Pocketpair gave the whole studio five days off for GTA 6, and I love that for them

So Pocketpair, the folks behind Palworld, apparently just handed their entire staff five days off so everyone can sit down and play GTA 6. Five days. Not a long weekend, not a cheeky "work from home" nudge. A full work week cleared out for launch.

I don't know about you, but that's the kind of studio leadership I can get behind. Launching a game the same week as GTA 6 is basically career suicide for a smaller team anyway, so why not lean into it? Let people actually enjoy the thing the whole industry has been waiting for.

It's also just funny to imagine the meeting where somebody pitched this. "Hey boss, nobody's going to get any work done on the 19th anyway." And the boss going "yeah, fair."

why this keeps happening

This isn't the first time we've seen something like this either. Logitech already announced a day off for launch, and the whole "give people time to play GTA 6" thing is turning into a proper trend. Honestly, more studios should be doing it. You can't fight the launch. November 19 is going to be a ghost town in offices everywhere, whether management likes it or not.

Five days is generous though. That's enough time to get properly sucked into Leonida, do a few missions, and maybe remember what sunlight looks like before you go back to work.

the flip side

Part of me wonders how this plays out for the studio itself. Five days is a lot of lost dev time, especially for a team that's presumably still working on stuff. But if morale and retention matter at all, stuff like this goes a long way. People remember the company that let them play GTA 6 on day one.

Anyway, shoutout to Pocketpair. Whoever signed off on this deserves a raise, or at the very least a copy of the Ultimate Edition.

Would you actually want your workplace to do something like this, or would you rather just quietly book the day off yourself?

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Source: Insider Gaming · Curated content.