"Let's pretend GTA VI is coming out tomorrow, but you don't have any paid leave available." That is how the carousel opens that the Fair Work Ombudsman — the Australian government body that enforces the country's workplace laws — put on Instagram (@fairworkgovau) and that reached the games press from October 8. It looks like a meme, and it is one, but the joke carries an accurate summary of how unpaid leave works in Australia.

The trick of the post is elimination. Instead of listing each entitlement dryly, it drops GTA 6 art into every situation where an Australian worker might be entitled to unpaid time off (GTA Boom says the carousel uses a frame from the "An Extended Look" video) and crosses them off one by one.

Four doors, three closed

  • Carer's leave. Up to two unpaid days, once paid leave has run out, to look after a sick or injured family or household member. The image shows someone taking a child's temperature with the game's box art where the face should be. The Ombudsman itself concedes this one wouldn't apply.
  • Community service leave. For voluntary emergency work with a recognised body, such as SES volunteers. The illustration is someone pretending to staff an emergency call centre while gaming. Doesn't count either.
  • Unpaid parental leave. Up to 12 months to care for a new child. The slide is an ultrasound showing a copy of the game, and the line the press chose to repeat is this one, quoted by Dexerto: "Though it's been in the oven for a while, a video game isn't a child." For anyone who has followed GTA 6's delays, the joke has an extra layer.
  • General unpaid leave. The only one left. According to Games.gg, the post says there is "no actual minimum entitlement" to it and that you'll need to "reach an agreement with your employer". In other words: you ask nicely, and the boss decides.

GTA Boom sums it up well: the joke is the process of elimination, and the real answer is the last row. By the same outlet, the legal summary is correct at a high level, if simplified — it is an Instagram carousel, not a legal opinion.

Ask early

The practical advice running through the coverage is as simple as it gets. According to Dexerto, the post's caption encourages followers to submit leave requests early. Gadget Review adds two caveats that make sense in any country: check your enterprise agreement, award or contract, because workplace terms can go beyond the legal minimum; and don't claim carer's, emergency or parental leave to cover a gaming day, since misrepresenting the reason for an absence is a far bigger problem than missing the first day of GTA 6.

One detail shows how the story travelled: Gadget Review says it saw the artwork through a post by the fan account @GTAVI_Countdown on X, dated October 8, rather than on the agency's own Instagram, and writes that the Ombudsman "reportedly" produced the graphic. The other outlets link the original post. There's also a date discrepancy not worth repeating: Tech4Gamers writes that the game comes out on November 11, which is wrong. The date Rockstar confirmed is Thursday, November 19, 2026, as we covered in GTA 6 confirms its official date.

Who is already taking time off

The Ombudsman's post isn't an isolated case of people arranging their lives around the launch. Dexerto cites a Wall Street Journal report on a software engineer who booked five days off and a Brazilian civil servant who set aside ten. Man of Many, citing the Associated Press, records that the US Army's 9th Brigade Engineer Battalion offered a four-day pass tied to the launch to soldiers who re-enlisted — at least 20 of roughly 130 eligible soldiers took it. And Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick joked, per the same piece, that "a lot of people will be calling in sick on November 19".

In our reading, what makes the Australian post notable isn't the joke but the fact that a public agency treats the date as a calendar event that will generate real questions from workers. Zelnick's line suggests Take-Two expects the same.

What about Brazil?

The post is about Australian law, and nothing it says applies here. In the sources we read there is no analysis of Brazilian rules, and we won't invent one: if you plan to take time off, ask HR and check your collective agreement, your contract and what Brazilian labour law (the CLT) provides in your case. What we can say safely about the calendar is that November 19 is a Thursday and Friday the 20th is Brazil's national Black Awareness Day holiday — check your city's and your employer's calendar. For many people the gap between launch and a long weekend is a single working day.

Another calculation that helps: the time the game unlocks varies by time zone, as we explained in staggered launch by time zone, and anyone who pre-loads the game early (see digital pre-load opens November 12) won't depend on downloading anything on the day. It doesn't solve the absence from work, but it takes one worry off the list.

What we couldn't confirm

We didn't open the Fair Work Ombudsman's Instagram directly, nor the agency's own page on unpaid leave; the carousel's details come from the descriptions in Dexerto, GTA Boom, Games.gg, Tech4Gamers and Gadget Review. Games.gg notes that the full caption doesn't appear in the coverage, so we don't know what else it says. VGC also covered the post, but the page wouldn't open for us.