People are already calling out sick to play the feverishly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI. Companies like Logitech are even giving staff paid time off to partake.
Now, thanks to prediction market Kalshi, folks won’t have to play hooky from their jobs to dive into the video game—the first installment in 13 years of Rockstar Games’ hit franchise that has earned the company billions worldwide. Instead, one person can make playing it their literal job.
Kalshi will pay a lucky gamer between $100,000 and $120,000 to play Grand Theft Auto VI’s story mode through to completion, starting right at midnight on launch day, November 19. The winning applicant will stream their digital criminal adventures on YouTube or Twitch as they explore the fictional U.S. state of Leonida as the Bonnie-and-Clyde main character couple, Jason and Lucia.
The ideal candidate is “an experienced gamer” and “streamer with your own channel,” the listing states, along with “18+ years of life IRL, 10+ years of sweaty gaming, 3+ years of streaming experience.” They’ll get an extra $15,000 upon completion of the project.
As Kalshi’s “researcher”—and yes, per the LinkedIn post, the company assures that this is a real job—the winning candidate will be tasked with exploring and studying Leonida’s in-game economy of robberies and heists, perfecting the “optimal moneymaking strategy” and building “a spreadsheet to prove it,” to the point where they’ll get “accused of ruining the game for everyone else.”
In addition to unpacking the way fictional money moves in Vice City, the researcher is apparently also tasked with monitoring the game’s effects on the actual economy—tracking, for example, “who called in ‘sick,’ how DoorDash carried the entire nation through launch week, and how much productivity America lost,” the listing states.
Kalshi’s interest in the cultural and economic impacts of the game are well founded: The Wall Street Journal has warned of a “work blackout” upon its release, and one Spanish economist estimated the U.S. economy will lose $1 billion in productivity due to absenteeism.
And according to a poll released last month that surveyed 1,000 U.S. adults 18 or older who are employed full time and play video games regularly, 39% said they were planning to request time off in advance to play GTA VI, 36% said they’ll call in sick, and 32% said they’d “work” from home on release day. Many anticipate catching “GTA flu.”
Grand Theft Auto VI, which is being called “the biggest entertainment launch in history,” arrives Thursday, November 19, on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S consoles. Digital preorders have broken records, generating $1 billion from over 10 million units sold worldwide, according to estimates.
The researcher listing hasn’t even been up for 24 hours, and “over 100 people have clicked apply,” according to the LinkedIn post—something nobody needed Kalshi to predict.