A Reddit user spent five days surveilling Rockstar North's Edinburgh HQ with directional mics, a DIY oxygen sensor, car traffic logs, and cigarette counts to predict when Grand Theft Auto 6 Trailer 3 drops.
Just when you thought you'd seen it all from Grand Theft Auto fans, a Reddit user has spent the past week conducting what we can only describe as amateur surveillance of Rockstar North's Edinburgh headquarters using directional microphones, an oxygen sensor built from household electronics, luxury car traffic analysis, and cigarette butt counting. The goal? Find out when Grand Theft Auto 6 Trailer 3 drops by measuring the stress levels, meeting frequency, and executive presence of Rockstar employees from outside the building.
This is either the most dedicated fan investigation in gaming history or the most elaborate shitpost ever committed to Reddit.
Either way, it deserves to be documented and part of GTA history.
Investigation Escalation Timeline
| Day | Method | What They Did | What They Found |
|---|---|---|---|
Day 1 | Acoustic monitoring | Set up directional microphones aimed at suspected meeting rooms on the northwest side of the building to measure decibel levels | Equipment "mysteriously disappeared" when the fan returned to check the data; a passerby apparently took it |
Day 2 | Car traffic analysis | Manually tracked the number of cars, their estimated value, and arrival/departure times in the Rockstar North car park | Traffic increased after 5 PM; higher-value cars appeared in the evening, suggesting executive presence after business hours |
Day 3 | Oxygen monitoring | Built a sensor rig using an ESP32 microcontroller with a low-cost oxygen sensor, temperature sensor, and humidity sensor; samples every 30 seconds | Oxygen levels dropped to 20.3% and 20.04% after 5 PM, suggesting "increased oxygen consumption" from more people in the building after hours |
Day 4 (weekend) | Oxygen monitoring continued | Tracked oxygen levels on a Saturday to determine whether weekend activity was occurring | Decreased oxygen levels on a weekend; fan interprets this as proof that executives are meeting after hours |
Day 5 | Cigarette counting + shoe identification | Counted cigarette butts outside the building and identified the shoe brands of employees entering | 71 cigarettes over 19 hours across an estimated 11 people; identified Hugo Boss and RM Williams footwear as "signals of executive presence" |
Day 5 (current) | All methods combined | Retrieved the stolen acoustic equipment; now running decibel monitoring, oxygen tracking, and cigarette analysis simultaneously | Predicts Trailer 3 "this coming week" based on the combined data |
This is either the most dedicated fan investigation in gaming history or the most elaborate shitpost ever committed to Reddit.
Each new method is presented with genuine analytical framing, complete with graphs, sensor sketches, and statistical reasoning. For example, the oxygen sensor runs on an ESP32 microcontroller, while the cigarette analysis includes per-capita smoking rate calculations ("the average cigarettes for a consumer sits around 15, but today I counted 71"), and the shoe identification uses brand recognition to determine corporate hierarchy.
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Is it real or performance art? We can't say for sure. The posts are written with enough technical detail (ESP32 microcontrollers, 30-second sampling intervals, environmental context sensors) to suggest they're genuine. They're also absurd enough to suggest someone who knows exactly how ridiculous this is and is committed to the bit.
The prediction itself, that Trailer 3 drops "this coming week" based on cigarette butts and oxygen depletion, carries exactly as much analytical rigor as every other unofficial Trailer 3 prediction the community has produced this year. The Best Buy email that moved $2 billion in stock value was wrong, the Graczdari_91 prediction of a May 26 trailer was wrong, and the State of Play GTA 6 speculation was wrong.
A cigarette-based prediction has approximately the same track record as every other method.
The actual timeline for Trailer 3, as established by Take-Two Interactive in its 10-K filing and public statements made by Strauss Zelnick, is this summer. The marketing campaign begins around the solstice, while the pre-orders will inevitably follow.
No amount of oxygen monitoring or shoe identification changes the timeline that Rockstar Games has already set.
In the off chance that this person is genuinely sitting in a car park outside Rockstar North counting cigarettes and measuring oxygen levels, he should know that they recently had police respond to a YouTuber who entered the building, and Police Scotland confirmed they attend reports of unusual activity at the address.
Setting up electronic monitoring equipment outside a facility with $8 billion in SEC-filed revenue guidance attached to what is inside it is bound to have consequences.