It took all summer, but we’re finally getting a third look at Grand Theft Auto 6. Developer Rockstar Games announced Thursday that the long-anticipated “trailer 3” will be released at 3 p.m. ET on Thursday, Aug. 27, via… Netflix? Sure! Why not?

On one hand, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that Rockstar is eschewing traditional promotional models, given that GTA 6 is just about the most anticipated entertainment release of all time. The open-world crime game, which returns the series to its Miami-inspired setting of Vice City, hasn’t seen its hype train derailed by delays, by years of steadily heightening expectations, or by an abject lack of any gameplay footage to date. Its first trailer, from December 2023, has racked up nearly 300 million views on YouTube. May 2025’s second trailer also put up staggering numbers: nearly 200 million views.

As my colleague Giovanni Colantonio has noted, an unconventional preview strategy is par for the course for Rockstar Games. Where most game developers follow a typical roadmap — drop a teaser, then a gameplay trailer, then a story trailer, then follow those with a round of previews, interviews, and reviews — Rockstar plays its cards close to the chest. Trailers are minimal. Previews are orchestrated among a tightly curated group of media. Gameplay isn’t revealed until close to the wire, all things considered.

So far, GTA 6 has followed that cycle, but the Netflix reveal is an unexpected twist. (It’s worth noting that the two companies have a years-old partnership: In 2023, Rockstar released Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition on Netflix.) Perhaps it was borne out of security concerns; recall that the first GTA 6 trailer actually leaked, forcing Rockstar to release it earlier than planned. Or perhaps this is just a play to debut gameplay footage on screens that are bigger than six inches, to better convey what GTA 6 will actually look like on release; Netflix data, after all, suggests 70% of users stream programming on TV compared to mobile phone apps. Even so, that’s a hard sell in the middle of the afternoon on a workday.

It’s hard to see what the benefit for Netflix is here too, beyond perhaps a minor boost in subscriptions that people just cancel after a month anyway. After the third GTA 6 trailer debuts on Netflix, it will be made freely available to stream for everyone via YouTube and Rockstar’s official website just six hours later, at 9 p.m. ET. (Not to mention all the people who will inevitably attempt to rip it right away. This is the internet, after all.) By the time most people watch this thing, the Netflix branding will have faded away. Netflix is seriously one-upping Square Enix here in the art of needless platform exclusivity. That’s assuming what we’re getting here is just a trailer or extended gameplay footage — Netflix does host games on its platform, so there may be some kind of interactive element to this Aug. 27 reveal. But that feels pretty unlikely, given Rockstar’s reticence to share details about GTA 6 up to this point.

Fans spent the early part of the summer speculating when GTA 6’s third trailer would drop, hoping that it would be released in May, following an earnings call for publisher Take-Two Interactive, then again in late June, after it failed to appear during Summer Game Fest, or then in early July, shortly after pre-orders went live. Aug. 27 is just about the most chaotic time of the summer for it to drop.

Gamescom’s annual Opening Night Light stream airs on Tuesday, Aug. 25, an event that is historically followed by a week of previews diving further into the games (and World Premieres!) highlighted in the showcase. This is a critical moment for studios that promote games during Opening Night Live, one last chance to generate buzz before the busy fall gaming season begins. Now, it’s inevitable that GTA 6’s third trailer will command most of that attention.

But that’s been the beat for every step of GTA 6’s marketing. Rockstar doesn’t need to follow anything traditional in getting GTA 6 out there. It could break every rule in the book and still smash sales records with this thing. The people, they yearn to commit hijinks in Fake Miami, and will hoover up every morsel of news about it — whether or not they need to borrow their cousin’s friend’s ex’s Netflix password to do so.

GTA 6 will be released Nov. 19 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.