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It looks like Grand Theft Auto 6 has received some reputational hit after all.
As reported by RockstarIntel, Grand Theft Auto 6 is the 7th most searched game in Google’s Year in Search 2025 list. It gave way to these games in the top 6 slots:
- Arc Raiders
- Battlefield 6
- Strands
- Split Fiction
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- Path of Exile 2
The list was rounded out by Pokémon Legends Z-A, MineCraft, and Roblox.
Is The Grand Theft Auto 6 Hype Cycle Dead?
It must be said that Google’s list of most searched games does not seem to match how game releases have turned out so far.
For example, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is now going back up the charts after initial news suggesting the game had lost ground to Arc Raiders and Battlefield 6. This is one of many games that we know are huge hits this year, but didn’t show up in this list at all.
We imagine you’re also wondering what Strands even is. This is a word search game that’s part of the New York Times Games Library. It’s certainly a video game, but maybe not one that’s relevant for PC and console gamers.
So maybe this isn’t a particularly urgent metric for Rockstar and Take-Two to worry about. But in an imperfect way, it does reflect on something that Take-Two does need to consider.
Grand Theft Auto 6 Needs More Marketing
As we have explained before, video game companies have adopted a limited marketing campaign for a reason. There is research that revealed that most video game marketing is most useful in the two weeks before it releases.
The idea is that if game companies do marketing for a longer period of time, consumers will forget about it and miss the release date.
This research has led to the unhappy state of video game marketing that fans have been decrying for years now.
But Take-Two needs to disregard that research for this situation. They’re allowing fans to fester in negativity for Grand Theft Auto 6.
This is not a call for Rockstar to speed up development, or for Take-Two to spend big bucks on yearlong advertising. But they have to do something about Grand Theft Auto 6’s decreasing reputation.
Even with Grand Theft Auto 6 expected to be the biggest launch the industry has ever seen, there’s a very real chance that it can fail.
That’s of course because they need to sell enough copies to pay for its development and marketing budget, with a margin to make investors happy.
While more marketing does not guarantee success, they can guarantee failure if they let this slide. We know they can’t course correct on this overnight, but they do have nearly a year to work on it.
