Palworld's Studio Is Giving Its Staff a Five-Day GTA 6 Holiday

Pocketpair's special leave runs from GTA 6's Nov. 19 launch through Nov. 23 for any employee who plans to play.

Any Pocketpair employee who plans to play GTA 6 gets excused from work from launch day, Nov. 19, through Nov. 23. The Palworld studio calls it an "urgent five-day business trip in Vice City."

The studio announced the leave Thursday by posting its internal notice on the official Palworld X account, Push Square reported. The fine print is kinder to the payroll than the joke is. Nov. 21 and 22 fall on a Saturday and Sunday, so the five-day trip costs Pocketpair three workdays, Inven Global noted.

The launch got here the long way. Rockstar first aimed GTA 6 at fall 2025, then slid it to May 26 of this year and then to Nov. 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, Inven Global reported, and there's still no date for a PC version. Pre-loads are already open on both consoles, Shacknews reported.

Pocketpair isn't the only employer clearing Nov. 19. Burger Motorsports, a California maker of car performance parts, said on Instagram in June that it would pause operations that day because several of its team had told managers they'd be out, Inven Global reported. At Fort Stewart in Georgia, an engineer battalion dangled four days of GTA 6 leave in front of soldiers willing to reenlist for four more years, Inven Global also reported. Insider Gaming noted that Logitech had just given all of its staff one day off in the coming year to play games, and said launch day was a fine pick.

Pocketpair's notice plays the bit completely straight. It pictures millions of players stuck at school or work on Nov. 19, "gazing longingly out the window," and says a moment that historic "deserves our full attention," according to Shacknews, which quoted the notice.

Pocketpair has done this before, just with less paperwork. On Feb. 28, 2025, the day Capcom's Monster Hunter Wilds came out, the studio gave everyone except a few essential departments the day off, Inven Global reported. Its reason that time was that a lot of employees had said they might be "feeling unwell." This time it dropped the sick note and named the game.

Palworld and Craftopia players are the ones who'd feel it if a studio's whole staff took off for most of a week. The notice deals with that up front: it says update work on both games is going smoothly and will stay on schedule. Inven Global read that section as an answer to fans worried the break would push patches back.

The boss isn't staying behind to mind the office. Takuro Mizobe, Pocketpair's CEO, wrote on his personal X account that he's stepping away for a while himself to get into GTA 6, according to Inven Global.

Source: invenglobal.com, retrieved November 13, 2026. Other sources: shacknews.com, insider-gaming.com.