29% of US players say they'll buy GTA 6, a Circana record; time-off requests for the 19th rise 13%

Nearly one in three. That's how long the line for GTA 6 looks to Circana in the United States: 29% of US console and PC players say they plan to buy the game, according to its PlayerPulse tracker, released on October 28. The firm says it's the highest purchase intent it has ever recorded for a video game.

The same week, a far less obvious gauge pointed the same way: the time-off calendar at American offices.

What Circana measured (and what it didn't)

Analyst Mat Piscatella called the launch "a rare cultural and commercial moment" for the industry. According to VGTimes and GTA Boom, he also said demand should spill over into consoles, accessories and subscriptions, and noted that players have been waiting 13 years for a GTA 5 sequel. One reporting detail: VGTimes puts that last remark in quotation marks, while Tech Insider, which also covered the report, warns these statements are paraphrases rather than direct quotes. So we're not quoting them here.

Before turning 29% into sales, keep in mind three caveats the sources themselves raise:

• Intent isn't a purchase. PlayerPulse asks what people plan to buy. Plenty of people say yes to a game they like and never check out.
• It's a record by Circana's yardstick, not the whole industry's. None of the reports we read gives the sample size, the exact question or the margin of error, or names the previous record holder.
• The survey includes PC players, but GTA 6 launches on November 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S only. VGTimes even listed PC among the launch platforms — that isn't what Rockstar announced. A PC version still has no date, and the most-cited estimates point to 2027 or later.

The figure fits what we already knew. GTA 5, Circana points out, was among the 20 best-selling games in the US every year from 2013 through 2025, and it's the best-selling premium game in the firm's US history by both units and dollars. On pre-orders, Sensor Tower had already estimated that GTA 6's digital pre-sales comfortably beat Modern Warfare 2's. And Piscatella himself had been saying publishers didn't need to run from November because of the game — which gets more interesting now that his own data shows unprecedented demand.

Days off: 13% or "9% to 17%"?

HR software company BambooHR published a report on October 22 based on anonymized data from more than 3.4 million US employees on its platform. The time-off request rate for November 19, 2026, is about 13% higher than on the same days (the third Thursday of November) in 2024 and 2025.

The number that went around in the press was different: "9% to 17%," in Money, GTA Boom and GAMES.GG. The two don't contradict each other. Our read is that the range is the spread around the average BambooHR itself sums up as 13% — and when in doubt, go with the primary source.

The report includes an honest caveat: time-off requests in general were already up 2% to 4% in 2026 compared with the previous two years. Doing rough math (ours, not BambooHR's), that leaves something like 9 to 11 points the overall trend doesn't explain. The company doesn't claim GTA 6 is the only cause.

The effect stretches into the weekend, too:

Who says they'll be out

The second half of the study is an online survey of 1,530 full-time employed US adults, run October 9–20. 18% said they plan to take launch day off. Among Gen Z it's 32%; among millennials, 27%.

BambooHR compared that with other year-end releases, and GTA 6 lands in blockbuster-movie territory: the same 18% plan to skip work for the premiere of Avengers: Doomsday on December 18, versus 14% for Dune: Part Three and 14% for World of Warcraft: Forever on November 4.

The awkward part for managers: half of the players planning time off for a release say they'll call in sick instead of asking for the day. And 51% of respondents admit to having used sick leave for reasons other than illness.

Vanessa Brulotte, from BambooHR's employee relations team, advises companies to plan ahead: "Employees do their best work when they feel valued, and part of that is respecting that they have a life outside of work." She said she has already blocked off February 19, 2027, for a Star Wars theatrical re-release.

This isn't the first time the 19th has turned into a workplace story. We've covered how Australia's government explained unpaid leave rights and where the $1 billion lost-productivity estimate in the US comes from.

What about Brazil?

We didn't find, in the sources we read, any purchase-intent or time-off survey of Brazilian players. But the calendar there has an edge Americans don't: November 20, the day after launch, is a national holiday — the National Day of Zumbi and Black Consciousness, created by Law 14,759 of 2023.

In practice, anyone in Brazil who gets Thursday the 19th off rolls straight into the Friday holiday and the weekend: four days in a row. For many Brazilian players with a regular job, the request to the boss is for one day, not two.

What the numbers don't tell us

• How many copies GTA 6 will sell. Neither Circana nor BambooHR makes a sales forecast.
• Which game held Circana's previous purchase-intent record — it doesn't appear in the reports we read.
• Whether all those days off are about GTA 6. BambooHR says part of the rise may simply be a trend of people using more of the time off they're entitled to.