Gran Turismo 7 players awarded 1M free credits after backlash over downtime and grind

polygon.com:

Polyphony Digital has responded to strong criticism from the Gran Turismo 7 community since last week’s downtime and controversial update by awarding all players one million free in-game credits.

In a post on the PlayStation Blog, Polyphony president and game director Kazunori Yamauchi also laid out plans for a robust series of updates, starting at the beginning of April, aimed at addressing issues with the game’s economy that are at the heart of player complaints. Changes will include doubling the payout for late-game races, adding new high-reward events to the game, and making it possible for players to sell cars in their collection.

Last week, Gran Turismo 7 servers remained offline for more than a day after the deployment of patch 1.07 broke, and necessitated an all-new patch, numbered 1.08, to fix it. GT7 has an always-online requirement that left most of the game unplayable during this time.

Yamauchi said the gift of credits to all players was a “goodwill gesture” to apologize not just for the downtime, but for players’ anger at the content of the patch, which nerfed credit rewards for certain races that players had been using to grind out cash in the game.

“I would like to apologize for the frustration and confusion caused last week with our patch updates which resulted in, not only a server outage but also adjustments to the in-game economy which were made without a clear explanation to our community,” Yamauchi said. “We know that this is not the Gran Turismo experience you expect.” In order to receive the one million credit gift, you must have bought a copy of GT7 prior to March 25, and you must log in to claim the gift before April 25.

The move to decrease race rewards was controversial because GT7 has a