Discord dethrones GTA 6 record for views on YouTube

Discord’s April Fools video surpassed the views garnered by the Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer in less than a day, but it appears that this was due to an accidental use of a viewbot.

It is customary to create April Fools pranks on the first day of April, and Discord made waves on April 1 after uploading a video to their official YouTube channel. However, this is not because of their trick content but rather the video's number of views within a short period.

The video, titled “Discord Loot Boxes Are Here,” managed to garner a record-breaking 628 million views, taking only 17 hours to reach that number. This took the record away from the first trailer for Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto 6, which had reached 93 million views within 24 hours.

The day after the video became available, a software developer examined it and found that Discord had “accidentally” implemented a YouTube view bot that was apparently responsible for the video streaming service's skyrocketing views.

Marvin Witt, who also created Discord Previews, revealed on his personal X account that Discord had included the video in the Toast notification promoting it. According to Witt, the video played on a loop in the background through the Toast notification, resulting in a “viewbot.”

Of course, all of these appear accidental, as Witt also attached a screenshot of a Discord senior developer expressing confusion about what happened.

The software’s official X account used humour to react to the reveal, first saying “Oops” and then expressing confusion at what it should do after achieving a world record after a user asked if the team would take steps to rectify the issue.

Discord's April Fools video currently has 1.4 billion views as of this time of writing.