UK workers are booking a week off to play Grand Theft Auto VI
Key Points
- UK workers are booking between two and seven days of annual leave for the launch of GTA VI on 19 November
- A Reddit thread on the subject drew more than 940 comments in under a day
- Pre-loading opens on 12 November, a week ahead of the midnight UK unlock
- Some players plan to wait for post-launch patches or the later PC release
UK workers are booking up to seven days of annual leave for the launch of Grand Theft Auto VI on 19 November, with a Reddit thread on the subject drawing more than 940 comments in under a day.
The thread, posted to Reddit on Tuesday (8 September), asked how many people planned to take time off for the release and whether managers had noticed a rise in leave requests around the date.
Several respondents said they had already booked the time. “I’ve booked off seven days for GTA6. I’ve been waiting for this game for 13 years,” said one user, who added that they had taken hardly any leave this year despite working from home.
Another user said they had booked leave from release day to the end of the following week, having built up more annual leave than they realised and being unable to carry it over.
Shorter breaks were more common, with multiple users saying they had booked the Thursday and Friday of release week. One said they had bought a PlayStation 5 Pro specifically for the game despite no longer playing much.
Others said they would wait, citing the risk of a poor launch. One user recounted booking four days off for the GTA V launch in 2013, only to spend the first day watching a mandatory day-one patch download over a slow connection.
“Never burning holiday on launch day again. You always book the week after once the servers stop melting,” the user said.
Rockstar Games is allowing players to pre-load the game from 12 November, a week ahead of release, which several commenters said would reduce the risk of download delays on the day.
Others pointed out that pre-loading does not protect against a large patch released on launch day, as happened with both GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2.
Grand Theft Auto VI is the first new entry in the series since Grand Theft Auto V launched in 2013, and Rockstar has confirmed the game for Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 at launch.
A PC version is expected at a later date, and a number of commenters said they would wait for that release rather than buy a console for the game.
PlayStation Store listings uncovered by fan site GTAVice show the game will unlock in the UK at 00:00 GMT on Thursday 19 November, with New Zealand players getting access first at around 11:00 GMT on Wednesday 18 November.
Players in Mexico, El Salvador and Costa Rica will wait longest, with the game unlocking at 00:00 CST on Friday 20 November.
An extended look at the game aired on Netflix last month and was the most-watched show on the platform that week, showing character switching, vehicle handling and combat in largely in-game footage.
