When a big game launch looms on the horizon, smaller publishers run for the hills. They upend their launch strategies to avoid competing for players’ money and, more preciously, their time. GTA VI is the next upcoming hyped game launch: A title with a production value of over $1B dollars and a legacy among both hardcore and casual gamers alike.
On live-streaming platforms, this is particularly true. With GTA V being the most watched game among live-streaming audiences over multiple years (even despite its age), other publishers’ concerns seem totally justified; especially for anyone relying on using influencer marketing campaigns on Twitch or other platforms to get the word out about their game. So let’s look at how prior hyped games impacted viewership of similar games back when they launched, and run through some approaches publishers might take to minimize the damage from GTA VI’s release…
The Industry Plays it Cautious Around GTA VI’s Release Date(s)
But first: Some “state-of-the-industry” discourse around GTA VI’s upcoming release. If you take it from Take-Two Interactive’s CEO Strauss Zelnick, GTA VI is basically too big to fail. Zelnick goes as far as to say that “the market’s anticipation is at fever pitch” and “it probably doesn’t matter” whether the game capitalizes on releasing during holiday season. This kind of confidence is justified based on the series’ track record: During the month that GTA V released, 50% of all gaming revenue in the U.S. came from that title alone. While some publishing heads like Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot maintain a positive view that big releases bring more players into the industry, most publishers feel these GTA VI players aren’t coming straight to them and waited to hear news from Take-Two before making any launch plans of their own.
Of course, as Take-Two and Rockstar are wont to do, they soon announced that the anticipated Fall 2025 release date for GTA VI would be pushed back to May 2026 instead. Publishers then scrambled to realign their launches and fill back in the Fall 2025 launch slot; in fact, Take-Two themselves are now releasing Mafia: The Old Country in that release window. It makes you wonder if this was all a strategy to entice GTA VI fans into trying another one of the publisher’s series… In any case, this was a huge relief for publishers that had committed to the Fall 2025 launch window. This is particularly true for games that are similar to GTA VI: If you’re interested in exactly what those games are, Christopher Dring over at The Game Business partnered with Ampere and Press Engine to create a general overview of what games might have the most overlap with GTA VI and how the game is likely to dominate media coverage.
For our part, we want to dive into how similar games will perform on live streaming when GTA VI releases by looking at how some other much-hyped games have shaken up platforms and influencer marketing strategies in the past.
The Effect of Three Hyped Games on Live Streaming: Diablo IV, Elden Ring, and Monster Hunter Wilds
We’re going to look at three of the most hyped game launches from the past few years: Diablo IV, Elden Ring, and Monster Hunter Wilds. These are games that were near-sure successes due to the sheer publicity around them and the reputation that their series built up over decades. Their impact on live streaming is incredible: In their respective release months, these games accounted for as much as 6.5% of all live-streaming viewership (in the case of Diablo IV). Keep in mind that’s ALL live-streaming viewership, not just games – that includes any IRL, Travel, or Just Chatting content, too. Among just games, this proportion increases by 0.5-1% in each case. With GTA V being by far the most watched game on Twitch, GTA VI will no doubt shatter these numbers and could hit above 10% of total viewership.
The games that should be afraid of these shockwaves are those in similar genres and with similar audiences. With that in mind, we dove into the viewership over time for similar games to the big three titles we’ve outlined above.
As the latest entry in the OG ARPG series, Blizzard’s Diablo IV drew in masses of viewership from both the genre’s core fanbase and curious newcomers to the series. When Diablo IV released back in June of 2022, viewership of its main competitor title Path of Exile plummeted from over 4M weekly hours watched a couple months before to just ~200K hours watched. On a quick sidenote: Previous Diablo titles also mostly dropped off at the same time, while smaller titles like Last Epoch stood no chance against Blizzard’s monolithic franchise.
But back on Path of Exile: A month and a half after Diablo IV’s release, viewership for the competitor was able to rebound back to upwards of 3M weekly hours watched. It may be that players had exhausted their fun from Diablo IV, or perhaps players looking for a more “hardcore” alternative turned to Path of Exile to sate their needs (a label well-earned through a clever bit of positioning from publisher Grinding Gear Games). We might call this approach “weathering the storm” – in other words, Path of Exile waited for hype to die off from Diablo IV, conserved their resources, then used a renewed marketing push to pick up players that had fallen off the Diablo IV bandwagon. Releasing Path of Exile 2 a year later put the fledgling series one step ahead of Diablo.
A similar “wiping-out” effect came in the lead up to Elden Ring’s release back in February of 2022, with RPGs like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt all declining in viewership and then flatlining around the game’s release. FromSoftware’s open-world title gave RPG fans all they could hope for in terms of challenging combat, in-depth worldbuilding, and elaborate storytelling. The fact that these competitor RPGs didn’t rebound like Path of Exile might be attributed to them being single-player and static in nature: There’s no ongoing community like with live service games, and the bulk of the enjoyment had already been found in original playthroughs of the game.
What is interesting, however, is that viewership of FromSoftware’s other Souls-like titles (Dark Souls III, Bloodborne) actually increased in the lead-up to Elden Ring’s release. This coverage was likely a celebration of the publisher’s library, with the community rallying together pre-emptively. There may have been an element of nostalgia here too, using the new release as an opportunity to revisit cherished titles. Once Elden Ring released, these viewers then transferred over to the new title and these old games plummeted back down. Publishers of much-loved series could learn from this example, even hosting events for older games in the lead up to a new entry in the series.
