A U.S. Army Unit Is Offering Soldiers Four Days Off to Play ‘GTA 6’ If They Reenlist for at Least Two Years

by · Thought Catalog
Joe Raedle / Getty Images News via Getty Images

Gossip

By Chrissy Stockton

Updated 3 minutes ago, August 19, 2026

A career counselor at Fort Stewart came up with a reenlistment perk built around something soldiers actually want: paid time off to play the year’s biggest video game. So far, the pitch is working.

Twenty soldiers in the 3rd Infantry Division’s 9th Brigade Engineering Battalion have already reenlisted to cash in on the deal, according to the division.

Two soldiers from the 2-82 Field Artillery kill time with a video game at Camp Virginia, Kuwait, on Dec. 8, 2011, a day after their unit completed its withdrawal from Iraq. Photo by Joe Raedle / Getty Images.

The offer, from the Army unit based at Fort Stewart, Georgia, gives active-duty soldiers a four-day pass to play “GTA 6” when it drops in November. To qualify, soldiers have to sign a reenlistment contract of at least two years — and as long as six — between Aug. 1 and Nov. 14.

Grand Theft Auto 6 promotional art from Rockstar Games. Credit: Rockstar Games.

“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 division, said in a statement to Variety. Tomko said the battalion’s new career counselor brought the idea to unit leadership to help hit reenlistment goals for fiscal year 2027.

Two 82nd Airborne Division soldiers share a video game session at Command Outpost Callahan in Baghdad, Iraq, in April 2007. Photo by Joe Raedle / Getty Images.

The timing lines up with one of the most anticipated releases in gaming history.

Rockstar’s “GTA 6” has been in development for more than a decade and releases Nov. 19. Preorders opened June 25 at $79.99 for the standard edition and $99.99 for the “ultimate” version. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has called the demand “unprecedented and astonishing.”

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