'Gran Turismo 7' has seen a significant amount of post-launch controversy, with players taking particular issue with the low pay-out rate for races.
Players have noted that the in-game economy relies heavily on microtransactions for players to make any meaningful progress, and a botched maintenance update left players essentially locked out of the game for a period of time.
As an apology, series director Kazunori Yamauchi has said that a suite of improvements will be made to the game to make it up to fans, with all players getting a payment of one million in-game credits.
The April patch will include the following fixes:
- 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.
The statement from Yamauchi read "the patch update previously deployed was intended to rectify an issue with inconsistent reward payouts within a part of the World Circuit Events."
"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."
"To improve the player experience, we will be rolling out a considerable patch in the beginning of April, with the number of events being increased, and we will reestablish the reward system with greater balance throughout the game to benefit all players," the statement added.
In future patches, set to be released in the "near-term," players will be able to sell their cars, increase the payout of value of limited-time rewards, add further events to the World Circuit mode, and 24-hour races.
'Gran Turismo 7' reviewed strongly upon release, but it soon became apparent that critics got a different version of the game than consumers ended up with.
The micro-transactions were not present during the review period and were subsequently added in when the game was released to the general public, which has resulted in a disparity between the strong critical reviews and the negative fan reaction.
Players can avail of the free 1 million credit giveaway from March 25th until April 25th.
