Billion-dollar sick day: US productivity expected to take a hit with release of ‘GTA VI’

The box office may have been lit up by talking space rocks, Greek legends, wall-crawling superheroes and unhealthy relationships this year, but the biggest media release of 2026 — and maybe any year — is still to come. And it won’t be at the movie theater.

Related video above: Soldiers incentivized to reenlist with time off to play Grand Theft Auto VI

Rockstar Games’ long-awaited “Grand Theft Auto VI” will finally release worldwide on Nov. 19, and early projections estimate it could make $1 billion within its first couple of days. It’s expected to accrue upwards of $10 billion in gross lifetime revenue. The game has already secured almost $600 million from preorders alone.

Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Rockstar Games’ owner, Take-Two Interactive, told shareholders the company expects more than $1 billion in operating cash flow this fiscal year, largely on the back of “GTA 6.” To date, the game’s predecessor has accrued nearly $11 billion in gross revenue since its release.

<img src="https://kubrick.htvapps.com/htv-prod/images/5243401e-6dcd-48cc-92ea-a7294e5b9e89.jpg?crop=1.00xw%3A0.876xh%3B0%2C0&resize=136%3A*" alt="PlayStation will stop releasing games on discs in 2028″>

PlayStation will stop releasing games on discs in 2028

But that money has to come from somewhere.

Analysts say when the latest entry in the “Grand Theft Auto” video game series launches on Nov. 19, the U.S. stands to lose around $1 billion in productivity.

According to a report from the International Business Times, José García Montalvo, an economics professor at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, said this is just an academic projection, but there is substantial evidence to support it.

For starters, it’s happened before.

When the previous entry in the series, “Grand Theft Auto V,” was released in 2013, an IGN survey of 11,000 readers revealed 46% had called off from work ahead of time, while 20% said they planned to call out sick the morning of the game’s launch. About 6% of workers aged 18 to 35 in major metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles and New York City took time off for the release.

In a similar IGN survey for this go-around, 42% of the 10,400 readers polled said they have already requested off for Nov. 19, while 9% said they’re planning to call off sick.

For the release of “Grand Theft Auto VI,” an estimated 1.5 million Americans are expected to call off sick on Nov. 19, leading to a potential $1 billion loss of U.S. output in a single day.

This follows a trend set by the day after the Super Bowl, also known as “Super Sick Monday.” In 2026, 26.2 million U.S. employees had planned to miss work that day, according to UKG’s annual Super Bowl Absenteeism Survey, leading to an estimated $5 billion loss in productivity. UKG also reported a potential $17 billion loss in global productivity from the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Montalvo bases this estimate on an average annual output of $70,000 per U.S. worker and a short-term productivity dip of 2%. An additional dip in productivity is expected from workers who don’t call off sick but still stay up late playing the game — or work remotely on release day. The bulk of employees expected to call out sick are men ages 18 to 30, with most of them expected to be from the tech world.

So, if the office is feeling emptier than usual on Nov. 19, there’s a good chance it’s because your colleagues are committing crimes — at least virtually.

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