Gran Turismo 7 servers are back up following extended maintenance

The developer has also adjusted its event rewards

Gran Turismo 7 servers are back online, after an extended maintenance period kept it offline for over 24 hours. Developer Polyphony Digital announced it has issued Update 1.08, after discovering a rare issue before the release of 1.07.

Yesterday, Polyphony Digital announced it was extending server maintenance, with no completion time set. “Due to an issue found with Update 1.07, we are extending the current server maintenance period,” the update reads. “We will confirm the completion time as soon as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and ask for your patience while we work to resolve the issue.”

Due to an issue found in Update 1.07, we will be extending the Server Maintenance period. We will notify everyone as soon as possible when this is likely to be completed. We apologize for this inconvenience and ask for your patience while we work to resolve the issue. #GT7

— Gran Turismo (@thegranturismo) March 17, 2022

Polyphony CEO Kazunori Yamauchi addressed the maintenance in an update on the Gran Turismo 7 site.

“Immediately before the release of the 1.07 update, we discovered an issue where the game would not start properly in some cases on product versions for the PS4 and PS5,” writes Yamauchi. “This was a rare issue that was not seen during tests on the development hardware or the QA sessions prior to the release, but in order to prioritize the safety of the save data of the users, we decided to interrupt the release of the 1.07 update, and to make a 1.08 correctional update.”

Several facets of Gran Turismo 7, including single-players modes like the campaign, require a connection to GT7‘s servers. Players were posting about the outages, as well as concerns about the in-game economy, on forums like the Gran Turismo subreddit. And folks like Digital Foundry’s John Linneman have noted how this illustrates the issue with required server connectivity for games. User reviews have also been dropping on Metacritic.

Yamauchi says the event rewards for Gran Turismo 7 were adjusted in the update as well. Describing the team’s plans going forward, he says he would like users to enjoy many cars and races “even without microtransactions.”

He also says it’s important for car prices to be linked with real-world price tags, to convey value and rarity.

“We will in time let you know the update plans for additional content, additional race events and additional features that will constructively resolve this,” Yamauchi says. “It pains me that I can’t explain the details regarding this at this moment, but we plan on continuing to revise GT7 so that as many players as possible can enjoy the game. We would really appreciate it if everyone could watch over the growth of Gran Turismo 7 from a somewhat longer term point of view.”