Australian Employers Brace for GTA VI Sick Days as Launch Nears Nov. 19
Grand Theft Auto VI launches November 19, and Australian employers expect no-shows, with some giving staff the day off. Workplace data shows booked leave up 29 per cent, and one estimate puts the cost of launch day at $70 million.
Australian employers are bracing for a wave of no-shows when Grand Theft Auto VI launches on November 19, the first new entry in 13 years of one of the best-selling GTA games, and some bosses are giving staff the day off.
Sony and Microsoft both said this week it had become the most pre-ordered game ever in their digital stores. Even the publisher expects absences. Strauss Zelnick, chief executive of Take-Two Interactive, which owns Rockstar Games, told a conference in Las Vegas he thought “a lot of people will be calling in sick on November 19”.
Australians will be among the first to play. The game unlocks at midnight in each country, starting in New Zealand, so launch night runs straight into a working Thursday.
What the data shows
PR consultant Eitan Soloducho estimates launch day could cost the Australian economy at least $70 million. His figure assumes one in 100 of the country's roughly 14 million workers pulls a sickie.
Deputy, a Sydney-founded rostering app used by cafes, retailers and hospitality venues, studied recent blockbuster launches. When Overwatch 2 went on wide release on a Thursday in August 2023, 12.7 per cent of shifts went unworked, up from a usual 6.55 per cent. That is a jump of almost 94 per cent.
Absenteeism also rose the day before every release Deputy studied, as players cleared their schedules to download the game. “The real trap for businesses is the day-before download spike,” said Ciaran Hale, Deputy's chief technology officer.
That spike may be smaller this time. Sony and Microsoft opened preloading more than a week early.
Many workers appear to be planning ahead. Employment Hero, which tracks more than 870,000 Australian workers, reports leave booked for November 19 is up 29 per cent on the same Thursday last year. Men aged 18 to 44 account for three-quarters of the rise.
Leave requests and productivity
Brendan Delacoe, 31, drives a truck for an op shop in Melbourne. He asked his manager for launch day and the day after off as soon as pre-orders opened. He has used up his annual leave, so the days will probably be unpaid. “You know, gotta prioritise things,” he said.
Mark Wooden, a professor emeritus at the University of Melbourne's Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, said a productivity hit was “certain”. He expects it to be bigger than at any earlier launch, though probably too small to show in national statistics.
Working from home is the big difference. When Grand Theft Auto V came out in 2013, few staff could log on from the couch.
A game on a record scale
Market research firm Newzoo estimates first-week sales of $3.25 billion to $5.2 billion across PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S, on a reported $1.5 billion budget. Almost 5,000 people worked on the game, which is set in Vice City, a fictional version of Miami, in a virtual Florida called Leonida.
The franchise traces back almost 30 years to Scottish studio DMA Design in Dundee, which became Rockstar North and now employs more than 1,000 people.
