Hordes of Aussie men set to blow off work in line with release of Grand Theft Auto VI

Bosses around the country are bracing for a legion of workers to call in sick on Thursday, giving themselves ample time to play one of the most-hyped video games in more than a decade.

After more than 13 years in development, cult hit Grand Theft Auto VI will finally be hitting shelves in a nirvana moment for gamers across the country.

Requests for work leave among Gen Z and millennial Aussie men aged between 18 and 44 are up a staggering 84 per cent in advance of the game’s console release this coming Thursday.

“Despite making up less than a third of the workforce our data tracks, they account for three quarters of the increase in leave,” Global Insights Lead for employment platform Employment Hero Lisa Cowie said.

“The good news for employers is that people are planning ahead and booking leave weeks in advance, giving managers time to arrange any required cover for what seems to be a big day of gaming,” Ms Cowie said.

William Foster, 21, said his absence from an upcoming shift at a Sydney cafe would be “abso-f**king-lutely” worth the money lost so he could play the game that had captured global audiences for years without anybody actually playing it.

“It’ll be likely that I’ll have a cold on Thursday. I’ve been waiting for this for so long, but I also think I’ll be completely useless at work anyway because I know what I’ll be thinking about the entire time,” he said.

Mr Foster said nostalgia was a big driver of his decision to play the game, which has been retailing for pre-order at $120.

“I remember when I was about 10 years old, I went to my mate’s house and his parents were a bit more lax than mine. He had this game called GTA V, and for an impressionable young boy, there isn’t much more fun to be had,” Mr Foster said.

“I know a lot of people are re-buying PlayStations that they just sold to play this game.”

Developed by Rockstar studios, GTA VI is one of the most intensely anticipated video games of all time, with more than 10.3 million copies listed for digital pre-order.

Both Sony and Microsoft have confirmed the game is the most ever pre-ordered through their digital storefronts.

GTA VI has experienced a notorious run of setbacks, spawning several viral internet memes and catchphrases.

Game reviewer Roberto Moran said he had taken an entire week off work to play GTA VI.

“When they finally dropped the release date, the first thing I did was tell my wife I was taking a week off,” Mr Moran said.

“Then I told my work I was taking that time off and everyone was like ‘oh, where are you going’, and I wasn’t really telling them. I’ve been joking to people saying that I’m going to Vice City. Some people actually think it’s real.”

“I think people taking time off is great honestly, it’s a good way to escape a bit from the harsh realities of the world.”

Mr Moran told NewsWire that GTA was part of a very small, unique type of video game.

“GTA transcends the community. It’s more about that one person who only plays one video game once every five years,” he said.

“Now imagine a million of them, that’s what it’s like. People don’t have to be hardcore gamers to get around it.”

The GTA series has been a staple title in the world of video games for nearly three decades, taking players through fictional American cities like Vice City and San Andreas, where they take the reins of a collection of troubled, criminally inclined protagonists.

As one may expect of a series that is, in essence, the video game equivalent of movies like Heat, The Hangover, Baby Driver and Miami Vice, there has been no shortage of controversy.

Australian gaming content creator GmanLives told NewsWire he purchased a censored version of GTA III shortly after its release in 2001, but his version of the game differed dramatically from the original release.

“I remember some of my mates saying there was a Grand Theft Auto game on the PS2, and I went and grabbed it,” he said.

“Turns out I got a copy not long after it had been recalled because there had been certain material in the game where you could pick up prostitutes. I bought it the day after it was re-released, so I got the censored version.”

Following the recall, the next edition of the series, GTA: Vice City, was proactively released in 2002 with censored gameplay in Australia.

Video game critic GmanLives said the cultural hype around the series reached its first real moment of fever pitch when the early trailers began dropping for GTA V.

“I was working as a video editor at the time, and when one of the trailers would come out, everyone in the office would just sit there and play the trailer on someone’s computer and watch them,” he said.

“There’s an office full of 10 dudes, all into video games, all dorks, and we would just sit there and watch these trailers. I remember at the end of one of them, one of the guys was like ‘well that was pretty f**king intense’.”

The content creator, who has amassed a tidy following of more than 800,000 people on YouTube, said the series had been so influential that even his “baby boomer” mum knew about it.

“My parents know about it, and they don’t really know anything about video games,” he said.

“My mum was asking me about it a couple of weeks ago; she’s like ‘are you gonna play this new Grand Theft Auto game coming out?’

“It’s gotten to the point where baby boomers know that it’s a thing and that it is happening, that’s how much it’s extended out of the realm of gaming.”

GTA VI will release for PlayStation and Xbox consoles on Thursday, with a projected PC release coming at an unspecified date.