GTA 6 Trailer 1: the leak, the record views and what it revealed
How GTA 6's first trailer leaked early in December 2023, broke three Guinness World Records and revealed Vice City, Lucia and a 2025 window that slipped.
Confirmed. Rockstar Games or Take-Two said this on the record.
GTA 6's first trailer is nearly three years old, and it still has the most dramatic backstory of any Rockstar reveal. It leaked on X on the evening of December 4, 2023, Rockstar Games pushed out the official version early in response, and within a day it held three Guinness World Records. Most of what it showed has held up. The big exception was the date on the final card: the trailer said 2025, and the game now launches on November 19, 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
How Rockstar set up the reveal
The countdown started on November 8, 2023. That morning Bloomberg reported that Rockstar was getting ready to announce the next Grand Theft Auto, according to TechRadar, and some fans guessed the reveal would come at the Golden Joystick Awards. Rockstar answered on its own channel the same day. In a Newswire post marking the studio's upcoming 25th anniversary, president Sam Houser wrote that "in early December, we will release the first trailer for the next Grand Theft Auto."
So the Bloomberg report was accurate, while the awards-show theory went nowhere: the confirmation came from Rockstar's Newswire, and the trailer never premiered on a stage. On December 1, Rockstar set the exact slot: Tuesday, December 5 at 9am ET.
The leak on December 4
The plan fell apart the evening before. On December 4, a copy of the full trailer turned up on X with a large cryptocurrency watermark stamped across the middle of the picture, PC Gamer reported. The account behind it was suspended, but mirror uploads were already spreading.
For years Rockstar had handled leaks with silence and copyright takedowns. This time it spoke up. At 6:10pm ET, a little over half an hour after the leak surfaced, it posted on X: "Our trailer has leaked so please watch the real thing on YouTube." GamesRadar+ worked out that the official video arrived about 15 hours ahead of schedule, and that it passed 2.2 million YouTube likes in 36 minutes while the view counter couldn't keep up.
The studio had been here before. A 2022 hack exposed unfinished footage of the game, and co-studio head Aaron Garbut has since said that episode felt deeply invasive.
How Rockstar developers reacted
Several Rockstar staff made no secret of their frustration, per PC Gamer. Senior gameplay animator Javier Altman said he had hoped to watch it for the first time with his coworkers, adding: "I feel we deserved that moment." Graphics programmer Angel Ortiz said he would wait to watch it with the people who made it. Senior gameplay designer Phil Beveridge wrote that it "would have been nice to do this with all of you at the same time." Others took it in stride. AI and gameplay programmer Matthew Rennie said he was "so excited to finally get to show off what we've been cooking."
The records
The early release didn't hurt the numbers. On December 6, Guinness World Records said the trailer had set three records, Dexerto reported:
- Most viewed video game reveal on YouTube in 24 hours: 90,421,491 views.
- Most liked video game trailer on YouTube in 24 hours: 8.9 million likes.
- Most views for a non-music YouTube video in 24 hours: beating MrBeast's previous record of 59.4 million.
By December 7 the trailer had passed 110 million views, according to PC Gamer. For comparison, the outlet put lifetime totals at around 17 million for Cyberpunk 2077's 2019 trailer, 18 million for Starfield's first teaser and 28 million for Hogwarts Legacy's. It didn't beat everything, though. BTS's "Butter" video drew more than 108 million views in its first 24 hours, so the overall record stayed with music. PC Gamer also pointed out that GTA 5's 2011 trailer had reached about 100 million views, but needed 12 years to get there.
What the trailer revealed
The roughly 90-second video, as GamesRadar+ summarised it, established:
- The official title, simply Grand Theft Auto VI.
- A return to Vice City, the Miami-inspired setting of the 2002 game.
- The series' first female protagonist, named as Lucia in Rockstar's official artwork, in a Bonnie-and-Clyde-style partnership with a man the trailer didn't name.
- Speedboats, motorcycles and sports cars, plus beaches, wetlands, highways, nightclubs, rooftops, an alligator in a swimming pool and a jail.
- A modern-day setting soaked in social media.
- A 2025 release on PlayStation and Xbox, with no PC version mentioned.
What held up, what didn't and what's still open
Held up. Vice City is back, and it's one of six regions Rockstar has confirmed for the state of Leonida (our Leonida map guide covers all six). Lucia is a lead, and her unnamed partner turned out to be Jason, completing a dual-protagonist setup Rockstar says it already had in place by 2019. The platforms were right too: PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
Didn't hold up. The 2025 window. The game slipped to May 2026 and then to November 19, 2026. Rockstar's Jennifer Kolbe has recalled phoning Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick to tell him about the second delay, and says his first reaction was "You're kidding. Please tell me you're kidding" before he accepted it. Our release date timeline goes through every delay.
Still open. PC. Back in 2023, PC Gamer expected a repeat of Red Dead Redemption 2, which reached PC a year after consoles. Rockstar and Take-Two still haven't announced a PC version. GamesBeat has reported a Q1 2027 target, but that remains unconfirmed.
The trailer that started it all now has a bookend: Rockstar released the GTA 6 launch trailer on October 15, 2026. Pre-loading opens on November 12, and the game arrives on November 19.
