O2 Says GTA 6 For Under 5p A Day. All In It Is 6.4p

O2 is offering a way to pay for Grand Theft Auto VI in monthly instalments, and its press release headline puts the cost at "under 5p a day". The instalment really does work out at 4.6 pence a day. The full deal, including the deposit that is not in the headline, works out at 6.4 pence a day. Both of those figures come from O2's own two numbers. Every line of the arithmetic below was computed by this desk and then recomputed independently by this desk's editor. What does the press release say? CONFIRMED. The Virgin Media O2 press release was fetched by a researcher and then re-fetched by this desk's editor at 2026-09-22T03:27:40Z, which returned HTTP 200 at 48,150 bytes, a byte count matching the researcher's read exactly. Its structured data gives datePublished and dateModified both as 2026-09-21T10:18:53. The headline reads: O2 offers gamers new way to secure GTA VI with monthly payments of under 5p a day The phrase "under 5p a day" appears 5 times on the page. The body, quoted exactly: the offer lets gamers pre-order GTA VI with a £20 upfront payment, followed by monthly payments of just £1.39 over 36 months (equivalent to 4.6 pence per day). With 0% interest to pay The asterisked footnote repeats the same figures verbatim. The credit terms, also from the release: 0% APR, finance subject to status and credit checks, 18+, Direct Debit, credit provided by Telefonica UK Ltd, 500 Brook Drive, Reading, RG2 6UU, UK. Is the 4.6 pence figure correct? Yes, and this desk wants to be clear about that before going any further. On O2's own numbers: 1.39 x 12 / 365 = 0.045699 That rounds to 4.6 pence. O2's "4.6 pence per day" is a correct description of the monthly instalment taken on its own. Nothing in this article is a false advertising accusation, and readers should not take it as one. The instalment is exactly what O2 says it is. What does the whole deal cost per day? The headline rate describes one of the two payments. The deposit is the other one. Adding it in: LineFigureSource Upfront payment20.00 poundsO2's own release Monthly instalment1.39 poundsO2's own release Term36 monthsO2's own release Instalments total, 1.39 x 3650.04 poundsthis desk's own arithmetic Total contracted outlay, 20 + 50.0470.04 poundsthis desk's own arithmetic Per day over 1,096 days6.39 pencethis desk's own arithmetic Per day over a flat 1,095 days6.40 pencethis desk's own arithmetic All-in rate as a multiple of the advertised rate1.398 times, 39.8 per cent higherthis desk's own arithmetic Deposit as a share of the total28.56 per centthis desk's own arithmetic Every figure in the right-hand column labelled as this desk's own arithmetic was computed twice, once by a researcher and once by the editor, from O2's own 20 pounds, 1.39 pounds and 36 months and from nothing else. The 1,096 day count includes 29 February 2028, which falls inside a 36 month term starting now. On a flat 1,095 day basis the figure is 6.40 pence. Either way the all-in daily cost is 6.4 pence, and the advertised daily cost is 4.6 pence. So the headline is a correct statement about 71.44 per cent of the money. The other 28.56 per cent is the deposit, and it is not in the headline. Does that make it a bad deal? No, and the release's central claim survives this. Here is the fair reading, stated as plainly as the criticism. Onward reporting on 21 September gave the UK price of the game as 69.99 pounds. If that figure is right, then a total contracted outlay of 70.04 pounds is five pence more than paying for the game outright. Five pence across three years is a rounding artefact of splitting a price into 36 equal instalments, and it is not a markup. On that basis O2's "0% interest" claim stands, and the deal does what it says: it spreads a launch-day purchase over three years at no meaningful extra cost. What the arithmetic actually shows is narrower. The advertised daily rate describes the instalment, not the purchase. Anyone budgeting from the headline will under-budget by 39.8 per cent, and anyone who has not read past the headline will not know there is a 20 pound payment due on day one. The price this desk could not verify The 69.99 pound figure is not this desk's. It comes from onward reporting, and the 6.4 pence finding does not depend on it in any way. The finding rests only on O2's own three numbers. No price is carried from O2 itself, because O2's own shop would not give one. Three routes were tried, and all three returned client-rendered JavaScript shells: o2.co.uk/shop/accessories/all?search=Grand+theft+auto, the route O2's own press release links to: HTTP 200, 2,310 bytes, at 2026-09-22T03:13:10Z. No price, no product name, and the string "Grand Theft Auto" appears nowhere in the markup. o2.co.uk/shop/gaming/gta-vi: HTTP 200, 2,268 bytes, the same shell. o2.co.uk/shop/gaming/grand-theft-auto-vi: HTTP 200, 2,281 bytes, the same shell. Two attempts at a British PlayStation Store price landed on entirely unrelated products, so no price is carried from there either. This article prints no GTA 6 UK retail price as a fact of its own. One detail worth knowing about where O2 files the game CONFIRMED, from the link in O2's own press release. The product route that release points at sits under /shop/accessories/. O2 is selling Grand Theft Auto VI in the accessories section of its shop. Anyone hunting for it under a gaming or games heading may not find it, and the two gaming URLs tried above returned empty shells. The short version The advertised rate is correct for what it describes. 1.39 pounds a month is 4.6 pence a day. The all-in rate is 6.4 pence a day, because of a 20 pound deposit that the headline does not mention. Total contracted outlay is 70.04 pounds across 36 months. The 0% interest claim stands if the game's UK price is 69.99 pounds, and that price is not one this desk verified. Budget 20 pounds on day one. That is the number missing from the headline, and it is the one that decides whether this offer solves your problem. Grand Theft Auto VI arrives on 19 November 2026, which is 58 days from today by this desk's own arithmetic. Expect more finance and bundle offers between now and then, and expect more of them to quote a daily rate computed on one of two payments.