When Discord released a video titled "Discord Loot Boxes are here." on Monday, April 1 they were certainly expecting to get some laughs out of the light-hearted April Fool's Day joke. What they (and no one else) were expecting was that the video's views would skyrocket to get hundreds of millions of views within hours and over a billion in less than a single day, seemingly taking Grand Theft Auto 6's 24-hour launch record. It was a short lived swap, however, as the view count on Discord's video has been changed to account for an accidental viewbot.

Discord kept it lighthearted in the days that followed on X as well, posting a short but sweet "oops" before replying with more light humor, saying things like they'd done something "just a lil silly" and asking if a phrase like "whoopsie doopsie" would be more enough to cover the situation.

Of course, just because the loot boxes are part of an April Fool's Day joke doesn't mean they're not real. You can actually open loot boxes in Discord right now until Monday, and if you open enough of the loot boxes to collect all nine rewards, you'll be well-rewarded with a fitting limited time reward – a clown avatar badge.

But if you want to know how we got here in terms of the view count fiasco, it was well explained by X user @NurM4rvin with a post stating "Discord managed to create a working YouTube view bot in 2024 by playing their loot box announcement trailer on loop in the background of the in-app toast". The thread also includes a screenshot of a Discord message from one of the developers at Discord succinctly expressing confusion about what happened, which you can see below.



Rockstar's Record Restored
As funny as the joke and the reward resulting from the Discord loot boxes are, the majority of the views weren't genuine and the view count has since been corrected and currently sits at 2,937,405 views as of writing this article, thus returning the record rightfully to Rockstar Games.

Rockstar previously set the record for 24-hour debut of a non-music video with the Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer. The trailer gained a massive 93 million views in just 24 hours, a record that was confirmed by YouTube on December 5, 2023. YouTube has always been a massive part of the GTA community, as is pointed out in the YouTube announcement.

The announcement states, "Our Creators have helped bring the games to life for millions of fans, and they have created a vibrant, creative community that continues to grow and evolve. Since the earliest days of the platform the Grand Theft Auto series has cultivated a massive gaming community on YouTube. From lets plays to machinima to mods, YouTube Creators have found endless ways to bring the GTA games to life, creating a world of content from San Andreas, Vice City, Liberty City and so much more."

Meanwhile, Grand Theft Auto 6's release is reportedly still on schedule, and Rockstar Games updated their community guidelines for online gaming this week.

Have you secured your clown badge of honor (or shame) on Discord? Let us know in the comments!

Posted: Apr 09, 2024 8:57 pm
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/gta-6-trailer-reclaims-youtube-record-from-discord/