On 21 November 2024, Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA 6) was crowned "Most Wanted Game" at the 42nd annual Golden Joystick Awards, held in London and presented by GamesRadar+ (Psy, 2024). The Golden Joystick Awards, established in 1983, are one of the longest-running and largest public-voted video game award ceremonies, with winners selected by millions of fans worldwide via online ballot (Chalk, 2024). The "Most Wanted Game" category specifically honours the upcoming, unreleased title that generated the most consumer anticipation during the voting window, making it a direct barometer of mainstream hype rather than a measure of finished quality.
GTA 6's win marked Rockstar Games' first triumph in the Most Wanted Game category since Grand Theft Auto V claimed the same prize in 2012, underlining the cultural staying power of the franchise across more than a decade of consumer anticipation (Tassi, 2024). It also placed GTA 6 in a small group of titles whose pre-release hype was deemed strong enough to overwhelm a field that, in 2024, included other heavily anticipated projects such as Monster Hunter Wilds, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, Ghost of Yotei, Doom: The Dark Ages and Borderlands 4 (Chalk, 2024).
The 2024 ceremony was hosted virtually on YouTube and Twitch, with the Most Wanted Game segment appearing roughly two hours and twenty-seven minutes into the broadcast (Psy, 2024). Black Myth: Wukong took the top Ultimate Game of the Year prize, while GTA 6's recognition was confined to the forward-looking Most Wanted slot — appropriate given that, at the time, the game had only been formally unveiled via a single trailer released on 4 December 2023 (Chalk, 2024). Despite no gameplay footage, no firm release date beyond "2025" and no playable demos, the title beat every competitor in the public vote, illustrating how Rockstar Games' brand equity translated directly into ballot-box dominance.
The Most Wanted Game award is particularly notable because it prompted Rockstar Games' first public statement about GTA 6 since the trailer launched nearly twelve months earlier. An unnamed Rockstar representative accepted the trophy in person, delivering brief but widely-circulated remarks (Psy, 2024):
"Thank you so much for this incredible award, also, a massive thank you to all the fans. They're the most important thing for us and they mean a lot to us at Rockstar. There's an incredible amount of people doing amazing things on Grand Theft Auto 6. Absolutely mind-blowing things. So it's a real honor to be able to come up here and accept this award on everyone's behalf. I wish more of us could be here. But thank you very much everybody, and yeah — more to come. Thank you."
The phrase "absolutely mind-blowing things" was seized upon by gaming press as a teaser, with PC Gamer, GamesRadar+ and other outlets running headlines centred entirely on those three words (Chalk, 2024). The comment "more to come" was widely interpreted as confirmation that further marketing — most obviously a second trailer — was imminent, though that trailer would not materialise until May 2025.
The win is significant for three reasons. First, it provided objective, public-vote evidence that GTA 6 remained the most anticipated unreleased game in the industry roughly a year after its reveal, despite an unusually quiet marketing cadence (Tassi, 2024). Second, it validated Rockstar's reveal-and-retreat strategy: a single trailer had generated sustained anticipation strong enough to defeat properties with active marketing campaigns. Third, it broke a twelve-year drought for Rockstar in this specific category and supplied the studio with a low-risk platform to re-engage the public without committing to new release-date or content disclosures. In retrospect, the 2024 win also foreshadowed GTA 6's second consecutive Most Wanted Game victory at the 2025 Golden Joystick Awards, putting it in a club previously occupied only by Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (MSN, 2025).
Chalk, A. (2024) 'Rockstar teases "absolutely mind-blowing things" in the works as Grand Theft Auto 6 wins Most Wanted Game at the Golden Joystick Awards', PC Gamer, 21 November. Available at: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rockstar-teases-absolutely-mind-blowing-things-as-grand-theft-auto-6-wins-most-wanted-game-at-the-golden-joystick-awards/ (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
MSN (2025) 'GTA 6 won Golden Joystick Most Wanted Game twice like Cyberpunk 2077', MSN News, 24 November. Available at: https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/techandscience/gta-6-won-golden-joystick-most-wanted-game-twice-like-cyberpunk-2077/ar-AA1QUq41 (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Psy (2024) 'GTA VI Wins Golden Joystick's Most Wanted Game Award', GTAVice.net, 21 November. Available at: https://www.gtavice.net/news/gta-vi-wins-golden-joysticks-most-wanted-game-award (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Tassi, P. (2024) 'GTA 6 Wins Most Wanted Game at the Golden Joystick Awards 2024', GamesRadar+, 21 November. Available at: https://www.gamesradar.com/games/grand-theft-auto/gta-6-wins-the-most-wanted-game-award-at-the-golden-joystick-awards-2024/ (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Wikipedia (2025) 'Golden Joystick Awards', Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Joystick_Awards (Accessed: 14 May 2026).