Elon Musk is no fan of 'GTA' — but X is desperate to bring the 'GTA 6' trailer to the platform
Elon Musk has voiced his love for video games like Elden Ring in the past. But there's one extremely popular game that Musk isn't a fan of: Grand Theft Auto.
"Tried, but didn’t like doing crime," Musk said in a reply to an X employee who said they had never played a GTA game before. "GTA5 required shooting police officers in the opening scene. Just couldn’t do it."
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GTA is a work of fiction – a video game – and playing it does not mean you are actually doing crime or shooting police officers. But Musk is entitled to his opinion. And GTA was certainly a big topic of conversation on Monday, after the trailer for GTA 6 leaked on Musk's social media platform a day before it was supposed to launch.
However, his opinion of one of the most popular video game franchises of all time isn't really the point here. It's that Musk openly shared his disdain for the game at the same time X CEO Linda Yaccarino publicly reached out to GTA 6 publisher Rockstar Games in hopes they'd upload the new game's debut trailer directly on X.
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"@RockstarGames — gaming is one of our most popular topics," Yaccarino posted on the platform formerly known as Twitter. "Drop that trailer here — give the people on @X what they want!!"
Musk seems to have a habit of undercutting Yaccarino, who he handpicked specifically as CEO to bring advertisers back to the platform due to her experience in the ad industry. Just last week, Musk told big brands like Apple and Disney to "go fuck yourself." This was in response to these companies suspending advertising on X over Musk's endorsement of an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
Yaccarino had previously boasted about the number of post views Rockstar Games' GTA 6 posts were receiving in the days leading up to the official trailer release, originally scheduled for Tuesday, Dec. 5.
"90+ million views in under 12hrs," the X CEO posted on Friday while sharing Rockstar Games' teaser post for the trailer release. "See you Tuesday!"
However, on Monday afternoon, the trailer was leaked by an anonymous X user named @Gta6trailerleak. While X suspended the account within an hour of the trailer leaking, the video was already making the rounds, forcing Rockstar Games to release the trailer on YouTube at 6:10 p.m. ET on Monday evening.
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At 9 a.m. ET on Tuesday, when the trailer was officially supposed to debut, Rockstar Games shared the trailer again on X by once again directing users to its official YouTube upload.
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As of publication time, the GTA 6 trailer has more than 74 million views on YouTube. As YouTube's biggest star MrBeast pointed out, the GTA trailer has already set a new YouTube record for most views within 24 hours.
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As of publication time, Rockstar Games has not uploaded the GTA 6 trailer directly to X.