Economist says GTA 6 sick days could cost US economy $1 billion
A Barcelona economist estimates 1.5 million US workers could skip work for GTA 6 on November 19, costing about $1 billion in lost output. The math explained.
Reported. Established outlets report this. Rockstar hasn't said so.
An economist has put a price on GTA 6 launch-day fever: about $1 billion in lost US productivity. José García Montalvo, an economics professor at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, estimates that around 1.5 million American workers could stay home on November 19 to play Rockstar's new game. The estimate first appeared in the International Business Times and was picked up by GamesRadar+ on October 21 and Dexerto on October 22.
GamesRadar+ points out that this is an academic projection, not an official forecast. Treat it as a fun bit of back-of-envelope economics, not a measurement.
How the estimate works
According to the coverage, the professor's model rests on a few assumptions:
- Output per worker: an average US worker produces about $70,000 a year. Dexerto describes this as an assumed average salary for the people who skip work.
- Absences: about 1.5 million people miss work on launch day. GamesRadar+ says this works out to a short-term productivity dip of around 2%.
- Who stays home: men aged 18 to 30 are expected to make up most of the absences, and the technology sector is expected to take the biggest hit. The report says that matches who took time off when GTA 5 launched.
- Who shows up anyway: people who go to work may still get less done because they are talking about the game or running on very little sleep after playing late.
None of the outlets shows exactly how those inputs add up to $1 billion. For a rough sense of scale: $70,000 a year comes to a few hundred dollars per working day, so 1.5 million absences on a single day would on their own land below the headline figure. The rest of the total presumably comes from that wider slowdown among people who do turn up, but the published reports don't break it down.
Zelnick saw it coming
Take-Two's boss expected this. Dexerto notes that CEO Strauss Zelnick said back in April that he thinks "a lot of people will be calling in sick on November 19." (We've collected more of his GTA 6 comments in our Strauss Zelnick explainer.)
Some employers aren't waiting to find out. Dexerto reports that a car company has said it will pause operations on launch day after many employees told it they would be off. GamesRadar+ says a few other companies have announced similar closures.
The other side of the ledger
The report itself admits the picture isn't all loss. Any productivity hit would be offset by what Take-Two and Rockstar earn from the release. Citing Insider Gaming, GameVicio notes that Take-Two projects more than $1 billion in operating cash flow for the fiscal year. That figure covers more than GTA 6 alone, though, so it can't be compared directly with the productivity estimate.
The same report cites Newzoo projections of 37 million to 51 million copies sold in the first week, worth $3.3 billion to $4.5 billion. Newzoo also estimates that first-week pre-orders brought in about $260 million.
A UK survey points the same way
Britain is getting the same treatment. Rockstar Intel reports on a Uswitch survey of 1,000 British employees chosen for their interest in video games. For launch day, 17% said they plan to take a paid day off, 14% unpaid leave, and 9% a sick day without actually being ill. In addition, 26% expect to talk about GTA 6 with colleagues and 21% expect to be tired the next day.
Scaled up to the whole UK workforce, those answers suggest about 1.68 million paid leave days, roughly 890,000 false sick days, more than 13.4 million lost work hours and about £403 million in losses. Rockstar Intel admits the sample is small, and a survey of people picked because they like games is likely to overstate the effect across the whole workforce.
What happens next
Nobody is going to audit how many people pulled a sick day on November 19, so the true cost will probably never be known. What these numbers do show is how big this launch has become outside gaming. If you're planning to play on day one, booking the day off properly is the safer option. Our release date timeline covers how we got to November 19, and our price breakdown covers what you'll pay.
