Gran Turismo 7 Becomes Sony’s Lowest User Rated Game On Metacritic, Players Unhappy With Microtransactions And Reduced Credit Payouts
Ryan Pearson
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Thanks to overbearing microtransactions and a recent patch that only served to make the problem worse, Gran Turismo 7 has tumbled down the rankings to become Sony’s lowest user-rated game on Metacritic.
Source: Gran Turismo 7 (2022), Sony Interactive Entertainment
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Though critics showered Gran Turismo 7 with high praise, handing the game an average of 87 across both Opencritic and Metacritic, the game’s user scores on the latter tell a different story. There, the PlayStation 5 version holds a mere 1.6 out of 10, with The PlayStation 4 faring hardly any better at 2.2.
In fact, Gran Turismo 7 is currently not only PlayStation Studios’ lowest user rated game on Metacritic, but also lower than any other title across Sony’s various labels, including Sony Interactive Entertainment, as well as Sony Computer Entertainment Japan, America, and Europe.
Source: Gran Turismo 7 (2022), Sony Interactive Entertainment
At the time of this article’s writing, the PlayStation 5 version of Gran Turismo 7 is the 55th worst user rated game on Metacritic. Ignoring duplicate titles who me the list multiple times thanks to cross-platform releases, that position falls to 37th.
Nonetheless, it should be noted users don’t need to verify they have played Gran Turismo 7 – or any game – before leaving it a review.
Source: Gran Turismo 7 (2022), Sony Interactive Entertainment
Metacritic attempted to counteract emotionally-driven reviews in 2020, implementinga system which prevented user reviews for any given title from being made until 36 hours after its release.
Though this move was made after players took issue with the disastrous launches of Warcraft III: Reforged and The Last of Us Part II, as well as a ResetERA orchestrated review bombing of AI: The Somnium Files, the review score aggregator later insisted that “the decision was not made based on reactions to any particular game.”
Source: Gran Turismo 7 (2022), Sony Interactive Entertainment
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So, why all the hate? The main crux seems to be Gran Turismo 7’s microtransactions.
The most useful user review, as ranked by other users, states the game is “Painfully behind the times, a clear cash grab at every turn.”
“This is what it feels like to be robbed blind,” condemns the user who authored the review, Boose. “Simply not up to par given hype and dev time. Cars woefully out of date.”
Source: Boose, Metacritic
“Game requires always online for single player, that’s really a bad Thing,” reviewed ER45ER. “Microtransactions = Theft. I would also say that I played every single GT Game since the 1st one.”
They then confessed, “I feel like betrayed and scammed at the moment. And one more Thing, STOP release game not properly finished. We are players, not testers.”
Source: ER45ER, Metacritic
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“In patch 1.07 Polyphony just made it harder to earn in-game credits by reducing race rewards in hope to force people to pay real money for it…,” whadafock lamented “I mean come on… with most of the money grab decisions from Sony this generation, this is still a new low. I am just gonna stop playing GT7 and go back to Horizon 5…..”
Source: whadafock, Metacritic
When comparing the cost of in-game credits to real world money, cars that were only $5 in the series’ prior entry – Gran Turismo Sport – are now $40. Further still, some cars are only available for a limited time.
Though fans used certain exploits within the game to farm credits, the aforementioned version 1.07 of Gran Turismo 7 not only patched these shortcuts out, but also reduced the credit payout on several races.
Source: Gran Turismo 7 (2022), Sony Interactive Entertainment
GTPlanet calculated that while version 1.06 of Gran Turismo 7 was the third most generous game of the series’ nine games with its credit payouts, version 1.07 drops it to seventh.
Despite having slightly less expensive cars than the most expensive entry in the series – the aformentioned Gran Turismo Sport – Gran Turismo 7 players still need to enter 333 races – taking roughly 17.8 hours of play time – to be able to afford the most expensive cars (barring limited time offers) at 20 million credits.
Source: Gran Turismo 7 (2022), Sony Interactive Entertainment
This marks the second worst expensive-car-per-race ratio in the series, though some titles such as Gran Turismo 6 also had login bonuses and special events towards the end of their lives.
However, when the cost of upgrade parts are also considered, GTPlanet proposes “it pushes GT7’s economy further out of step compared to even GT Sport,” and that Gran Turismo 7 had the slowest economy of any title in the series.
Source: Gran Turismo 7 (2022), Sony Interactive Entertainment
Further still, the patch for 1.07 caused an issue that caused a Gran Turismo 7 server maintenance period to be extended to almost 30 hours. This occurred just shy of two weeks after the game launched.
Polyphony Digital President and Gran Turismo series producer Kazunori Yamauchi later apologized for what he described as a “rare issue that was not seen during tests on the development hardware or the QA sessions prior to the release.”
Source: Gran Turismo 7 (2022), Sony Interactive Entertainment
Yamauchi also addressed the outcry over the microtransactions, reasoning, “In GT7 I would like to have users enjoy lots of cars and races even without microtransactions. At the same time the pricing of cars is an important element that conveys their value and rarity, so I do think it’s important for it to be linked with the real world prices.”
“I want to make GT7 a game in which you can enjoy a variety of cars lots of different ways, and if possible would like to try to avoid a situation where a player must mechanically keep replaying certain events over and over again,” Yamauchi justified.
Source: Gran Turismo 7 (2022), Sony Interactive Entertainment
“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 continued. “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,” he concluded.
Source: Gran Turismo 7 (2022), Sony Interactive Entertainment
What do you make of Gran Turismo 7’s microtransactions? Let us know on social media and in the comments below.
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