ILLUSTRATIVE FILE PHOTO: Xbox game controller on a table; not a Grand Theft Auto screenshot or Kalshi material. Photo: Padraig Treanor / Unsplash, Unsplash License. Published August 29, 2023; cropped and resized.
With Grand Theft Auto VI less than a week away, Kalshi, a company focused on prediction market betting, announced on LinkedIn on Thursday that it was looking for someone to investigate the video game as part of a full-time job for the company.
“This is a real job. We’re looking for someone whose parents said video games would never pay the bills. They were wrong, and you can tell them we said so,” said Chris Tanasescu, Growth lead at Kalshi, in a LinkedIn post.
Even with employees of the company publicly claiming that the job offering is legitimate, The Jerusalem Post could not independently verify the claims that someone would actually be contracted by Kalshi to perform this job.
According to the information shared on LinkedIn, the GTA VI Researcher position that Kalshi is offering would pay $120,000 per year (or upon project completion) with additional bonuses of up to $15,000.
What does researching GTA VI mean?
Kalshi explained that the role will require someone with at least 3 years of streaming experience to play and livestream GTA VI on launch day on Thursday, November 19, and create a model of Leonida’s (the fictional state where the game takes place) economy.
“As Kalshi’s GTA VI Researcher, you’ll begin at midnight on November 19 and play until you beat the story. You’ll stream the entire journey, investigate Leonida’s economy, and study what happens to the real economy when everyone suddenly has a “family emergency” on launch day,” Kalshi said in the job offering.
“Live, and breathe GTA VI on release and provide real economic data and insights IRL and in Vice City,” Tanasescu added. “Study the Leonida economy and deliver an official State of the Leonida Economy address.”
The job posting also says the position will require studying the “real-life effects” of the video game’s launch on the world economy, analyzing how many people called in sick, how much money was made delivering food, and “how much productivity America lost.”
The final goal, according to Kalshi, is to establish a “min-max guide” that lets players beat the game as efficiently as possible while also learning all the tricks behind the new video game.
Rate on par with Kalshi’s top deals to streamers, data shows
According to data from Indeed, a salary tracking platform, Kalshi’s offer for a GTA VI Researcher falls slightly below the $150,000 average it already pays yearly to content creators in the United States.
The highest payouts to influencers contracted by Kalshi reach about $250,000 per year, with higher deals for top streaming stars not publicly available.
Kalshi also reportedly paid influencers as little as $54,000 per year, according to Indeed, putting the offer at nearly the average it offers streamers.
GTA VI expected to hit US, world economy on launch day
GTA VI is expected to take a heavy toll on the American and world economy on Thursday, with estimates saying more than a billion dollars in productivity will be lost in the US as people call in sick.
The estimates also point out that more than a million people will call in sick on Thursday in America, with some companies even offering the day off for their employees to play the game at launch.
The game has already crossed the $1 billion line in revenue only with preorders, with more than 10 million copies sold worldwide as of Friday.
Rockstar, the company behind the game, invested some $2 billion in the game’s development and marketing, and expects to generate between $3.2 billion and $7 billion in sales after launch.
