GTA 6 Is Tipped To Cost A Billion Dollars In Sick Days

Grand Theft Auto VI lands on Thursday 19 November, and if the early estimates are right, a lot of people won’t be at their desks. Around 1.5 million American workers are expected to skip work on launch day, according to the International Business Times, at a cost to the US economy of roughly US$1 billion in lost productivity.

The figure is built on an average annual output of about US$70,000 per worker, and the report claims the walkout would trim national output by around 2 per cent for the day.

We’d take that with a grain of salt. US$70,000 spread over roughly 250 working days is closer to US$280 a day, which puts 1.5 million absent workers nearer US$420 million, although that’s still an expensive Thursday by anyone’s standards.

Even the publisher isn’t pretending otherwise. Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick told a conference in Las Vegas he thinks “a lot of people will be calling in sick on November 19.”

Plenty are being more organised about it. The Wall Street Journal reports that some workers have been banking leave specifically for launch day, and that some companies have built the date into end-of-year packages.

The oddest example comes from the US Army. The 9th Brigade Engineer Battalion at Fort Stewart in Georgia is reportedly offering soldiers who sign on again a special four-day pass in November, which might be the most effective re-enlistment incentive in military history.

None of this is new, either. When GTA V launched in 2013, an IGN survey of 11,000 readers found 46 per cent had taken the day off and nearly 20 per cent planned to call in sick that morning.

For Rockstar’s parent company, the numbers run the other way. SensorTower’s tracker puts preorder revenue at nearly US$600 million, market research firm Newzoo estimates the game could book up to US$4.5 billion at retail in its opening week, and Take-Two expects more than US$1 billion in operating cash flow this financial year.

It has been a long wait. GTA 6 was originally due in 2025 and slipped twice, but Take-Two has repeatedly reaffirmed the 19 November date, with the game arriving on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S and no PC version at launch.

The 19th falls on a Thursday here too, so Australian bosses are about to find out how many of their staff suddenly come down with something. It’s worth remembering that under Fair Work rules, paid sick leave is for when you’re genuinely unfit for work and employers can ask for evidence, so a day of annual leave is the far safer play.

Vice City’s garages will be full of supercars, of course, but if you’d rather spend the money on the real thing, the 2026 Corvette Stingray is still the best-value supercar you can buy in Australia.