A live-service game is once again apologizing for its microtransactions, and promising to do better. In a new blog post, Gran Turismo 7 director Kazunori Yamauchi acknowledged frustrations with the state of the game and announced developer Polyphony Digital will issue 1 million credits to every player, as well as dramatically change GT7’s car economy to help make amends.
“Thank you for your continued support and feedback on Gran Turismo 7, your voices have not gone unheard,” the series creator wrote. “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.”
GT7 servers went down for maintenance on March 17 and didn’t come back until over a day later, leaving players who had paid for the game–much of which is single-player–locked out of most of its content for an extended period of time. When it came back up, players noticed some of its modes weren’t dishing out the same number of credits, GT7’s in-game currency, as they were expecting. Today, Yamauchi addressed what happened.
“The patch update previously deployed was intended to rectify an issue with inconsistent reward payouts within a part of the World Circuit Events,” he wrote. “But, 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.”
Players review bombed GT7 on Metacritic following the outtage and changes. To win them back, Yamauchi said everyone will be eligible to claim 1 million credits, the equivalent of $15, for free up until April 25. He also said a number of patches will be rolled out in the next month to add content and make grinding for credits, required to unlock the game’s best cars, less of a soul crushing slog.
Here’s a quick summary of what’s planned:
- Increase rewards in the events in the latter half of the World Circuits by approximately 100% on average.
- Addition of high rewards for clearing the Circuit Experience in all Gold/All Bronze results.
- Increase of rewards in Online Races.
- Include a total of eight new one-hour Endurance Race events to Missions. These will also have higher reward settings.
- Increase the upper limit of non-paid credits in player wallets from 20M Cr. to 100M Cr.
- Increase the quantity of Used and Legend cars on offer at any given time.
- Increase the payout value of limited time rewards as we develop as a live service.
- Further World Circuit event additions.
- Addition of Endurance Races to Missions including 24-hour races.
- Addition of Online Time Trials and awarding of rewards according to the player’s difference with the top ranked time.
- Make it so cars can be sold.
More generous credit prizes and the ability to resell cars are the two biggest improvements. Increasing the cap on non-paid credits players can hold is another no-brainer. Why Polyphony waited until after launch to make these adjustments remains a mystery. The car economy was so stingy that some players have been taking advantage of a complex exploit to earn for credits while not even playing. Unlike many other microtransaction-heavy games, GT7 isn’t free-to-play. It costs $70 on PS5.