November 19 will be a Thursday, and many US employees do not plan to spend it at the office. IGN relays data from HR software company BambooHR, first reported by Money.com: time-off requests for that date are up 9% to 17% compared with a normal third Thursday of November.
IGN notes that nobody knows whether every request is tied to GTA 6, but says it stands to reason that most of them are. The figure echoes surveys already cited. According to KCCI, an IGN poll of 10,400 readers found 42% have already requested the day off and 9% plan to call in sick. For GTA V in 2013, 46% of 11,000 respondents had booked the day off in advance.
KCCI repeats the estimate by José García Montalvo, an economics professor at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, cited by the International Business Times: about 1.5 million Americans could be absent, for a loss of roughly $1 billion in output that day. The researcher calls it an academic projection. We detailed the calculation in our billion-dollar sick day article, and the measures already taken in Oceania in the November 20 piece.
The same station recalls that the game has already raked in almost $600 million in preorders, and that Take-Two expects more than $1 billion in operating cash flow this year, largely on GTA 6.
Read also GTA 6: Xbox Series sales fell 27% in September, Circana analyst says
HR departments in US companies see November 19 coming before players do. The 9% to 17% figure is an average from a single software vendor, not a national count. The release date and the November 12 preload, which saves time that day, are on the release page.
Reported Reported by the press, not confirmed by Rockstar
By Solange Rocheval · GTAVIFRANCE newsroom
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