24 HOURS OF EXTENDED MAINTENANCE, GRAN TURISMO 7 IS STILL OFFLINE
Gran Turismo 7 Has Been Virtually Unplayable For The Past 24 Hours, As An Issue In The Latest Update Caused Its Planned Server Maintenance To Run Longer Than Usual. While you can still play the Music Rally mode and custom Arcade races, server downtime prevents any kind of single player progress from being saved, as well as unavailable for online multiplayer. Also, Polyphony Digital has planned server maintenance to coincide with the latest Gran Turismo 7 update, version 1.07. However, due to a “problem” with the update, server maintenance continued. There have been no updates on this matter in the last 21 hours and it has already been 27 hours since the servers were disconnected at 6AM GMT. You can at least check the server status on the GT7 website, so you don’t waste your time loading the game to find out.
To be honest, apologies aren’t good enough for another completely safe decision to take a single player experience and force online connectivity. This situation is exactly the kind of thing that makes such decisions controversial, aside from the fact that when Sony and Polyphony Digital decide to shut down the game’s servers, they kill the game outright. It might be in 10 years, it might be in 20, but where you can load up Gran Turismo 4 or 5 and play happily on old consoles, GT7 will one day become a heavyweight.
This isn’t the only thing that irritates potential players in the game, as the inclusion of microtransactions and the weight of payouts from races and events has also come under criticism. The game does a good job of feeding you a slew of car unlocks through the single player, with car rewards for each race the GT Café to-do list books send you to, but once you reach the end of the reward streak you’ll then count on the Daily Workout and earn in-game to buy cars. Alternatively, you can spend money on some inaccurate transactions to fill up your digital wallet and buy quality cars. That crunch was already drawing some criticism, but data experts found that update 1.07 reduced the payouts for certain high-paying events to significantly reduce the effectiveness of some money-making events.
This is in addition to other problems, such as not being able to modify multiplayer lobbies after creating them, a feature that has been standard since Gran Turismo 5. You have to close the lobby and start one from scratch if you want to change the route, race length, vehicle requirements, lobby privacy or literally anything. .
Other than not being able to play the game in any meaningful way at the moment, Gran Turismo 7 is awesome! In our review, I wrote: ‘Gran Turismo 7 takes everything excellent in GT Sport’s great multiplayer, high-resolution circuits, circuits and the innovative Scapes mode, and builds a more traditional GT experience around. It has its own quirky new ideas that will likely pass the diversions on to most people, but at its core, this is the Gran Turismo you know and love. Spacious and accessible, but with depth, nuance and competitive racing for those who want to find it.’
