Summary
TheGrand Theft Auto 6trailer has recovered its record for the most-watched YouTube video in the first 24 hours post-release. Rockstar’sGTA 6reveal briefly lost that claim to fame due to an April Fools' joke that went sideways.
The gag in question was originally meant to add toDiscord’s carefree social media presence, with the chat app recently debuting a trailer announcing native loot boxes for its users. The stunt was even accompanied by the actual loot boxes, which are still available in the app as of April 6. And though many gaming companies joined in on the April Fools' fun, what made this particular joke stand out was that it generated some astonishing momentum, surpassing 1.3 billion views by April 2.
Discord Overshadowed GTA 6 Trailer by Accidentally Spoofing Its YouTube Views
As of April 6, the vast majority of those views have been removed, with the video’s current view count now sitting at a mere 3 million. TheGTA 6trailer has hence recovered its YouTube debut record, which once again stands at roughly 93 million views in 24 hours. As for what led to this temporary record-holder switch, it would appear that the chat app has spoofed its own YouTube views, albeit unintentionally.
As first reported byMarvin Wizzof DiscordPreviews, the April 1 loot box trailer has been pushed to users via the so-called Discord toast notification, which is non-intrusive by design. Not only does that make it more likely to be overlooked by users, but the notification video was actually made to play on a loop on top of that. This appears to have been done completely unintentionally, as suggested by one April 2 message from a verified Discord developer posted to the “discord-api” server, which saw them express their disbelief at the fact that the video was “getting so many views.”
While spoofing views is technically abannable offense on YouTube, the fact that this apparently wasn’t a conscious attempt at gaming the system on Discord’s part likely means that its channel is safe from sanctions. The company’s PR team took all this in good fun, having described the situation as a “whoopsie doopsie” in an April 2 tweet.
Now that this view-botting mishap has been corrected, theGTA 6trailer’s launch day viewership record once again looks unassailable. The previous holder was MrBeast’sEvery Country On Earth Fights For $250,000video, which managed to amass over 59 million views in the first 24 hours following its August 2023 debut. While there’s always a chance that thenextGTA 6trailerwill challenge the 93 million figure, that’s far from guaranteed. Looking at the past 3D entries in the iconic franchise, their debut trailers generally enjoyed much stronger momentum than their immediate follow-ups.
Grand Theft Auto 6
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