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.
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“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:
