First posted by the official French Netflix Twitter account back on the 13th of April, the tweet that started all of this simply read “Basically, GTA 6 is coming soon”. While it’s been an open secret for a while now that Rockstar is indeed working on the next title in the hyper-popular GTA franchise, what is it to Netflix? How would they have such insider info, or authorization to talk about it so casually?
— Netflix France (@NetflixFR) April 13, 2021 Despite the clear absurdity and strangeness of the whole affair marking it as something unofficial and un-serious, a tweet like that coming from what is ostensibly an official account set off serious waves of speculation, with some fans interpreting this as proof of an officially licensed Netflix series set in the GTA universe, or that somehow the streaming giant is involved with the publishing of a video game. The way the account responded, rather whimsically, to various comments under the thread of the original tweet further reinforced that whoever was behind the screen was clowning on the users. When asked when GTA 6 would be released, the reply read “Sometime between now and the end of the world” as well as the memetic response “Prochainement”, which is their equivalent of the “Soon™” joke. It quickly became apparent that the whole thing is some strange new brand of corporate joke, if not a very bored employee having a bit of a laugh on company time, so no real rumors took flight. While we don’t think anything legitimately related to GTA 6 is to be learned from this, it does raise some questions about what the reason for all this nonsense was in the first place. Grand Theft Auto 6 has been something of a white whale for the gaming community, as it is believed that GTA Online’s massive unprecedented, and continued, success has been responsible for the huge gap of time since the launch of GTA 5 and… whenever we will get another game. While Rockstar themselves have discussed some decisions going into the development of the new entry in the series, essentially confirming GTA 6’s existence, slowly but surely the unannounced title is gaining the same kind of status in the fandom as the mythic Half-Life 3.
— Netflix France (@NetflixFR) April 13, 2021 It’s also consistently one of the most searched terms online. A tweet about the announcement of GTA 6 likely boosted the French Netflix account’s SEO rating more than any other tweet they every posted. Lo and behold, a number of gaming outlets also reported on these shenanigans, us included. We don’t suspect anyone will be motivated to buy a Netflix subscription just because of a silly tweet, but who knows? Is this going to be the new marketing tactic employed by major companies where they just spew top search terms? In any case, if GTA 6 ever gets an official announcement, it will come from Rockstar Games - and if they ever do collaborate with Netflix, expect an announcement with more fanfare.
