Grand Theft Auto 6 pre-orders did not open on May 18, 2026, despite a Best Buy affiliate email that briefly moved Take-Two Interactive's stock value by $2 billion.
Tragic - the Best Buy affiliate email that added $2 billion to Take-Two Interactive's market cap in a single morning appears to have been wrong. On May 18, 2026, hours before the community expected pre-orders to go live, a GTAForums user named Graczdari_91 posted the following:
I don't want to disappoint anyone. But internal company emails suggest that Best Buy has got it wrong and no pre-orders will be launching today. Things might change at the last minute, but I'd advise keeping your expectations in check.
The forum's chief administrator, Spider-Vice, verified the user's identity in direct messages. According to Spider-Vice, Graczdari_91 holds a high-ranking position at a European distribution company and provided evidence that pre-orders were not going live. The company email used to register the GTAForums account matched the user's professional email. True enough, Grand Theft Auto 6 pre-orders did not open on May 18.
As of this writing, they have not opened at all.
Best Buy GTA 6 Pre-Order Timeline
| Date | Event | What the Community Believed | What Actually Happened |
|---|---|---|---|
May 13 | Best Buy affiliate email surfaces via FrogBoyX1Gaming | Pre-orders open May 18; Trailer 3 imminent | Email was real; dates were apparently wrong |
May 14 | Take-Two stock surges 10% (+$2B market cap) | Market confirms the leak is credible | Market reacted to speculation, not confirmation |
May 14 | Tom Henderson (Insider Gaming) verifies email is authentic | Email is real, therefore dates are real | Henderson later said he does not believe pre-orders open Monday |
May 16 | Henderson says July or August is more likely | Community splits; debate intensifies | Henderson's sources had not heard of May 18 plans |
May 17 | Zelnick confirms November 19 on Founders podcast | Date is locked; pre-orders must be coming | Date confirmed but no pre-order announcement accompanied it |
May 18 | Graczdari_91 posts on GTAForums; Spider-Vice verifies | Best Buy got it wrong; no pre-orders today | Pre-orders did not open |
May 18 | Entire day passes with no Rockstar announcement | Hope shifts to May 19-21 (Best Buy window ran to May 21) | Rockstar said nothing |
Here is what happened, what went wrong, and what is actually left to watch for.
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The email was real. Tom Henderson confirmed it was sent through Impact, a legitimate affiliate marketing network, and several more insiders and outlets verified the email independently. Unfortunately, while the email was legitimate and indeed sent out, the information in it was evidently incorrect.
It's possible Best Buy's affiliate team used a placeholder date that was either an old internal estimate from before the delays, or a projected window that was never confirmed by Rockstar Games or Take-Two Interactive. This would explain why the email, which indeed happened and was sent out, is both real and wrong.
The "damage control" language from videotech's post is interesting. If Best Buy simply made a mistake, all they need to do is to correct it. However, the term "damage control" implies that the premature email created a problem that multiple parties are now working to contain. We won't rule out Best Buy's relationship with Take-Two going south because the leak moved $2 billion in its market cap based on incorrect information.
'Damage control' could mean the affiliate network is handling fallout from creators who promoted the date to their audiences. It could also mean Best Buy is internally disciplining whoever sent the email before the dates were confirmed. For what it's worth, pre-orders were never going to exist in a vacuum. It's not just Rockstar's MO to open pre-orders without accompanying marketing material.
There was never going to be a pre-order page without a Trailer 3, edition details, and pricing confirmation. Even if the dates had been correct, the Best Buy email would have followed a trailer drop, edition reveals, pricing confirmation, and a simultaneous launch across every retailer on Earth within a single weekend. The studio that has shown less of this game to the public than any major release in modern history was never going to break its silence because Best Buy's affiliate team sent an email.
The May 21 earnings call remains the next official checkpoint. Strauss Zelnick will take the stage on Wednesday. He will almost certainly provide a marketing update. For now, the silence continues, and we just learned, again, that the only source of GTA 6 information that matters is Rockstar alone.