A US Army unit in Georgia is offering active duty service members a four-day pass to play the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI video game in exchange for at least two more years of service, CBS News reported Wednesday.
The report cited a memo that first appeared on US Army WTF! Moments, which says any soldier who signs a reenlistment contract between Aug. 1 and Nov. 14 will be authorized for a special four-day pass designated to coincide with “the highly anticipated release of the video game Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA 6).”
In exchange for the four-day playing pass, active duty soldiers would reenlist for a minimum of two years and up to six years.
Task & Purpose and Military.com were the first to authenticate the memo, the report said.
The offer was proposed exclusively for one battalion in Georgia, but the program could be expanded across the military.
Twenty soldiers at Fort Stewart in Georgia in the Army’s 9th Brigade Engineering Battalion, part of the 3rd Infantry Division, have already agreed to the incentive, and approximately 130 soldiers are currently eligible for the offer.
Over the years, the army has used various enlistment bonuses and incentives, including college tuition assistance, choice of duty station assignments, and access to special training programs where soldiers learn to jump from airplanes, to encourage soldiers to enlist or re-enlist.
The idea behind this reported offer is to connect with soldiers’ unique interests.
“The idea was to have a unique incentives program that connects to what Soldiers are interested in,” Lt.-Col. Angel Tomko, a spokesperson for the 3rd Infantry Division, said in a statement. “The command team, in conjunction with the career counselor, wanted to get soldiers excited to reenlist.”
It has been over a decade since the last version of the game, GTA V, was published in 2013 by Rockstar Games, and the announcement of the the new publication has created intense anticipation for the gamers.
Again set in a fictional version of Miami and featuring its first female lead, the game is set for release on November 19th.
Notably, this isn’t the first time the army has crafted a reenlistment incentive aimed at the gaming community.
After the army missed its recruitment goals in 2018 for the first time in more than a decade, recruiters were exploring alternative ways to sign new recruits.
Recruiters began attending gaming conventions, and the army launched an esports team focused on the popular video game franchise Call of Duty, along with other multiplayer games like Fortnite and League of Legends, to find potential recruits.
