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Thursday, November 19, is circled on calendars across America, and not only by gamers. The chief executive of the company behind Grand Theft Auto VI said months ago what he expects to happen at workplaces that morning. An economist has since attached a billion-dollar estimate to the scenario, and employers are already making quiet plans around it. The first sign of the fallout did not come from a game store. It came from a car parts shop in California.
Burger Motorsports Posted a June 11 Memo Announcing a “Company-Wide Operational Pause” for Nov. 19
The California performance-parts company told customers that customer support, social media, shipping and processing could all be delayed on release day because several staff members would be unavailable. Normal operations, the memo said, will resume once employees have finished at least one mission and “return to reality.” Tech outlets pointed out the notice may double as a publicity stunt. Still, it was a real company putting a real date on the calendar. A much larger employer had been planning around the same Thursday.
A Georgia Army Battalion Is Offering Soldiers Four Days Off Timed to the Launch
According to Spanish gaming outlet MuyComputer, which cited reporting from the Wall Street Journal, the 9th Brigade Engineer Battalion at Fort Stewart is giving a special four-day leave to soldiers who reenlist between August 1 and November 14 for at least two years. The leave lands right on the game’s launch window. Nobody at the base has called it a GTA benefit, but the timing speaks for itself. Meanwhile, one civilian has already worked out his own schedule down to the hour.
Software Engineer Bud Burruss Plans to Be Awake at 1 or 2 A.M. When the Game Unlocks
Burruss, 36 and a father of three, told the Wall Street Journal he has booked five days off the week before Thanksgiving. His plan is to go to bed early Wednesday, wake in the middle of the night and start playing the moment the game goes live. He says he will not play for 20 straight hours, but “right out of the gate we’re going hard.” His employer has presumably seen the request. A worker in Brazil has gone further.
A Brazilian Civil Servant Is Spending 10 Vacation Days on GTA VI, Half What Red Dead Redemption 2 Cost Him
Guilherme Stephano, 34, told the same newspaper he is cashing in 10 days of leave for the launch. That is actually an improvement. When Rockstar released Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018, he took 20 days off to play it. Another worker in the report, medical sales representative Anna Ray, 30, is clearing the entire launch week and prepping meals in advance so nothing interrupts her sessions. Not all of this planning is a joke, as the person who set the tone made clear back in April.
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick Said at an April Conference That “a Lot of People Will Be Calling in Sick”
Speaking at the iicon conference in Las Vegas on April 28, Zelnick said: “I think a lot of people will be calling in sick on November 19.” It was a quip, and he attached no number or dollar value to it. The game launches only on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, with no PC version on day one, which narrows the pool of potential absentees. The economist who tried to put a figure on that pool singled out two groups.
Economist José García Montalvo Points to Men Aged 18 to 30 and Remote Tech Workers
Montalvo, a professor at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, named young men and the technology sector as the likeliest to skip work. Remote jobs, he noted, mean less supervision and an easier path to slipping away for a few hours of play. The $1 billion loss reported through Cadena SER remains an estimate, and the 1.5 million headcount that later circulated has not been confirmed by any national absenteeism study. Still, there is precedent for a launch causing this kind of absence.
GTA V Earned $1 Billion in Three Days in 2013, and Workers Reportedly Stayed Home Then Too
Past reports claimed that up to 6% of workers aged 18 to 35 in cities such as Los Angeles and New York took GTA V’s launch day off, though accounts of that figure vary. The game made $1 billion in its first three days and has since passed 230 million copies sold, while the wider franchise approaches 475 million. GTA VI is entering a market where that success is the baseline. Analysts have already run the numbers on how much bigger this release could be.
Newzoo Projects Between 37 and 51 Million Copies in GTA VI’s First Week
The market research firm Newzoo calls the pre-order campaign the strongest on record. It estimates about $260 million was spent globally in the first week of pre-orders, extrapolated from roughly $180 million measured in the US and five major European markets. Its launch-week forecast runs from about $3.3 billion to $4.5 billion, depending on how front-loaded demand turns out to be. All of it hinges on one Thursday, a week before Thanksgiving.
The Billion-Dollar Sick Day Is an Estimate, but the Absences Behind It Are Real
The $1 billion figure is not a verified forecast, and the 1.5 million headcount is unconfirmed. What exists is documented: a company shutting down for the day, an Army unit sweetening reenlistment with launch-week leave, workers booking up to 10 days off, and a publisher CEO who predicted the sick calls himself. Employers in tech and other young-skewing fields have the clearest reasons to plan ahead. GTA VI arrives November 19 on consoles, and the staffing gaps will be easy to count by that afternoon.