The makers of Grand Theft Auto V warned that the game’s online component would probably have a rocky launch. And that turned out to be true. But they’re letting folks know what some of the issues are. And, until things get better, players won’t be able to spend real-world money in the game.
An excerpt from an update on the publisher’s official site says:
Things are changing and developing frequently but here are some latest updates as of this afternoon:
- For PlayStation 3 users, a PlayStation Network server issue was detected that was limiting the amount of possible concurrent users. This was preventing most players from accessing GTA Online altogether and as of this morning, that problem was resolved.
- There is an issue that is preventing some players from getting through the first tutorial mission across both platforms. Many players have been able to get through this with repeated retries, and we are working on unblocking this for everyone as soon as possible.
- This morning, we experienced some instability across the GTA Online services which is affecting even people who have progressed beyond the tutorial mission. We are identifying these issues now and are working to restore stability for users as soon as possible.
- For the time being and until we have been able to get everybody access to GTA Online and things are running smoothly, we have disabled the option of purchasable GTA$ cash packs. Players can however keep on earning GTA$ by pulling off Jobs and other profitable gameplay activities rather than purchasing cash packs.
Various Kotaku staffers have had intermittent success getting into GTA Online. How have you guys been faring?
Comments
24 responses to “Grand Theft Auto Online Launch Woes Put Microtransactions On Hold”
I can not even play at all, nothing has been resolved for me. Perhaps they should have temporarily added more infrastructure to cope with the load.
Could not connect the first night, but I wasn’t too concerned as it’d just been released. Home late from work last night so haven’t had a second shot at it. Probably have a go tonight.
I wouldn’t bother, I tried all night Tuesday night, it allowed me to connect ONCE, created my character, went through the intro and got stuck at the start of the first race.
Tried again all night last night, STILL CAN’T EVEN START THE FREAKIN’ RACE!
I’m not even gonna try and get online anymore until I know ALL the bugs have been fixed. I’ve got better things to do with my time than sit on a launch screen for 10 minutes at a time and restart the game over and over again.
Worked for a bunch of us last night. Free play was fine. Missions and races had issues though with mostly being unable to connect.
Yeah this, my free roam is mostly stable and I seem to be able to connect without issue but still get ‘cloud server unavailable occasionally’ However I have only been able to do one or two missions so far with every attempt to do a mission having some problem, usually ‘failing to download’.
What I have played has been pretty fun though, seems a lot more challenging/punishing than single player too. I even plugged my headset in this morning as I figure I might actually (need to) use it to talk to people in this environment.
Mate and I spent around six hours on free play with no issues. Did one job that timed me out and one job that worked fine.
Hasn’t been going well. I get as far as the beginning the first race, but then it gets stuck on the ‘Launching session” menu. What’s worst, every time I restart, I have to recreate my character and sit through the long, unskippable intro again.
I have not bothered to try out the Online part yet.
Still finishing the main campaign, only a handful of missions to go, so should get that knocked out by the weekend, might try GTA Online either on the weekend or early next week, once things have calmed down and stabilised a bit more.
No point getting myself all worked up when it fails to connect over and over again, will just wait a little longer I think
You know what I find interesting? That everyone is pretty much ok with having micro-transactions in the game just because it’s Rockstar, If it was EA, there would be a ton of people (myself included) jumping up and down saying that it’s BS.
Yes, I know they’re completely optional, but c’mon this is just greed pure and simple. Rockstar has made over $1 Billion dollars on GTA V. Do they really need any more money.
I recall Rockstar saying before release that GTA V was about the almighty dollar. They weren’t wrong.
Too much money is never enough for some. Why settle for $1bil if they can make $1.5 or $2bil?
I guess it was implemented before they had the sales figures but even still, this is NOT pay to win, it doesn’t give you gameplay features you couldn’t get if you just spent a little longer and this is basically a completely free MMO game that is possibly one of THE most expansive online games out there, once it’s fully rolled out. This was on top of a game that was generally regarded as being one of the largest and most entertaining games ever released, without DLC missions.
I get that a lot of people hate microtransactions and spending extra money in general but there’s a difference between this and, say, Popcap games or Bioware or Square Enix or most of the others.
I’m fine with the micro-trans as long they keep supporting GTA-O. Added content, bug fixes, server maintenance.
I posted a breakdown of the billion dollar figure in another thread. Short version, it’s a billion in sales. By the time that money actually gets to Rockstar North, it’s not (yet) enough to cover the game’s $292M cost of development.
As for microtransactions, I don’t have a problem with them if they’re done right, so it’s not like I’m giving Rockstar specifically a free pass . If I don’t want to use them, I just won’t. Simple enough.
Indeed.. IAPs are fine if they are not pay-walls or whatever other term you want to call it.
If that is true and Rockstar haven’t even covered development costs yet, then they have clearly bitten off more than they can chew. I’m sure they could have made a GTA game for A LOT less money than that and it still would have sold by the truckload.
If you’re turning over 1 Billion dollars in sales, and you still haven’t made enough to cover costs after paying taxes and whatnot, you’re doing it wrong.
It’s just the standard breakdown of video game costs. The vast majority goes into the pockets of middlemen, and the developer gets bugger all at the end. On a billion I think I calculated they made about $230M, while the game cost $292M. Covering 80% of your development costs in the first two weeks is pretty good, and they will turn profit soon if they haven’t already. Mainly, I’m trying to draw people’s attention to the fact that a really high sales figure doesn’t mean all (or even much) of that money ends up in the developer’s pockets.
Theres is bias, but I think it really helps that they are thrown in your face. The game mentioned it to me once, and I know its there, but thats the end of my experience with it.
Those “everyone likes it when [company X] does THIS but when [company Y] does it then EVERYONE hates it!” arguments never work. If you ever come to that conclusion, try again because it’s wrong. The same goes for when you write something like “pure and simple” when it isn’t simple. You’ve made it simple for yourself so you understand it.
I’ve been trying all morning and every night since launch. The furthest I’ve fared is finishing the character customisation, then it conks out. I’m losing hope!
Had a lot of trouble connecting the last few days – got online finally last night for about 30 minutes. Watched the intro and did the first race, against Lamar only. That’s all I’ve been able to do.
I had a solid hour yesterday, the tutorial was only Lamar and I which was disappointing. After the tutorial there were people everywhere, but some dick kept targeting me which prevented me from having a decent look around. I got access again last night (maybe 9pm-ish) but there were no other players so after having maybe 30mins of hanging out I left.
Admittedly I didn’t bother this morning but I did try for about 3 or 4 hours last night, off and on, to get in. Even going to the “Solo Mode”, I could get as far as the beginning of the tutorial mission. My only consolation of this is that my character information has been saved at the start of the tutorial mission and I don’t have to go through the awesome but lengthy and unskippable intro movie every time I want to try.
I am a PS3 user and it was only through accidentally coming across a single forum thread on GTAForums that I found that the PS3 GTA Online was suffering the most to get online.. and that acknowledgement now that there was a PSN issue is what I needed to hear. 🙂
Yeah, why is that movie unskippable? I don’t think it’s masking loading times or anything because there’s plenty of those as it is.
Had big trouble connecting then started solo mode to do the tutorial missions, once they were done I had no problem entering free mode but missions/jobs/races are still hit or miss, either way am now a level 8 thug.