Gran Turismo 7 players get 1M free credits after backlash over downtime, grind

Polyphony Digital responded to the harsh criticisms of its customers Gran Turismo 7 community since last week’s downtime and controversial update by awarding all players one million free in-game credits.

In a post on the PlayStation Blog, Polyphony president and game director Kazunori Yamauchi also laid out plans for a robust series of updates, starting at the beginning of April, aimed at addressing issues with the game’s economy that are at the heart of player complaints. The changes include double the payout for late-game races and the addition of high-reward events. Players will also be able to sell their cars.

The week before, Gran Turismo 7Servers remained down for over a day following the release of patch 1.07. This necessitated a new patch (numbered 1.08), to correct it. GT7a requirement to be online at all times, which made most of the game impossible to play.

Yamauchi said the gift of credits to all players was a “goodwill gesture” to apologize not just for the downtime, but for players’ anger at the content of the patch, which nerfed credit rewards for certain races that players had been using to grind out cash in the game.

“I would like to apologize for the frustration and confusion caused last week with our patch updates which resulted in, not only a server outage but also adjustments to the in-game economy which were made without a clear explanation to our community,” Yamauchi said. “We know that this is not the Gran Turismo experience you expect.” In order to receive the one million credit gift, you must have bought a copy of GT7To claim your gift, you will need to log in before March 25.

Image: Polyphony Digital/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

Because of its controversial nature, the move to reduce race-rewards was controversial GT7 has a combination of relatively meager race rewards, extremely expensive in-game “Legend” cars, and microtransactions selling credit packs at a high price. To encourage players to spend money at the store, we reduced the payouts for the races they had chosen to earn credits the fastest.

Yamauchi said that the patch was simply an attempt to fix “inconsistent reward payouts,” but has now acknowledged the need to rebalance the game economy as a whole to make it faster and more fun to earn credits. “To re-establish the intended equilibrium and provide more accurate rewards based on time investment and completion, it was necessary to recalculate the rewards system as a whole,” he said.

The average reward for participating in World Circuits events will double in a patch that is due to be published in April. For online racing, and completing Circuit Experience challenges, rewards will increase. Missions will add new high-reward endurance races that last for one hour. The maximum amount of credits non-paid credit players have in their wallets is increased from 20 to 100 million. In order to alleviate frustration at the lack of vehicles in certain areas, additional cars will now be made available from both the Used and Legend dealerships.

Additional patches are planned for the beginning of April to add cars, course layouts, and other fixes.

Yamauchi also offered a view of what further “near-term” updates to Gran Turismo 7You will be able to sell cars out of your garage and increase your income. There will be new World Circuit events. Missions will get 24-hour endurance races. Additionally, online time trials for players will be available. These time trials reward them based on their time.

“We want to thank you for your continued patience and valuable feedback as we grow and evolve GT7 to make it as enjoyable and rewarding for as many players as possible,” Yamauchi said. “We always want to keep communication lines open with our community so that we can work together to build the best racing experience possible.”

Indeed, the promised updates address most of players’ concerns, although there’s still a question mark over the eye-watering prices for credit packs on the PlayStation Store. VGC noted that to get enough, you would need $40. GT7 credits to buy a Porsche 919 Hybrid — a race car that can be bought as a one-off purchase for $2.99 in Gran Turismo Sport. It would cost $180 to purchase the 1970 Porsche 917 for real money. The Legend dealer is selling it at 18 million credits. The prices are due for a balance, or at least a return of the direct car-for-cash microtransactions that were much more fair and appealing. GT Sport.

All of the reasons are listed above. Gran Turismo 7 has been review-bombed on Metacritic to the point that it is now Sony’s lowest-rated game ever by audience score. Hopefully Polyphony’s changes can fix its economy and begin to repair its reputation because, as I found at review, it’s a technically excellent and surprisingly soulful racing game that’s “all science and engineering on the outside, and all history and heart within.”