Virgin Media O2: GTA VI Pre-Load Set Its Biggest-Ever Broadband Traffic Peak
The UK network says pre-load night on November 10 beat its Champions League traffic record by 3.8% and its daily data record by 4%.
Confirmed — Virgin Media O2 said it itself, in a press release on November 11, 2026.
The company says peak traffic during GTA VI’s pre-load “exceeded the previous record, set during Arsenal v Atlético Madrid in the Champions League, by 3.8%.” Between midnight and 1am on Tuesday, November 10, broadband traffic was up 51.6% on the Tuesday before. By 11.05pm that day, the total downloaded had beaten the previous record for an entire day, set by Fortnite on November 1. The day finished 4% above it.
Chief Technology Officer Jeanie York: “GTA VI is already proving to be a record-breaking moment for our network.”
Reported: Dexerto says another UK provider, YouFibre, emailed customers about “a network capacity issue” on pre-load day, and that service later returned to normal.
The limit of this story: these are one UK network’s own figures for its own customers. They are not worldwide numbers, and Rockstar has published no download figures. Virgin Media’s release calls the game 190GB; our own PS5 pre-load was 209.758 GB.
Sources
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