GTA 6 release date has millions ready to book off sick with 'GTA flu'

Rockstar Games’ upcoming title Grand Theft Auto VI is set to cause a wave of coincidently timed sick days, according to a recent study.

Shout out in advance to TweakTown's Anthony Garreffa, who detailed the report from Grand Theft Auto fansite GTA Boom.

The study, which revealed which US states are the most excited about the upcoming game, concluded that its release will cause "an unusual increase" in folks taking time off to play the title.

“Given the history of significant sick day spikes during major game releases,” stated Matt Gibbs, the director of GTA Boom, “like with Rockstar's last big hit, Red Dead Redemption II, it wouldn't be surprising to see a wave of 'GTA flu' when the game launches. Employers in these high-interest states might want to prepare for an unusual increase in sick leave requests around that time.”

Wouldn’t be the first time a Grand Theft Auto game has resulted in thousands of people all just happening to get sick at the same time.

Back in 2013, on the day of Grand Theft Auto V’s release, IGN asked its readers whether they’d be taking the day off to play the game (as detailed in a report from The Telegraph’s Alice Vincent).

According to the poll IGN ran, 5059 (roughly 46%) of the 10,995 readers told them they'd taken the day off as a holiday.

However, a whopping 19% of them (more than 2000 of the people who voted on the poll) admitted that they were going to pretend to be sick and take the day off sick instead.

Now, that’s not a huge sample size and it is targeted directly at gamers so it is almost definitely skewed but… it does imply that employers might have a bit of an issue on their hands once GTA VI finally does hit store shelves.