Our third example, Monster Hunter Wilds, is a little different. While strictly speaking the game is an RPG (or even a JRPG), it eschews many of the conventions of those titles. Instead, the game’s dominant element is its core gameplay loop: Research monsters, prepare your equipment, hunt them, then craft new gear from their loot. This gameplay loop and the online nature of Monster Hunter Wilds puts it more in line with MMORPGs than JRPGs, and so we’ve investigated how other MMOs from Asia fared around the time of its release (though it is worth noting that RPG title Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii moved its release date up by a week to avoid Monster Hunter Wilds’ launch window).
As seen with previous examples, viewership of similar titles like Lost Ark and Black Desert Online dropped around the time of Monster Hunter Wilds’ release, albeit not as dramatically. Final Fantasy XIV Online was a more interesting case, seeing peaks in viewership on either side of Monster Hunter Wilds’ release. As the most similar title (also coming from a legacy franchise), Final Fantasy XIV is the best indicator of how pre-existing titles might be affected by hyped game launches.
Looking across all three examples, the shape of their curves is interesting: While it’s true that their viewership spikes dramatically upon release, this massive interest is short-lived. The demand for hyped game launches seems to last 6-8 weeks at most, from roughly the week before the game’s launch to a month or so afterwards. For publishers trying to avoid the release windows of much-hyped games altogether, this is the danger zone.
Streamers Ride the Wave of Hyped Game Launches
While game publishers are cautious of hyped game launches, streamers revel in them. These games bring new viewers to live-streaming platforms and re-engage old fans who only turn to live streaming for particularly popular series. For some Twitch streamers this effect can be dramatic, boosting their viewership ranks up into the Top 100 as seen with the likes of AdmiralBahroo for Elden Ring (rank increase of 153) or VTuber Kanae Ch. (叶ちゃんねる) with Monster Hunter Wilds (rank increase of 54). The biggest jumps come to streamers who are experts within their respective genre and/or franchise, like ARPG pro wudijo who jumped 1204 ranks up to #17 (across all of Twitch!) and increased his followers by 123.5% from Diablo IV content.
It’s no wonder, then, that streamers feel obligated to cover these much-hyped game releases, even when they might be outside of their typical content. As streamers flood to new game releases, their attention is diverted away from other games launching at the same time – and there’s a real fear they won’t come back to play those titles once the hype has died down. Publishers of other games considering influencer marketing campaigns in the same release window should be aware that it’ll take better incentives to attract influencers’ attention during this time, and might be better either getting in early or targeting influencers with vastly different content.
How To Plan Around GTA VI’s Eventual Release Date
So, we’ve established what many publishers already suspected: If you’ve got a similar game coming out around the same time as a hyped game launch, you can expect live-streaming attention to gravitate towards the more talked-about title. Launching your game in the release window for GTA VI is like putting yourself directly in the firing line, and the safe play is to avoid the launch window altogether. In the words of one gaming exec, “GTA VI is basically a huge meteor and we will just stay clear of the blast zone”.
But you do have other options worth exploring. Instead of ducking for cover, why not try positioning yourself directly on either side of the game’s launch window to capitalize on the influx of interest in gaming? This was Baldur’s Gate 3’s strategy to avoid being captured in the wake of Starfield’s release back in late 2023: The release date was moved to just before Starfield to beat it to the punch. Aside from being a well-crafted game, this strategy also worked because Baldur’s Gate 3 had an entirely different aesthetic and core gameplay philosophy to Starfield (despite both being RPGs). Additionally, Baldur’s Gate 3’s D&D-inspired combat targeted a different segment of gamers than those who would enjoy the gunplay of Starfield.
The bold option (see: risky) is to compete with hyped game launches anyway. If you believe your title is polished and offers something unique, you might just get away with it. When Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 launched on the 24th of April 2025, publishers Kepler Interactive had a potential nightmare scenario on their hands: The much-anticipated The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion: Remastered surprise-launched just two days prior, another RPG which no doubt had massive overlap with Clair Obscur’s planned audience. And yet, Clair Obscur still had an incredible launch, landing on its feet thanks to its novel aesthetic, its pre-release marketing campaign, and (thankfully) word-of-mouth support from the Oblivion Remastered team who were fans of the game. Though Kepler Interactive might not have done this on purpose, the end result was positive.
Of course, most of the time this strategy is a disaster. Take the now famous example of Alan Wake launching at the same time as Red Dead Redemption: The former game was completely overshadowed by the latter due to competing on the same platform (despite Alan Wake’s widely recognized stellar quality). This setback hurt confidence in the series, and it took developer Remedy Entertainment another 13 years to get a shot at a sequel. This story is by far the most common one, and so it’s no surprise that most publishers are opting not to compete with GTA VI.
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When GTA VI releases, other, dissimilar games might be able to weather the storm. But with so many influencers passionately covering GTA VI (if for no other reason than the obvious boost to their viewerships), this will greatly restrict which influencers other publishers can reach out to. This will also largely depend on the online functionality of GTA VI on launch – will streamers be able to hop straight into RP servers, some of the most popular live-streaming content for GTA V? At any rate, the pool for potential viewers will be diminished for any game trying to go up against the gaming titan: Publishers should instead consider how they can ride the wave of GTA VI’s success to boost viewership of their own game instead of crashing headfirst into the swell.
Alternatively, you could just plan to release your game on May 26th and gamble on Rockstar delaying GTA VI’s launch again…
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