GTA V: The Record Breaker

Three days, one billion dollars

Grand Theft Auto V launched on September 17, 2013, for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Within 24 hours it had brought in more than 800 million dollars, about double what analysts expected. Three days after release it passed one billion dollars, which made it the fastest-selling entertainment product in history, faster than any film, album or game before it.

On October 8, 2013, Guinness World Records handed it seven records at once, including best-selling video game in 24 hours, highest-grossing video game in 24 hours and fastest entertainment property to gross one billion dollars.

The game that kept selling

Most hits fade. Grand Theft Auto V kept coming back. It was re-released for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on November 18, 2014, for PC on April 14, 2015, and in an expanded and enhanced version for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on March 15, 2022. Players bought more copies in 2020 than in any year since launch.

It has now shipped more than 220 million copies, which places it third on the all-time chart, behind only Tetris and Minecraft. Wikipedia's best-selling list puts it at about 230 million by 2026. Reports put its lifetime revenue at nearly ten billion dollars, one of the biggest totals for any entertainment product ever made.

Built by more than 1,000 people

Rockstar North in Edinburgh led development, which began around the release of Grand Theft Auto IV in 2008, with staff from Rockstar studios worldwide taking the team past 1,000 people. The studio overhauled its RAGE engine to draw a huge open world, the fictional state of San Andreas built around Los Santos, Rockstar's take on Los Angeles, and sent team members on field research trips around California.

The game's radio stations carried more than 240 licensed tracks, and its design gave players three lead characters to switch between, a first for the series.

The online engine

Grand Theft Auto Online launched on October 1, 2013, two weeks after the main game, and Rockstar has supported it with free updates ever since, most recently a summer 2026 update in July. Online is a big reason the game still matters: market researcher Circana ranked Grand Theft Auto V as the third most-played game on PlayStation in the US in both 2024 and 2025.

In the UK it also became the fastest-selling game on record at the time, selling more than 2.25 million copies in five days.

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