In just 22 hours, the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI has been accumulated 85 million views, breaking the record for a MrBeast video for the most views on YouTube in 24 hours. That ranking excludes music videos, but the hype around this highly anticipated game could surpass those records, too: Right now, the most viewed YouTube video in 24 hours is the music video for the K-Pop sensation's song BTS.Butter”, which was seen 108 million times in that period of time.
The excitement for Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA 6) has been brewing for a decade. The last game in the franchise, Grand Theft Auto V, was released more than ten years ago, in September 2013. According to Guinness World Records, broke the record for “highest revenue generated by an entertainment product in 24 hours,” earning $815.7 million on the day of its release from the sale of 11.21 million copies. Keep being him second best seller video game of all time, only below Minecraft.
Rockstar Games, the publisher of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, planned to release the trailer on Tuesday morning. But the trailer was filtered out on X (Twitter) a day earlier, Rockstar simply posted the trailer anyway and deleted the leaked version.
“Our trailer has leaked, so check out the real video on YouTube,” Rockstar wrote in X; that post X itself has 1.1 million likes and 82 million views.
Excluding music videos, MrBeast previously held the record for most views on YouTube in 24 hours. The specialist philanthropist's August video, in which he had contestants from “every country” in the world face off in a series of contests, got 59.4 million views on his first day. In another of the twenty-five-year-old YouTuber's most popular videos, he recreated the Netflix hit “The Squid Game” (no, no one was hurt during filming). Given the nature of Grand Theft Auto, we can only hope that MrBeast doesn't try to recreate a bank robbery or prison break.
We'll update this post if Grand Theft Auto manages to dethrone the BTS boys from their butter-sculpted throne; Meanwhile, here's the trailer for GTA 6, which will be released in 2025.
