A player pre-ordered Grand Theft Auto VI and paid effectively $2 for it, just the tax, by stacking a Best Buy credit card promotion against the purchase. They had upgraded to a PlayStation 5 Pro earlier, earned card perks and rewards along the way, and applied them to the pre-order. The best part? You can do it too, so long as you're patient enough to stack multiple rewards.
As shared on Reddit, the player didn't find an exploit, a glitch, or scam anyone. They used a store credit card, in this case Best Buy's, that earns rewards or promotional credits on purchases like a PS5 Pro console. Those rewards piled up over time and when GTA 6 pre-orders opened, they cashed that built-up credit against the $80 game, knocking the out-of-pocket cost down to basically the sales tax. So the game was not really $2. It was paid for with rewards they earned by spending money elsewhere first.
The rewards were not free money falling from the sky. They were earned from real spending the player did anyway, then redeemed at the best possible moment.
This is a genuine deal, if, as we've already mentioned, one that takes patience and time.
The Math Behind a $2 GTA 6 Pre-Order
| Rewards Path | Points per $1 | Effective Cash Back | Spend Needed to Earn $80 in Certificates | What a PS5 Pro ($649.99) Alone Yields |
|---|---|---|---|---|
My Best Buy (free tier) | 0 | 0% | Not eligible | $0 |
My Best Buy Plus ($49.99/yr) or Total ($199.99/yr) | 0.5 | 1% | $8,000 | ~$6.50 |
My Best Buy Credit Card (Standard Credit) | 2.5 | 5% | $1,600 | ~$32.50 |
Plus/Total member + Credit Card stacked | 3.0 | 6% | ~$1,334 | ~$39.00 |
Sign-up bonus (first day of purchases, within 14 days of card approval) | 5.0 | 10% | $800 | ~$65.00 |
My Best Buy Visa outside Best Buy: gas stations | 1.5 | 3% | ~$5,334 | Not applicable |
My Best Buy Visa outside Best Buy: restaurants, bars, groceries | 1.0 | 2% | $8,000 | Not applicable |
My Best Buy Visa outside Best Buy: everything else | 0.5 | 1% | $16,000 | Not applicable |
The table shows Best Buy's current rewards tiers, how much you'd need to spend at Best Buy to bank enough reward certificates to cover an $79.99 GTA 6 pre-order, and what a single $649.99 PS5 Pro purchase actually yields at each rate.
With the next Grand Theft Auto costing $80 (or $100 for the Ultimate Edition) and coming without a physical disc, many are looking for ways to get it for a lower price because of its resale value, or lack thereof. Deal hunters suggest buying discounted PlayStation and Xbox gift cards at warehouse stores, then using those to pay a reduced price.
Others have had success stacking rewards points from programs like Microsoft Rewards to cover the cost entirely. Fuel apps, GameStop credit, and card cashback all feed into similar ideas of chipping away at the $80 with credit you earned elsewhere.
As for the Best Buy rewards, banking enough to nearly cover a game like GTA 6 means you have to spend a fair amount at Best Buy first. In this case, the player bought a PS5 Pro, a several-hundred-dollar purchase that just got more expensive earlier this year. The rewards are a nice byproduct of spending you were going to do, but they are not a strategy for saving money unless you were already buying that stuff. If you go open a store card and start spending just to chase a cheap GTA 6, you will spend far more than $80 getting there.
To be fair, none of that takes away from the win. It is a legitimately satisfying result and a decent reminder that if you already use a rewards card, timing a big redemption around a launch you were going to buy anyway is just smart.
Deals like this are the lighter side of a launch that has been dominated by the discless physical edition backlash that has so far reached politicians in Brazil and France. While some players are angry about what GTA 6 costs and what is locked behind the higher tier, others are quietly gaming the system to pay almost nothing, which is its own kind of commentary on how differently people are approaching the same $80 game.
Ultimately, the GTA 6 pre-order period has become a strange mix of grievance and bargain-hunting, and this $2 story sits right at the fun end of that spectrum.