A US police department says it can't wait for GTA 6 so people stay home and they catch a break

Cops are apparently counting down the days to November 19 too, just for completely different reasons than us. Dexerto picked up a story about a police department in the States basically saying they're looking forward to GTA 6 dropping because everyone will be inside playing it instead of out causing trouble.

I get the logic. Launch week of a game this size, half the country is going to be glued to a couch with a controller in hand. Nobody's out doing dumb stuff when there's a Leonida to explore. Officers get a quiet week, we get the biggest release of the decade. Everybody wins.

it's a funny angle but they're not wrong

Big game launches do actually shift behavior for a few days. People call in sick, plans get cancelled, group chats go quiet. Multiply that by the scale of GTA 6 and you've got a genuine lull in the streets. Some departments probably remember how quiet things got around other massive releases and they're hoping lightning strikes again.

What cracked me up is the phrasing. A police department publicly wishing for a GTA game to come out is a sentence I didn't expect to read this year. The same franchise that's had cops as the bad guys for two decades is now being quietly rooted for by actual law enforcement. That's a weird full circle moment.

the flip side nobody's talking about

If the streets really do empty out, the servers are going to be the ones taking the beating. Everyone home at once, all trying to get into the same game. I'd bet the first 48 hours are a mess no matter how well Rockstar preps, and that's before you factor in preloads and day one patches.

Also, a quiet week for the cops means a loud week for the internet. Spoiler dodging is going to be a full contact sport. People finishing the story in three days and posting everything. I'm going dark on socials for a bit, no question.

Anyway, funny story, weird times. Cops rooting for a crime game so the crime takes a night off. Only GTA could pull that off.

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Source: Dexerto · Curated content.