Folks are lining up for their annual seasonal vaccines. But there’s one contagion that a CVS appointment can’t immunize against.
“GTA flu” is sweeping the nation—and many workers anticipate “catching” it to call out sick once Grand Theft Auto VI releases on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles on November 19. Others put in paid time off (PTO) requests weeks, even months ahead of the release of the game that critics say is the most anticipated of the decade.
That’s according to a new survey by the entertainment company GameSquare and the polling company Pollfish, which polled 1,000 U.S. adults 18 or over who are employed full-time and play video games regularly. The survey found that 39% said they were planning to request time off in advance to play the game, 36% said they’ll call in sick, and 32% said they’d “work” from home that day.
That’s relevant data for the workforce, given that more than 190 million Americans are gamers.
“I started a new role about four months ago, haven’t taken any PTO yet, and this felt like a good first opportunity,” says Jake, who works in tech PR and is using a pseudonym to speak freely. He’s planning on taking November 19 and 20 off to make it a four-day weekend. He says he was up-front with his manager about it, who gave him her blessing.
“She gave a mildly amused shrug and said, ‘It’s your PTO, use it how you want,’” he says. “I’ll probably log my first few hours at midnight on the 19th, sleep, take care of a couple things the next morning, and dive back in.”
The new game is the latest in the Grand Theft Auto franchise that’s earned Rockstar Games billions of dollars, and is one of the best-selling video game series of all time. It debuted back in 1997, and it’s been 13 long years since a new title in the main series. Gamers are ready—but offices might not be.
The Wall Street Journal has warned of a “work blackout.” A Spanish economist estimated the game’s release could cost the U.S. $1 billion in productivity lost to absenteeism. Burger Motorsports, a California-based automotive performance products company, even announced it will issue a “temporary company-wide operational pause” upon “reviewing multiple employee scheduling conflicts” in preparation for “this unprecedented cultural event.”
On average, workers in the survey said they were planning on taking 3.9 days off to play the game.
Indicative of a bigger trend
Workers pretending to be sick, using PTO or taking personal days related to big cultural events or entertainment releases isn’t new.
In February, the day after this year’s Super Bowl LX, a record 26.2 million U.S. workers were projected to feign illness the next day; efforts to make the Monday after the Super Bowl a national holiday have existed for years.
Gamers, in particular, have been known to take time off for an entertainment event, like the release of a big title.
Currys, the U.K.’s largest consumer electronics retailer, released a survey in 2024 that found more than a third of 1,000 British gamers said they’d “fake a sickie” to stay home and play a new game if their PTO request was denied.
Such a strategy can be risky. “Employment is based not only on a contract, but also on trust and relationships. I don’t advise putting that trust and those relationships at risk,” says Manuela Collis, assistant professor of organization and strategy at Carnegie Mellon University.
Still, it’s not lost on employers that people do this. Even the national workplace regulator of Australia, Fair Work Ombudsman, put up a tongue-in-cheek-yet-informative Instagram post last month explaining how workers can request unpaid time off to play the game.
And yet, even when requesting time off to which they’re entitled, workers can feel uncomfortable doing so.
In the GameSquare survey, when asked “How do you think your boss/supervisor would react to taking time off?” to play the game, 33% answered “supportive.” But 12.5% answered “not supportive,” 20.3% said “neutral” and 12.5% said “very annoyed.” More than a fifth said, “They’ll never know.”
Justin Kenna, CEO of GameSquare, says any such stigma from bosses is misguided.
“It’s a moment in our culture—especially youth culture—that many people are looking forward to, and they don’t want to wait and run the risk of having the experience spoiled whether via social media or their friends,” he says.
Ryan Wharton, a communications professional and freelance journalist, says he’s also doing the four-day, PTO-approved weekend, and luckily hasn’t had issues in the past at jobs with this sort of thing. But the stigma “is what contributed to my initial anxiety about requesting off,” he says. “I feel jobs shouldn’t care too much about what we do outside of work.”
A potential culture issue
Experts say that good leaders know workers are entitled to time off, no matter the reason, and can realistically integrate it into workflow without judgment.
“I’d treat a predictable event like this—be it this game launch, the Monday after the Super Bowl, days before or after common holidays like the 4th of July or Thanksgiving, children’s spring breaks—as a coordination problem,” says Salvatore “Sal” Affinito, professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
“Managers can invite employees to submit time-off requests early, establish fair coverage rules, and try to manage workflows so that one person taking time off doesn’t drive unsustainable workloads for everyone else,” he says.
But in America’s productivity-obsessed hustle culture, people feel uncomfortable asking for any time off. Data from 2024 showed that 78% of Americans don’t take all their vacation days each year, and 47% feel guilty about taking time off at all.
“It really isn’t any business of their boss what the employee is doing with their personal time,” says Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks, professor of management and organizations and cultural psychologist at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. “This example raises broader questions about the culture of work and the culture of the organization.”
Toxic work environments can lead to checked-out employees engaging in absenteeism and bordering burnout—or even brazenly spending company hours doing noncompany things.
Recent data shows that remote workers, especially ones who feel underpaid and burned out, have no qualms taking “soft off days” to have tennis dates, run errands and even hop on international flights for pleasure while staying online and on the clock.
As for Grand Theft Auto VI, for many workers, taking time off to enjoy the game is more than just playing hooky and eating pizza on the couch on a weekday.
Dustin Hall, a facilities engineer at a semiconductor research lab at the University of California, Berkeley, is taking a floating holiday that was negotiated by his union, spending it to play the game. He says he and his wife, Heather, “were very excited to play GTA VI together.”
“Sadly, she passed away due to cancer before the game was released,” he says. “One thing you’ll notice, if you look at the comments of GTA VI trailers, is how many people say something like, ‘A moment of silence for all of those who couldn’t make it here.’ And it makes me well up every time.”
“I’ll be playing this game in her memory,” he says. “I think days off should be granted with no questions asked.”
“We should not have to turn off our Human Mode to be considered professional,” Sanchez-Burks says.
