“Grand Theft Auto VI” is about to be the biggest pop media event of the year, if not the decade. The data backs this up.
The latest evidence arrived Thursday, when Netflix viewership surged for the long-awaited first look at gameplay footage, according to data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The firm estimates “GTA VI” has already received about 4.6 million preorders.
Box office blockbusters like “The Odyssey” take weeks to hit $1 billion. “GTA V” famously did it in three days. Analyst firm Newzoo projects the new game could generate between $3.3 billion and $5.2 billion by the end of its launch week in November.
What makes these rags-to-riches crime dramas so wildly popular? The appeal of the Grand Theft Auto series has always been rooted in a simple fantasy: living in a recognizable simulation of American life without guardrails. Players can drive to the beach listening to the latest hits on the radio while ignoring all traffic along the way. For hundreds of millions of people, “Grand Theft Auto VI” represents a digital vacation that abandons almost all inhibition.
The influence of the series, created by Rockstar Games, extends beyond sales records.
In 2025, “GTA V” accumulated 1.89 billion hours watched despite being a 12-year-old title, according to Stream Hatchet.
Much of those hours are spent watching people role-play in “GTA Online,” particularly through role-play servers managed by studio Cfx.re, which was acquired by Rockstar in 2023. By 2024, the studio said more than 20 million players used its platforms. GTA role-play involves players pretending to be cops, robbers, hapless retail workers or any functioning member of society within the online game.
One of those players was political streamer Hasan Piker, who streamed 570 hours of GTA role-play between February 2021 and January 2024, according to tracker site HasRoot.
The game can lift up music sales and streams. Tom Petty’s 1989 song “Love is a Long Road” saw stream numbers increased by nearly 37,000 percent on Spotify after it was the soundtrack to the debut “GTA VI” trailer in 2023, according to Universal Music Publishing Group.
The series inspires new forms of art. During the pandemic, out-of-work British actors staged a production of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” entirely within “GTA Online.” The resulting documentary, “Grand Theft Hamlet,” became an award-winning feature film.
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