UPDATE 9/1: Analysts read the crash as a demand signal, with Newzoo estimating GTA 6 sales could hit $4.5 billion by launch week and Take-Two closing Friday at $239.93.
The first thing Netflix’s six-hour GTA 6 exclusive did was fall over.
Per Downdetector, Netflix error reports hit 3,129 at 2:49 p.m. ET Thursday, eleven minutes before Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look was scheduled to premiere.
Fans who opened the app got Netflix’s “Something went wrong” screen and error code NSEZ-503 instead of Jason and Lucia.
YouTuber Tyrone Magnus, who has 2.05 million subscribers, caught it on camera. His reaction video went up under the title “Netflix CRASHED on My GTA 6 Extended Look Reaction!” and opens on the error screen instead of the game.
Three Thousand Reports In Twenty Minutes
Reports indicate that Downdetector data show 38 percent of complaints were about Netflix’s website, 27 percent about server connections, and 22 percent about video streaming, with the outage happening in bigger cities.
Netflix quickly recovered, as by the time GTA 6 went live, things stabilized, per the above screenshot, in roughly about 5 minutes.
Netflix Built A Live Event Out Of A Pre-Recorded Video
However, this is a pattern for the streamer.
Netflix’s servers buckled under the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight, the Love Is Blind live reunion, and the Stranger Things series finale on New Year’s Eve, the second time that final season knocked the platform over.
Those were live.
The Extended Look is a 26-minute video captured on a PS5 weeks ago.
The only reason it hit Netflix like a live event is that Rockstar and Netflix built it like one: a fixed 3 p.m. start and a six-hour window before the same footage goes free on YouTube at 9 p.m. ET.
Every subscriber who wanted the head start showed up at the same minute, and the service did what it does when that happens.
Which is the whole argument for the deal in a single error screen.
Asked why the reveal was on Netflix at all, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said fans would “understand more” once they saw it.
Thursday’s explanation: enough people wanted 26 minutes of GTA 6 at 3 p.m. on a weekday to take down the biggest streaming service on earth, briefly, before the show had even started.
It’s also what the exclusive cost the people who paid for it.
The subscribers who signed up for the head start got NSEZ-503, while Cyberleek’s stolen clips have been free on X for ten days. Rockstar put its game behind a paywall for six hours, and the paywall broke.
The Extended Look goes free on Rockstar’s YouTube channel at 9 p.m. ET. The 26 minutes themselves, and the 80-hour playthrough Rockstar’s studio head finished in February, are covered here.
GTA 6 launches November 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
Related: Why the GTA 6 reveal is on Netflix, per Zelnick, the Extended Look premiere details, and Rockstar’s leak statement.
