The Big Problem With Gran Turismo 7

The age of always-online gaming has its advantages—and, as Gran Turismo 7 is proving, its own problems.

If you’re anything like us at AutoGuide, you’ve been scratching the GT7 itch this month. The latest in Sony’s long-running franchise launched on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 on March 4. Early reviews generally were pretty positive, with fellow journo and friend Adam Ismail saying “it might just remind you why you fell in love with cars in the first place” in his Jalopnik review.

Then update v1.07 came.

In the wee hours of March 17, the latest Gran Turismo 7 game update was pushed out, and the online servers went down. When the game briefly returned, players found that developer Polyphony Digital had severely reduced the in-game payouts of the most lucrative races. We say “briefly” because a short time afterwards, Polyphony announced it had found an issue with the 1.07 patch. As of this writing, over 30 hours since the original maintenance, the servers are still offline. This severely limits players’ ability to, well, actually play GT7.

Let’s dive into those payouts. Had we published our own review of the game prior to release, we probably would have criticized the game’s economy as slightly stingy. It showers players with free cars early in the career, sure, but the actual prize money on hand is some of the lowest amounts in the series. That’s a bit of a barrier for a game that is ostensibly about inviting a new generation of players to become car enthusiasts.

Prior to the patch, the quickest way to earn credits in GT7 involved a single-lap race of the Fisherman’s Ranch track. In around three minutes, players could earn 65,000 credits—or 97,500 if they kept the clean race bonus. Stick at it, and it was possible to earn well over 1,000,000 credits per hour. That still meant hours of re-running the same race if you wanted a shot at cars like the 12,000,000-credit Jaguar XJ13, however. Maybe even more, since the game’s rare used car dealership pricing fluctuates, as part of a collaboration with Hagerty.

Now, that same race pays out 30,000 (45,000 with the bonus). That more than doubles the amount of time needed to buy that same classic Jag. And it wasn’t just this race that saw its price payouts reduced. Well over a dozen other tracks also significant reduction credits received after race completion. It has made what was already a fairly monotonous slog even worse. On top of this is the (welcome) return of tuning to Gran Turismo. GT7 has a broader range of aftermarket options than any GT game before it, and that’s great! But it’s also expensive.

Further compounding this issue is the presence of microtransactions—credit packs that cost real money. The most cost-efficient pack is the 2,000,000 one, which currently goes for $20 on the PlayStation Store. Polyphony intentionally hobbling the in-game economy can be seen as a not-so-subtle way to steer players to shovel additional cash towards these packs.

Depending on how you feel about the above situation, maybe this is the big problem. Since Polyphony pulled the v1.07 update, and is keeping the servers offline until it has a fix for this unknown issue, players have access to a tiny fraction of the game they paid for. Single Race, Time Trial, and Drift Trail are available, and only 13 of the game’s 424 cars are accessible—and only stock, no less.

Want to progress through the single player campaign? Maybe you just want to modify a car, or even create a custom livery? Too bad. If the GT7 servers aren’t up, you can’t do any of that. Even previous title GT Sport allowed players to do paying race events when servers were down.

What this could mean down the road, when Polyphony stops supporting GT7 servers, is anybody’s guess. How it handles the inevitable wind-down of the afore-mentioned Sport servers will serve as a hint of things to come.

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