Australia's Fair Work Ombudsman posts a guide to asking for unpaid leave to play GTA 6, VGC reports

Australia's Fair Work Ombudsman, a government agency, posted a tongue-in-cheek guide on Instagram about taking unpaid leave to play GTA 6, Video Games Chronicle reported on October 8, 2026. The guide was aimed at people with no paid leave left for launch day.

VGC said the post opened with the line "Let's pretend GTA VI is coming out tomorrow" and asked whether you can take unpaid leave. It then went through the cases where the National Employment Standards give workers a protected right to time off without pay. The first is unpaid carer's leave, which lets workers take up to two days to look after a sick or injured family member once their paid leave has run out. The guide joked that this one would not apply.

The next is community service leave for people doing voluntary emergency work with a recognised body such as the SES. The guide said that probably would not apply either. It also mentioned up to 12 months of unpaid parental leave, and added that a video game is not a child.

The point of the guide, as VGC described it, was the question "why do I need the time off?". If the answer is only that you want to play GTA 6, you have no automatic right to unpaid leave. You can still ask your employer, but the guide said there is no minimum entitlement in that case, so the two of you would have to agree on it.

We have not seen the Instagram post itself, so the details above come from VGC's account of it. The ombudsman was giving general information about Australian employment rules, not advice about any one job, and the rules in other countries are different.

Rockstar had set GTA 6 for release on November 19, 2026 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, and VGC noted that Australia was included in the global launch.