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Gran Turismo 7 developer apologizes after 30 hours of downtime

Polyphony Digital CEO Kazunori Yamauchi has issued an explanation as to why Gran Turismo 7 was down for more than 24 hours.

Donovan Erskine

March 18, 2022 9:10 AM

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It’s not uncommon for a developer to briefly take a game offline in order to perform some necessary maintenance in order to keep things working as expected. In some cases, server maintenance can be extensive and cause frustration for players. Gran Turismo 7 set a new bar when it went down for a whopping 30 hours recently due to some unexpected issues during a scheduled server maintenance. Now, the developer has issued an apology and an explanation.

Polyphony Digital CEO Kazunori Yamauchi shared a statement to Gran Turismo 7 fans to discuss the update 1.07 downtime that began early on March 17 and lasted until the morning of March 18. “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,” he said. It was this game-breaking issue that caused the developers to keep the servers offline for roughly 30 hours.

It was during this extended period that PS4 and PS5 players weren’t able to get into Gran Turismo 7, since the game requires you to have an online connection in order to play. It highlights a major complaint in the digital era of gaming, where even most single-player experiences require the player to be constantly connected to the internet and updated to a game’s latest version.

It’s a bit mind-boggling that a game as new and big as Gran Turismo 7 was completely unplayable for over 24 hours, but those issues have now been resolved. Despite those frustrations, we found the game to be an excellent entry in the racing series in our review.

Donovan Erskine

News Editor

Donovan is a journalist from Maryland. His oldest gaming memory is playing Pajama Sam on his mom's desktop during weekends. Pokémon Emerald, Halo 2, and the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 were some of the most influential titles in awakening his love for video games. After interning for Shacknews throughout college, Donovan graduated from Bowie State University in 2020 with a major in broadcast journalism and joined the team full-time. He is a huge film fanatic and will talk with you about movies and games all day. You can follow him on twitter @Donimals_