Aussies Plan Leave Around GTA VI Launch as Employers Brace for Sickie Spike and NBN Traffic Surge

Josh, a healthcare worker in Sydney, has booked two weeks of leave around the release of Grand Theft Auto VI in late November. He says he is not ashamed that he will spend most of that time playing it. His colleagues know. Some, he says, are jealous they didn't think of it first, and a few think the plan is ridiculous. A friend of his has taken a week off for the same reason, and he would be surprised if his other friends didn't pull a sickie.

Josh has been here before. He first booked two weeks of leave for May 2026, after Rockstar Games pushed the game back from its original late 2025 date. Then it was delayed again, to November. He had enough leave left to book a second fortnight. The game arrives on Thursday, 19 November, on Sony's PlayStation and Microsoft's Xbox, 13 years after Grand Theft Auto V. Both companies have confirmed it is the most pre-ordered title in their histories.

Australian employers are bracing. Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two Interactive, which owns Rockstar, suggested in April that a lot of people would be calling in sick on 19 November. Deputy, an Australian workforce management software company, estimates the launch could push absenteeism around 90 per cent above average. It reached that view by studying absenteeism around three earlier major releases: Baldur's Gate 3, Elden Ring and Overwatch 2. Mid-week launches, it found, can trigger massive spikes, and Overwatch 2's public release in August 2023 nearly doubled absenteeism.

Deputy's chief technology officer, Ciaran Hale, says the spike tends to come the day before a launch, as people want to pre-download the huge files and play the moment servers open. Shift workers clear their schedules 24 hours ahead, he says, and given the anticipation around this game, he expects a major, multi-day scheduling crunch across the frontline workforce. Deputy also found that women tend to work more hours on major game launch days.

The network is preparing too. The game is digital-only, and an NBN Co spokesperson said it could produce a record-breaking traffic month. Pre-orderers could start pre-downloading the 200-plus gigabytes earlier this week. On Tuesday, 10 November, that added about 3 terabits per second of network use, an increase on the usual level for that time of day but still well below the normal daily peak.

NBN Co says the long preloading window should spread out demand and avoid acute peaks. Distributors also pre-seed updates through release periods, which it says has made the impact of big game releases less significant over time. So it does not expect a record in any single hour or day, but it does expect higher traffic across the preload and release period overall. For comparison, a major 2025 Fortnite update set the NBN's record peak at 32.91 Tbps, about 30 per cent above baseline and almost 8 Tbps of extra load in the busy hour.

Josh calls pre-downloading genius, reasoning that players can jump in as soon as the game drops, and that staggered downloads around the world probably ease the load on servers.

The Fair Work Ombudsman has weighed in with tongue-in-cheek social media posts. In October it urged gamers to get leave requests in sooner rather than later, and noted that carer's leave, community service leave and parental leave would not apply. Workers without annual leave would likely need to agree on unpaid leave with their employer. Last week it added that employers can ask for evidence of illness or injury for sick leave on or around 19 November, and told people to use sick leave responsibly.

Josh says calling in sick for a game while working in healthcare would feel a bit dodgy, so he is glad to have booked his leave fair and square. He plans to do some chores while his wife is at work, and says he won't only be playing: he still has a wife and a cat he enjoys being around. What to watch now is how many absences actually land on 19 November, and what NBN's traffic looks like across the month.