Things slowed down once again in week 21 and despite a 10% drop in activity, Grand Theft Auto V still managed to again take the number one position. A large chunk of GTAV’s press success came as a result of overflow content from the previous week, all based on the games giveaway on the Epic store, as such the retailer topic was the most popular with 25% of the games total coverage. There was a lot of articles put out in week 21 about sales charts and lifetime sales for a variety of games, GTAV appeared frequently within these articles which led the sales/player numbers topic to making up 17.4% of Grand Theft Auto V’s PR. Free to play/trial was also a well-covered topic off the back of the Epic news, the topic hit 11.8%. Fortnite moved from fourth to second week on week thanks to a surprising name, Christopher Nolan. What does Mr. Nolan have to do with Fortnite you might ask, well the director premiered a trailer for his upcoming film, Tenet, in Fortnite, which led the trailer topic to a 19.1% share of Fortnite’s PR coverage. eSports, an ever-present topic for Fortnite was up next with 11.5% which was then followed by DLC/content update at 6.8% as excitement builds for the next seasons launch. Third place belonged to Call of Duty: Warzone which benefitted from a 95% uptake in press happenings compared to the previous week. DLC/content update was the main order of the week at 13.7%, outlets discussed new updates, seasons, maps and characters. Bugs/issues/patches/updates was up next with 9.5% speaking about the patch notes predominantly, followed by in-game event with 9.2% where press spoke specifically about season 4. The Last of Us: Part 2 once again made it into the top ten, in week 21 the upcoming release grabbed the number four spot. The most covered topic for TLOU2 was special editions, as a themed PS4 was announced for the game. At 19.8% the second most popular topic was gameplay, as new footage was analysed and fawned over, the announcement topic followed with 9.8%, as a range of themed accessories were revealed alongside the branded PS4 console. Fifth place belonged to highly successful Animal Crossing: New Horizons which continues to move large amounts of units. Sales wasn’t the biggest topic though, that was guide/walkthrough with 25.2%. The sales/player number topic did manage a respectable 24% as a result of the numerous sales charts articles being published a lot of which Animal Crossing remains number one in. Up next with a much smaller 6.9% was bugs/issues/patches/updates as a new patch for the game was rolled out. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare returned to the top ten after a week out and came back in the sixth spot. DLC/content update was the most talked about topic in regards to Modern Warfare, the topic made up 14.2% of the press and the bulk of the articles talked about the games 4<sup>th</sup> season. Like other games in the top ten Modern Warfare featured heavily in articles about sales charts, the sales/player numbers topic accounted for 10.9% of the games overall PR. Bugs/issues/patches/updates was also up there as a popular subject for CoD:MW at 10.3%, most articles talking about the 1.22 update. Dropping from third in week 20 to seventh in week 21 was Ghost of Tsushima. Along with TLOU2, Ghost of Tsushima is getting ready for launch and as a result more details about the game are being revealed. One of these details that came out in week 21 was the size of the game when installed on the PS4, this led the technical details topic to a 11.5% chunk of the title’s coverage. Ghost of Tsushima also featured often within articles on the PS5 event that’s rumoured to be coming soon, outlets expect to see the game make it to the next gen console and this led the launch details topic to a 9.8% piece of the pie. The announcements topic was also up there with 9.3% with press pieces talking about a variety of things including but limited to the reveal of the games file size. Top Ten newcomer Mortal Kombat 11 – Aftermath secured the eighth spot after a new trailer dropped for the DLC. The “Friendships” trailer dominated the MK11 DLC’s press coverage and the trailer topic made up a whopping 64.8%. The next two chunks were significantly smaller; DLC/content update at 9.1% and gameplay at 8.4%. Valorant made its way into the Top Ten and in to the ninth position after a many week absence. An end date for the game’s beta and official release date were revealed in a stream as part of the Summer Games Fest, this news led the launch details topic to make up a 31.7% chunk of the game’s press. Much like other games in the genre a big part of Valorant’s PR came under the eSports topic in this case it was a 14.3% piece. The announcement of the Summer Games Fest stream, the launch date and some other eSports announces meant that the third most covered subject for Valorant was announcement and the topic accounted for 12.1% the overall coverage. Rounding out the Top Ten in week 21 was Mafia II: Definitive Edition, taking the place of Mafia: Trilogy from week 20. The special edition topic dominated here making up 40.4% of the coverage, launch details made up another 12.4% and then trailer at 7.6%. Announcement came next with 7.1%, gameplay with 6.7% and then review at 3.9%. The breakdown of the topics fell in line with what we would expect of a newly launching title.
