GTA is back

Hey, this is Vlad in sunny Hong Kong. The first trailer video for Grand Theft Auto VI is taking over the internet. But first...Three things [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hey, this is Vlad in sunny Hong Kong. The first trailer video for Grand Theft Auto VI is taking over the internet. But first... Three things you need to know today: • US tries to contain [hacks on water systems]( • Nvidia insiders [unloaded shares]( • Twilio is holding its [third round of layoffs]( Smooth criminal Gamers got an early present for the holidays Monday night. The [first trailer]( for the next Grand Theft Auto game was supposed to drop Tuesday morning, but the publisher Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. decided to release it early after a low-quality version of it leaked. Within hours, it had more than 50 million views plus 6.5 million likes and was the top trending item on YouTube’s gaming section as well as Twitter — excuse me, Elon Musk’s X. Online influencers are now posting their commentary and, if we’re lucky, we’ll get a treasure like [this reaction video]( from the first GTA V trailer 12 years ago. For my part, I love the richly saturated and sunny aesthetic shown in the trailer, which I’m sure will be in stark contrast to the shady acts of the antihero protagonists — who in this iteration of the franchise appear to be a Bonnie and Clyde duo roaming the streets of Miami. The leap in graphical fidelity from prior entries in the series is also evident. The excitement around GTA VI is hard to overstate. When Bloomberg broke the news last month that a trailer and more details were [coming](, it overshadowed even Taylor Swift’s attendance of Kansas City Chiefs games. A [post]( from GTA developer Rockstar Games on X announcing the date and time of the video’s planned release collected 180 million views and 2 million likes. That post contained no more than a still image. The game’s gravity managed to suck in other brands’ social media teams. Spotify Technology SA [wrote](, “gta 6 radio is going to put me out of business.” IGN, one of the biggest video game news publications, ran a YouTube livestream just counting down the days and hours to the release. They all came to soak in the halo effect not of a game but of a teaser to a trailer for a game. Here’s why everyone is so hyped: A decade ago GTA V reached $1 billion in sales [in three days](, faster than any other entertainment property in history, eclipsing even Hollywood’s finest. On top of that, the developer Rockstar Games built GTA Online, an appendage that extended the game’s life and popularity as an online multiplayer experience. In 2018, Rockstar released Red Dead Redemption II, a game widely lauded as among the best in recent memory. A good way to think about the whole thing is to imagine if Call of Duty were released once every 10 years instead of every year. GTA VI will let loose a decade’s worth of pent-up anticipation for a new story in the choose-your-own-lawless-adventure series. The trailer gave us hints about gameplay involving social media and livestreaming, it featured an aligator on the loose and promised a release date for the major console platforms in 2025. So now we wait. Rockstar didn’t need to wow anyone, and yet the positive immediate reaction to the trailer suggests that it did anyway. From here until release, fans will do much of the heavy lifting of hyping this game up, though the labeling of this as “trailer 1” tells us there’ll be more to whet appetites. —[Vlad Savov](mailto:vsavov5@bloomberg.net) The big story TikTok struggled to take down deepfake videos of people who died in the Israel-Hamas war. The videos often portray the likeness of a victim [talking about how they died](. One to watch [Watch the Bloomberg Technology TV interview]( with Anduril founder Palmer Luckey. Get fully charged Spotify cut 1,500 jobs. The CEO said the company [must be leaner](. It also [canceled two acclaimed podcasts](. Israel said it would provide whatever financial support the country’s technology industry [needs to withstand wartime](. AT&T chose Ericsson over Nokia for its [$14 billion network overhaul](. Andreessen Horowitz is helping push Mistral, a rival to OpenAI, to a [valuation nearing $2 billion](. 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