Grand Theft Auto VI trailer debuts early after leak on social media

Video game developer Rockstar Games released the first trailer for the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI a day early, after it briefly leaked online ahead of schedule.

The leaked trailer was posted on Monday in grainy quality on a burner account on X, formerly known as Twitter, with a large "Buy #BTC" (Bitcoin) watermark obscuring a large portion of the screen. It racked up more than one million views before it was taken offline, about half an hour after it first appeared.

Rockstar Games — owned by American publisher Take-Two Interactive — premiered the trailer properly later Monday evening, about 15 hours ahead of its scheduled Tuesday morning posting.

"Our trailer has leaked so please watch the real thing on YouTube," the company said on social media. As of Tuesday morning, it's racked up more than 68 million views.

The 90-second trailer, set to Tom Petty's Love Is A Long Road, said the game is scheduled to launch in 2025, although it didn't list a specific date.

In a media release, Rockstar confirmed the game is set to release on Sony's Playstation 5 and Microsoft's Xbox Series X & S consoles, but did not mention a potential PC or Nintendo Switch release.

"Grand Theft Auto VI continues our efforts to push the limits of what's possible in highly immersive, story-driven open-world experiences," Rockstar founder Sam Houser said in the release. "We're thrilled to be able to share this new vision with players everywhere."

Set in Vice City, the GTA games' analogue to Miami, we're introduced to a woman named Lucia and an unnamed male partner in love and/or crime. Earlier leaked reports suggested the game would feature two playable main characters in a Bonnie and Clyde-type relationship, including the first female protagonist in the series.

Female protagonist, familiar mayhem

We see scenes of sun-drenched beaches, street racing and outlaws being chased by the police — in other words, exactly the kind of thing fans of the satirical action-adventure series will be familiar with.

But alongside the requisite outlaw mayhem and bikini models, we get a look at the messier side of Vice City — including a man trying to wrangle an alligator out of a backyard pool and what appears to be an elderly man watering his lawn wearing only a thong and a sun visor.

Several scenes mimic social media feeds analagous to Instagram and TikTok, with shaky, vertical phone footage with a stream of social media comments on the side.

It's perhaps the most modern element seen so far of the series' satirical look at North American culture. The last instalment, Grand Theft Auto V, released in 2013.

While GTAV hit video game consoles more than a decade ago, it's remained a top seller, with more than 190 million copies sold. The sustained interest is mostly because of the enduring popularity of its online multiplayer mode, often just referred to as GTA Online.

The online mode's potential for multiplayer mayhem, bolstered by a large community of fans making unofficial modifications and additions, is the secret sauce to its continued popularity, said Rebekah Valentine a senior reporter for the video games website IGN.

"People are making things and running into each other and getting up to shenanigans in GTA Online in the same way one might do that in Minecraft or Fortnite," she said. "It has that same level of virality."

Constant updates by Rockstar have expanded the online component far beyond the initial single-player narrative GTAV launched with in 2013.

"It's essentially a sandbox; it can be molded to any game that people want to play in it — it's a racer, a shooter; it's everything really," said Jordan Middler, a reporter for the site Video Games Chronicle.

Much like their debut trailers for previous GTA games, the GTAVI trailer doesn't give much detail about what the game will play like. Instead, it focuses on brief character moments and setting a general vibe.

Reports had also emerged that Rockstar was cleaning up its work culture. Investigations ahead of its 2018 release Red Dead Redemption 2 described extreme overtime conditions, with some developers working 100-hour weeks in a phenomenon known in the games industry as "crunch."

More recent stories said the company had restructured its hierarchy to avoid or discourage excessive overtime, while also re-examining its writing and humour for GTAVI to avoid "punching down" humour the series had previously been known for.