Let’s say you’ve already spent some time in the United States Army, a vicious colonial project that in recent years has been weaponized by a government with even more openly fascistic tendencies than in the past. What would get you to reup, aside from general economic hardship that the Army has long preyed upon? Special training? Time and money to attend college? Extra leave to spend as you please? OK, well how about this: Four—that’s right, four!—days off to play a video game.
Fort Stewart in Georgia is currently offering four fleeting days with Grand Theft Auto VI in exchange for two-to-six more years of service, according to CBS. Soldiers who reenlist between Aug 1 and Nov 14 will be granted a special pass that, per the terms of the contract, coincides with “the highly anticipated release of the video game Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA 6).” For now, the offer is limited to a lone battalion, but it could apparently be expanded to others.
"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, told CBS. "The command team, in conjunction with the career counselor, wanted to get soldiers excited to reenlist."
20 soldiers (of around 130 eligible) have accepted the offer.
The Army has been targeting gamers for years now, with booths at video game conventions, equipment that draws on popular video game control methods, and—perhaps most notoriously—a presence on Twitch in 2020 that was extremely poorly received. Undeterred by that setback, the Army made plans to spend millions on Call of Duty-related streamers and events in 2021 and 2022, according to documents obtained by Motherboard. More recently, the Trump administration has leaned heavily on jingoistic memes that reference games like Halo to make being a professional violent racist seem cool to the youths (never mind that everybody who plays Halo in 2026 is 40).
My first piece of advice: Don’t enlist in the Army! But if you’re already in it, and somebody offers you four days with a video game in exchange for a significant chunk of your life—you know, like the Devil would do—I’m begging you: turn them down.
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Riley MacLeod
