Gaming instead of work: Personnel dispatchers are reporting a noticeable number of vacation requests at the start of GTA VI

The cloudy November is not one of the classic holiday months. But just in time for the release of the video game Grand Theft Auto VI, many employers are apparently receiving a noticeably high number of vacation requests. This is shown by data from HR software providers.

Gamers around the world are preparing for the official launch of the long-awaited video game Grand Theft Auto (GTA) VI. For November 19th and the days after, an above-average number of employees submitted vacation requests, as figures from the human resources software provider Personio showed. In Germany the value is 38 percent above average. When it comes to compensating time off for overtime, the increase amounts to 58 percent. Many employees would take Thursday and Friday of next week off. Vacation planning in the days before the GTA VI premiere, on the other hand, was unremarkable, according to the human resources software provider.

Personio's competitor Remote comes to similar results and recorded a global increase in vacation requests of 32 percent when the video game was launched. The change is most noticeable in Italy, where almost twice as many employees took time off as is usual at this time of year in mid-November. This was followed by a noticeable number of holiday applications in India and Ireland. However, in the remote survey, Germany did not end up in the top ten with the largest increase in planned vacation days.

The human resources software provider revealed that men from “Generation Z”, born around 1995, most often take time off. An above-average number of employees from the finance department and marketing are said to have applied for vacation at the end of next week.

However, it is unclear how meaningful the figures are for the economy as a whole. According to the company, over 16,000 companies use Personio's HR software. According to its own information, the competitor Remote is used by companies such as Anthropic and KFC for personnel management.

Grand Theft Auto is a popular action video game about criminals who steal cars in fictional US cities and work their way up the underworld. It is being developed by Rockstar Games, a subsidiary of the US game developer Take-Two. A few days ago, the company raised its sales target for 2026 to between $7.98 and $8.18 billion. Previously, the forecast was between $7.9 and $8.1 billion. According to estimates, the US company could achieve sales of up to $5.2 billion with GTA VI in the premiere week alone.

The predecessor GTA V, launched in 2013, is one of the most successful video games in history with 230 million units sold. In addition, the online components have ensured Take-Two's continued income in recent years because players have to pay extra for certain functions. According to the company, pre-sales of GTA VI broke all records.

Buyers have been able to download the software and install it on their devices for a few days now - but the game has not yet been activated. Providers have recently recorded a noticeable increase in data volumes due to many GTA downloads. "Compared to normal nights, the increase was at times a factor of around ten. We also expect an increased traffic volume around the publication on November 19th. However, we do not expect our network infrastructure to be overloaded - we are well prepared for that," said a spokesman for the Internet provider United Internet.