GTA 6 Launch Day Could Cost America $1 Billion in Sick Days

Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto 6 is due on November 19, and one economics professor has put a dollar figure on the pull it holds over American workers. José García Montalvo projects that about 1.5 million people may call in sick that day to play. Assuming each of them earns $70,000 a year, he arrives at roughly $1 billion in lost work.

The caveat matters. This is an academic projection, not an official forecast or a measured figure, and nobody is tracking actual absences yet. The money also doesn't disappear. Wages that go unearned in one place become spending in another, and GTA 6 publisher Take-Two Interactive stands to collect a comparable sum from sales that day. The economy would be moving money around more than burning it.

The franchise has done this before. Ahead of GTA 5's 2013 launch, an IGN poll found that 46% of its nearly 11,000 respondents planned to take the day off for what readers called "GTA flu." That was a self-selected survey of intentions, not a record of who actually stayed home, but it shows how a Rockstar release behaves less like a product launch and more like a cultural event.

Some fans are going further than a poll answer. Bud Burruss, a streamer and father of three, told the Wall Street Journal in September that he planned a five-day vacation to play. On social media, some couples have reportedly drafted contracts over who gets to play first, and others have called playing during work hours "cheating." The military has even offered soldiers at Fort Stewart, Georgia, some days off to play.

Whether the $1 billion figure holds up or not, it captures how rare it has become for a single game to pull a whole country's attention onto one date. Expect the sick-day jokes to keep coming until the game ships.