{"id":91733,"date":"2026-10-21T12:02:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T16:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=91733"},"modified":"2026-10-21T12:41:37","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T16:41:37","slug":"gta-6-might-give-america-a-very-expensive-sick-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=91733","title":{"rendered":"GTA 6 Might Give America A Very Expensive Sick Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Everyone wants to play Rockstar Games&#8217; upcoming heist-&#8217;em-up <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/games\/grand-theft-auto-vi\/\" data-type=\"games\" data-id=\"477234\">Grand Theft Auto 6<\/a>&#8211;so much so that some 1.5 million Americans are projected to call in sick to work on November 19 to play the game, which an economics professor estimates will set the country back roughly $1 billion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ibtimes.co.uk\/gta-6-launch-billion-dollar-sick-day-1818190\">an International Business Times report<\/a>, economics professor Jos\u00e9 Garc\u00eda Montalvo projected that the 1.5 million workers planning to play hooky to traipse around Leonida next month could cost America a boatload of money. If each worker has an annual salary of $70,000, Montalvo suggests that the math works out to $1 billion, with GTA 6 publisher Take-Two Interactive estimated to make that same amount on November 19.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&#8217;s the catch. The American economy isn&#8217;t necessarily losing money; the bills are just changing hands, from the pockets of the country writ large to those of one multi-billion-dollar corporation. I&#8217;m sure you know the saying: The rich get richer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s worth noting, though, that this isn&#8217;t an official forecast. Rather, Montalvo&#8217;s estimation is a mere academic projection. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However, the phenomenon has a precedent in the hype surrounding <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/games\/grand-theft-auto-v\/\" data-type=\"games\" data-id=\"245806\">Grand Theft Auto 5<\/a>&#8216;s launch in September 2013, when <a href=\"https:\/\/www.itv.com\/news\/update\/2013-09-17\/poll-almost-half-of-gamers-take-day-off-work-for-gta-v\/?utm_source=chatgpt.com\">an IGN poll<\/a> found that 46%<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Everyone wants to play Rockstar Games&#8217; upcoming heist-&#8217;em-up Grand Theft Auto 6&#8211;so much so that some 1.5 million Americans are projected to call in sick to work on November 19 to play the game, which an economics professor estimates will set the country back roughly $1 billion. According to an International Business Times report, economics&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":91735,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-external"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91733"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=91733"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91736,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91733\/revisions\/91736"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/91735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=91733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=91733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=91733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}