YouTube Gaming, told Variety. “Setting this new all-time record is a testament to the cultural impact of the series and demonstrates why YouTube is the leading destination for gaming content and pop culture.”
As of Thursday night, GTA VI was still trending as the No. 1 video with than 124,854,789 views.
Check out Complex's rundown of everything people are saying about the trailer—and everything we noticed—right here.
See original story below.
What is almost certain to become the biggest title in video game history rolled out its inaugural trailer on Monday, bringing with it the culmination of years of hype and speculation.
We're talking about Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto franchise, of course. Fittingly, the GTA VI trailer arrives just over a decade after the debut of the most recent main entry in the franchise, 2013’s industry-redefining blockbuster Grand Theft Auto V.
The 90-second clip is light on plot, heavy on style, and promises a 2025 release. Set to Tom Petty’s “Love Is a Long Road," it looks as Floridian as one could possibly imagine, right down to the alligator clawing its way into a convenience store. It also indicates a social media-style interface could play a big part, promises some of the best graphics gamers have ever seen, and officially introduces protagonist Lucia.
Longtime GTA fans damn near achieved levitation back in November when Rockstar Games president and co-founder Sam Houser mentioned the new game in a statement reflecting on the company's 25th anniversary.
"In 1998, Rockstar Games was founded on the idea that video games could come to be as essential to culture as any other form of entertainment, and we hope that we have created games you love in our efforts to be part of that evolution," Houser said at the time.
In the years since, this dream of art-forward essentiality has indeed come to fruition. The fervor for GTA VI, specifically, resulted in a leak in 2022 that was so widely covered that Rockstar ultimately addressed it in an official statement of its own.
Per Rockstar, the leak was the work of “an unauthorized third party” having “illegally accessed and downloaded confidential information” from their systems. Included in the leak was what Rockstar said was “early development footage” for the upcoming GTA title.
Fittingly enough, the Grand Theft Auto VI trailer leaking earlier Monday evidently led the studio to drop the official version early. Enjoy it up top.
