Rockstar Games does not do small talk. It's the type of studio that can go months without talking to its community, so when the official @rockstargames account quietly followed a cluster of the biggest streamers on the planet within days of teasing its first real look at Grand Theft Auto VI, people noticed.
In total, Rockstar followed six streamers, several of them fixtures in the Grand Theft Auto role-playing scene, and they landed on the list right as Rockstar preps Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look, the Netflix-first reveal set for August 27.
If you are about to drop the first meaty gameplay footage in nearly two years, you want the people who will spend that night reacting to it in front of millions already in your corner, which Rockstar has apparently okay'ed already.
The creators in question are not random picks, either. Several are role-play heavyweights, MoistCr1TiKaL has been streaming his way through classic GTA titles and Jynxzi has been folding GTA content into his streams for months. These are the exact accounts you would warm up before an event you need to trend worldwide.
The Six Streamers, and Why Each Fits a GTA 6 Push
Creator | Who they are | Why the follow fits |
|---|---|---|
Valkyrae | Variety streamer, 100 Thieves co-owner | Role-play scene mainstay |
Fuslie | Variety streamer | Role-play regular |
MoistCr1TiKaL | Massive YouTube and Twitch creator | Currently playing older GTA games |
Jynxzi | Fast-rising Twitch star | Has featured GTA on stream |
TimTheTatman | Top US streamer | No GTA tie, but enormous reach |
BrookeAB | 100 Thieves creator | Broad gaming audience (some snapshots list xQc instead) |
The recent follows most likely to power launch-night reaction streams, and the GTA link behind each.
Of course, the exact roster of recent follows by Rockstar changes depending on when you grab the snapshot. Even so, the meat of the story remains. Six well-chosen creators now have one of the most influential video game developers in the industry on their follower list and that says plenty despite the studio's silence.
As for Rockstar's other more recent follows, they aren't nobody either. Erling Haaland plays for Manchester City and recently named Grand Theft Auto V as one of his favorite titles. Meanwhile, Danny Dyer is an English actor who lent his talents to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Finally, Prospa, a British electronic dance act, has no clear GTA ties, and Marcha Powder is a film account starring Danny Dyer.
This is where we pump the brakes. Rockstar hasn't confirmed anything,and the narrative isn't perfect. Follows cost Rockstar nothing and it isn't a commitment to anything. What it does is it lets everyone else do the speculating and hype for free, a convenient position Rockstar has taken more often than not in recent years.
With that said, if ever Rockstar is lining up creators, it slots perfectly into what Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick previously promised as the shortest and most intense marketing run the series has ever had. Handing the Extended Look to streamers for launch-night reactions would stretch a single Netflix event across thousands of livestreams and reach the younger, casual crowd that does not follow gaming news but absolutely follows someone like Valkyrae.
For a game that has grown too big for the industry around it, turning your reveal/show into everyone's content for a night is an opportunity too good to pass up on.
Let's just hope we get actual viewership numbers instead of Zelnick dodging the actual figure for August 27.