Rockstar games has announced plans to reveal the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI next month, as the company celebrates its 25-year anniversary.
Releasing ten years after the fifth instalment in the GTA (Grand Theft Auto) series, Rockstar President Sam Houser said in a statement the developer is “very excited” about the announcement.
The project, which has been a subject of extreme secrecy, has had fans speculating for the best part of a decade, desperate for any semblance of hints from Rockstar.
Though development was announced back in February of 2022, very few announcements have been made since, with no official images or footage shown yet.
Rockstar have been accused of being too profit orientated by fans of the series in the past, due to the number of DLCs and premium content released for the online version of the game.
Since the launch of GTA online, there have been over 40 DLC’s released for it, to a busy market. This month alone saw a peak of 160,000 players.
The game holds the title of second best-selling videogame of all time (behind Tetris, of all things). It has made about eight billion USD in profits since release.
Satirist gaming youtuber VideogameDunkey released a video after the trailer was announced, highlighting ten years of misunderstanding, false hope, and outright lies that have circulated online.
One notorious example of this is a video by youtuber Sernando. In 2017, he released a video claiming to have obtained a copy of GTA VI, which currently has 4.7 million views.
The cultural impact of the GTA games contributed heavily to this. The popularity of it on YouTube meant that there was a constant clickbait market for fake GTA VI footage.
The first instance of actual gameplay footage came in 2022 when a member of hacking group ‘Lapsus$’ leaking what was alleged to be footage of the sixth instalment in an attempt to blackmail the company.
In a statement, the Rockstar Games team said they were disappointed to have had the game revealed this way, and they would “Properly introduce you to the game when its ready”.
Despite instances such as these, there are plenty of positive stories from the YouTube GTA community. Ireland’s own Jacksepticeye tweeted his excitement for the next game.
With the beginning of his career and the release of GTA V coinciding, he attributes much of his early success to his videos of gameplay.
“GTA V was some of the very first content I ever did on my channel, when I had like 2,000 subs”, he said.
His initial rise in popularity came when youtuber PewDiePie, (who had the most subscribers on the platform at the time) reacted to one of his GTA videos in September of 2013.
