GTA 6 pre-loads set a broadband record at Virgin Media O2 and congested a UK network

Virgin Media O2 had the biggest day in its broadband network's history on Tuesday November 10, the day GTA 6 pre-loading opened, the company said in a statement. It passed its old daily record at 23:05 that night, with the hours after midnight still to come.

Two records went in the same 24 hours. Total data for the day beat the previous high, set by the launch of Fortnite Chapter 7's Mini Season on November 1, by 4 percent. Peak traffic beat the previous high, set during Arsenal's Champions League semi-final against Atletico Madrid, by 3.8 percent.

What the numbers look like hour by hour

On PS5, pre-loading opened at midnight local time. In that first hour, from midnight to 1am, Virgin Media O2 measured 51.6 percent more broadband traffic than in the same hour on November 3. By 9am, its customers had pulled down 73.3 percent more data than in the equivalent period a week earlier.

"GTA VI is already proving to be a record-breaking moment for our network, with fans downloading the game in huge numbers before it launches," said Jeanie York, chief technology officer at Virgin Media O2. The company said customers on its Gig2 service can finish the download in under 15 minutes.

Other networks saw the same night

In the Netherlands, Ziggo, the country's second largest home broadband provider, told Telecompaper its traffic was 57 percent above normal around 00:15 on November 10, and that traffic across the whole night ran about 30 percent above usual.

One network did not absorb it. YouFibre told customers it had "a network capacity issue affecting the YouFibre network, due to the high demand of GTA 6 downloads", in an email reported by Dexerto. Chief executive Jeremy Chelot wrote on X that the game was "causing issue with one of our [Broadband Network Gateways]" and that "people around Yorkshire are currently suffering congestion". The company said afterwards that emergency traffic management work had spread the load across more of its network and that service was back to normal.

Why the download is this heavy

GTA 6 is a 212GB download on PS5, and Rockstar moved pre-loading forward to November 10 so that it would not all land on launch day. Some providers prepared for it: in the United States, Spectrum lifted eligible customers to gig speeds for the download window.

Virgin Media O2 also ran a survey of 520 UK adults who expect to play. Of those in work, 50 percent said they plan to take time off for the game, and 33 percent of that group plan to take two days or more. The group expects to play 17 hours in the first week.

GTA 6 launches on November 19, 2026 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.