Game News
Gran Turismo 7 launched two weeks ago and the consensus is that it’s a good game. In many aspects, fans consider it a return to form following the less-than-ideal GT5 and GT6. However, it isn’t perfect by any means. A recent update has backfired causing Gran Turismo 7 to stay offline for over 24 hours.
The offending patch was Update 1.07 which was supposed to be a routine balancing patch. But an oversight in it has forced developer Polyphony Digital to perform maintenance. That maintenance period has now passed 24 hours meaning that paying customers have had to go a whole day without access to their game.
To make matter worse, the patch that caused Gran Turismo 7 to go offline was already controversial. It aims to nerf various methods of making credits causing the racing game to be even grindier than it started.
Technically, Gran Turismo has always been a grindy franchise so this may not seem too bad. Unfortunately, the developer’s motive for implementing this change is not to increase GT7’s difficulty. Instead, it was done to tempt players into buying microtransactions. Gran Turismo 7 offers all kinds of microtransactions that can help a player skip some of the grind. By making the grind less enjoyable the developer is hoping that more players will pay up to save time.
A workaround
Technically, it is still possible to play Gran Turismo 7 in offline mode. By disconnecting your PS4 or PS5 and then booting the game it will still launch. Although the experience awaiting you is probably not what you were hoping for.
Loading and processing time can be very long in offline mode. Equally, certain game modes and gameplay functionality are disabled when not connected to the internet. It’s better than nothing but players are hardly going to be happy with this makeshift solution.
