Grand Theft Auto VI Has ‘Closed’ Its First Business

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When Take-Two Interactive chief executive Strauss Zelnick said earlier this year that “a lot of people will be calling in sick on 19 November,” he was probably not expecting a California car parts manufacturer to take that as actionable HR advice.

Burger Motorsports, a Southern California performance tuning company with no connection to the games industry, has announced it will suspend all operations on the day Grand Theft Auto VI launches because too many of its employees had already requested the day off.

The company posted an internal notice to its Instagram account that did not attempt to obscure what was happening.

“After reviewing multiple employee scheduling conflicts, management has determined that normal business operations may be impacted due to the release of Grand Theft Auto VI. Several team members have already notified management that they will be unavailable, unreachable, and/or ‘in Vice City’ for the duration of the day.“​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Rather than operate on a skeleton crew and disappoint customers anyway, management closed the whole operation. Customer support, shipping, order processing and, in a detail that suggests someone has a sense of humour, “general productivity” are all listed as affected departments.

Normal operations, the memo states, will resume once employees have “completed their initial exploration, finished at least one mission, and returned to reality.“​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The notice is amusing. It is also a reasonable description of what happens when a game with a 13-year development gap finally ships.

GTA VI launches on 19 November 2026 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, after two delays from an original target of late 2025. Its predecessor, GTA V, was released in 2013 and has since sold over 200 million copies, making it the second best-selling video game in history.

The scale of what is expected from the sequel has been reshaping the entertainment calendar for months — publishers have emptied November of competing releases, developers have described planning their entire 2026 schedules around avoiding its shadow, and Rockstar has confirmed that pre-orders will open on 25 June through selected digital storefronts. Pricing remains unconfirmed.

Take-Two has stayed noncommittal on price, with Zelnick repeatedly saying the company will aim to deliver an “immense value proposition” without specifying a number.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The pricing question has attracted considerable outside opinion. Epyllion chief executive Matthew Ball put forward the idea of a US$100 (RM414) price point​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​, citing the game’s development costs — estimated by several analysts at over RM6.9 billion (US$1.5 billion) — and its likely hold on consumer attention well into 2027.

The memo closes by thanking customers for their patience “during this unprecedented cultural event.” — an accurate description of what 19 November is shaping up to be.