GTA 6 Special Preview Crashes Netflix, And Millions of Gamers Are Scrambling

Over the past calendar year, Netflix has been the prime spot for major debuts. New Year’s Eve delivered the series finale of Stranger Things, which immediately knocked the servers out as fans were eager to see the ending of the show, and that was the second time that Stranger Things Season 5 had managed to crash the platform. There have been a handful of other times that Netflix has crashed as well, as subscribers flocked to something making its debut, most of which was live content, such as the Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul fight and the Love Is Blind Live Reunion. Now, perhaps the biggest Netflix debut of the year has arrived, and the same result has occurred.

Thursday, August 27 has been circled on the calendar for countless gamers around the world, as it marks the day that Rockstar would roll out Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look on the streaming platform. Clocking in at 27 minutes, fans have been antsy to see more of the highly anticipated new video game, and that fact has been made clear as Netflix is struggling to stay alive during its premiere. A 3 PM premiere time was confirmed previously for the new first look, and even amid all the leaks of footage from the game, it would appear that every fan logged onto Netflix at the exact same time, and as a result, it crashed…again.

Grand Theft Auto VI Special Crashes Netflix

The 3 PM premiere time for Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look has been on the books for weeks now, meaning that not only did every gamer in existence know that basically a TV-length trailer for GTA6 was inbound, but Netflix knew there would be a huge demand. To that end, one would have expected they’d be ready to meet it, and at first it didn’t seem to be true. As expected, fans flocked to watch it, and sent the servers crashing down. Their second step after crashing Netflix was, of course, to complain about it on social media.

All that said, and despite countless tweets lamenting the crash of Netflix just minutes before the premiere of Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look, it would appear the streamer has very quickly gotten its act together. As of this writing, four minutes past the hour, the streamer appears to be doing fine, with fans watching and engaging with the special without problem.

For an idea of how grim the picture looked, though, the website Down Detector tracked thousands of complaints that Netflix was down and inaccessible. Just thirty minutes before Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look was released, the number of complaints was 35 (with a baseline of “5” reports potentially meaning problems with the service. Right now, there are over 3000 notices of errors on Netflix. Down Detector’s map of outage reports is also at its hottest in the places one might expect: populated cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

The good news for fans that can’t access it is that it seems Netflix is making things right quickly, and it should be streamable soon. Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look will also debut on YouTube in just a matter of hours, too.