Gran Turismo 7 Offers Free Credits & Announces Fixes After Backlash

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Polyphony Digital President Kazunori Yamauchi penned a letter to the Gran Turismo 7 community, offering one million free credits and promising the team will produce a host of fixes to the experience. Despite receiving widespread acclaim from critics, Gran Turismo 7's launch month has proven disastrous as far as many fans are concerned.

An update that went live several days after release made cars in GT7 much more difficult to earn, for example. To make matters worse, such a stumbling block came amid discourse about the racing title's frustrating post-launch microtransactions. And the hits just kept coming. Issues with the 1.07 patch in mid-March forced Polyphony Digital to extend maintenance on the racer, meaning Gran Turismo 7 would spend a lengthy period of time with its servers down. This downtime lasted for an astounding 24-plus hours, much of it with little to no communication from Polyphony or Sony. But once the servers returned to working order, the overbearing microtransactions and the grind needed to avoid them hadn't been addressed. Gran Turismo 7 users quickly fought back against the disappointing state of affairs, and it seems Polyphony has taken the opprobrium to heart.

Related: Gran Turismo 7 Becomes Worst User-Rated Sony Game Ever

Studio President Kazunori Yamauchi took to the PlayStation Blog to address the server outage and in-game economy changes. In acknowledging that this isn't the Gran Turismo experience players anticipated, Polyphony is offering a "goodwill gesture" in the form of one million free in-game credits to all who owned GT7 on PS4/PS5 prior to Friday, March 25. Users must claim the free credit pack before Monday, April 25, Yamauchi wrote. The executive also stated a "considerable patch"