The year is 2026, and in a move that surprises absolutely nobody who has paid even a passing glance at the games industry, a certain 2013 open-world crime simulator has once again clawed its way to the top of the UK all-formats chart. Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V has toppled Techland’s zombie-fest Dying Light—itself no spring chicken—thanks to a staggering 49% week-on-week sales surge. The reason? A brand-new batch of Online Heists, lovingly repackaged for modern audiences, proving that the best way to sell a game in 2026 is to remind everyone it still exists. 🏆

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Observers with long memories will recall that Dying Light had been comfortably squatting in pole position, much like a particularly stubborn Volatile on a rooftop. Now it must settle for second, while FIFA 15—yes, you read that correctly, FIFA 15—glides into third. EA’s strategy of annually cycling through its back catalogue as ‘Classic Legacy Editions’ has clearly paid off; this month’s retro darling features a slightly upscaled grass texture and a mode called Ultimate Team: Time Capsule, where all the legends are the same as they were in 2014. Some things never change. ⚽

Elsewhere in the top 20, the charts read like a fever dream confected by a dusty second-hand game shop. Minecraft appears not once but twice: the Xbox One/360 Edition sits at number four, while the PlayStation 4/3/Vita bundle clings on at seven. Microsoft and Sony have kept these versions alive through sheer force of will and a steady drip-feed of texture packs that add, for example, slightly different dirt. The building phenomenon refuses to die, probably because everyone is still trying to finish that one megaproject they started during lockdown number three. 🧱

Capcom’s DmC: Devil May Cry Definitive Edition makes a “brand new” debut in fifth place. Let’s be clear: this is the exact same Definitive Edition that launched way back in 2015 for PS4 and Xbox One. Now it has arrived on PS7 and Xbox Series Y with a fresh coat of 8K paint and a snazzy frame rate that makes Nero’s hair even silkier. Capcom, never one to miss a chance to resell you Dante’s childhood trauma, reportedly celebrated by opening a small portal to hell in its fiscal reports. 🔥

Sniper Elite 3: Ultimate Edition enters at number ten, presumably because 505 Games realised they hadn’t yet packaged the base game with every single bit of DLC and called it something grandiose. This “Ultimate Edition” includes the original campaign, all nine rifles, twelve hats, and a bonus mission where you can shoot Hitler’s moustache off in 16K resolution. Fair play to them; slow-motion testicle shots never really go out of fashion. 💥

Let’s take a stroll down the full top 20 as it stood in that unforgettable March week of 2026, complete with the previous week’s chart positions for the statistically obsessed:

  1. Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar) – Up from 2

  2. Dying Light (Warner Bros.) – Down from 1

  3. FIFA 15 (EA) – Steady at 3

  4. Minecraft: Xbox One/360 Edition (Microsoft) – Up from 6

  5. DmC: Devil May Cry Definitive Edition (Capcom) – Brand New

  6. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (Activision) – Down from 4

  7. Minecraft: PlayStation 4/3/Vita Edition (Sony) – Up from 10

  8. Evolve (2K Games) – Up from 9

  9. Zombie Army Trilogy (505 Games) – Down from 8

  10. Sniper Elite 3: Ultimate Edition (505 Games) – Brand New

  11. Dragon Ball: Xenoverse (Bandai Namco) – Down from 5

  12. WWE 2K15 (2K Games) – Up from 13

  13. Terraria (505 Games) – Up from 14

  14. Forza Horizon 2 (Microsoft) – Up from 15

  15. Far Cry 4 (Ubisoft) – Down from 11

  16. The Crew (Ubisoft) – Up from 19

  17. Disney Infinity 2.0 (Disney) – Up from 17

  18. Destiny (Activision) – Down from 12

  19. The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D (Nintendo) – Down from 16

  20. LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham (Warner Bros.) – Did Not Chart

If the list feels like a temporal anomaly, you are not alone. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare hangs on at six, presumably because someone at Activision duct-taped the servers back together and called it a “historical preservation event.” Evolve, a game whose player base once rivalled the population of a medium-sized village, crawls up one spot to eight. 505 Games dominates the lower reaches, planting Terraria like a stubborn weed at thirteen, while Dragon Ball: Xenoverse’s Saiyans take a beating, dropping from five to eleven. Even Majora’s Mask 3D, a remaster of a remake of a Nintendo 64 classic, refuses to drop off entirely, which may or may not be linked to the fact that Nintendo still hasn’t released a proper Switch 2 successor and fans are coping any way they can. 😬

The sheer resilience of these titles speaks volumes about the state of play in 2026. New IPs are scarcer than hen’s teeth, and a “brand new” launch these days usually means a texture pack, a tweaked lighting engine, or the inclusion of a long-lost multiplayer map. Why risk millions on an untested concept when you can simply re-release a ten-year-old game and watch the nostalgic hordes empty their wallets? It makes sound business sense, even if it causes a mild existential crisis for anyone who remembers buying these games the first time round.

Heists, of course, deserve much of the credit for GTA V’s latest resurgence. Rockstar’s 2026 patch—dubbed “Online Heists: The Diamond Casino & Resort & Retirement Home”—introduced new story missions, a hovercraft that doubles as a panic room, and an NPC accomplice whose AI has reached the point where it occasionally forgets to walk into a wall. The community responded with the kind of fervour usually reserved for the announcement of actual new games, proving that Los Santos remains a digital playground where middle-aged gamers can live out their crime fantasies without troubling their knees. 💰

For Dying Light, the fall to second place stings but is hardly fatal. Techland’s undead opus has seen its own fair share of updates, including a 2025 expansion that added zombie giraffes (don’t ask). Still, even the craftiest parkour can’t outrun the cultural juggernaut that is Grand Theft Auto V. The battle between living dead and unkillable franchise is destined to be retold many times—perhaps in the Definitive Edition of this very article, due out in 2036.

And so the charts march on, a carousel of the familiar. In ten years’ time, will we be writing the same story about a GTA V that has by then been ported to smart fridges and holographic toasters? Quite possibly. For now, gamers can only boot up their respective consoles, fire up a decade-old classic, and marvel at how little—and how much—has changed. Welcome to 2026: the year the past never left. 🎮