You can now finance Grand Theft Auto VI the way you would a phone. Virgin Media O2 in the United Kingdom is offering the upcoming game on a pay-monthly plan, letting you pre-order it for £20 upfront and £1.39 a month for the next three years.

The carrier is marketing it as "under 5p a day," which sounds too good to be true (but it is) and almost too cheap to refuse. The full plan runs for 36 months, all the way to 2029, for a game that comes out this November. On paper, taking out a multi-year payment plan for a single £69.99 video game is a pretty absurd thing to do. However, if you do the math, it's actually pretty smart.

The plan is 0% interest, so you're going to pay the same £69.99 you would have paid anyway, it's just that the payment plan spreads it across three years. There is no markup and no catch on the price itself. O2 even throws in the Vintage Vice City pre-order pack, with the offer open to non-customers too.

Of course, it is not entirely free of strings. This is a real consumer credit agreement, subject to credit checks and an 18-plus requirement. It also commits you to a 36-month direct debit for a game that ships only as a digital download code. You can shorten it to as few as three months if the multi-year version feels ridiculous.

With that said, this is another sign of how big GTA 6's commercial moment has gotten. A mobile network is now underwriting installment plans for a game and marketing it in pennies per day, no different from an iPhone, where, by the way, you can now play Grand Theft Auto V on. This kind of absurd news fits in next to everything else the generational hype this game has produced, from record pre-orders and sold-out PS5 Pros to real brand copying the game's art style. Now the financing industry wants in, too.

So no, you do not need a three-year loan to play GTA 6, but if paying £69.99 in one go stings, O2 will happily let you dribble it out until 2029, interest-free, for the most anticipated game in years. By that time, the PlayStation 6 will have been released and maybe also the PC port of GTA 6 and you'll still be paying for GTA 6 on the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series S/X. But, hey, at least you'll have enjoyed your time in Vice City and Leonida for pence on the pound.