Gran Turismo 7 hits record-low user score

Sony‘s seventh edition to the Gran Turismo franchise has become the company’s lowest-rated game on Metacritic. This comes following a recent update that made it harder for players to unlock cars without paying real money.

As of writing, the user score of Gran Turismo 7 (GT7) on Metacritic has dropped to just 2.0 and as reported by Eurogamer is the lowest user score from PlayStation Studios or Sony Interactive Entertainment game.

The recent drop in user scores started arriving during extended maintenance caused Gran Turismo 7 to be unplayable for over a day prompting an apology from the series’ creator.

However, following the maintenance with the addition of the Gran Turismo 7‘s 1.07 update, these negative reviews have begun flooding in torrents. This is due to the update reducing the rewards for in-game events, making it harder to unlock cars using currency earned for free.

Earlier in the month, fans had already criticised Gran Turismo 7 microtransactions for being overbearing and expensive. Several of the reviews specifically raise issues with the changes to rewards included in the 1.07 update.

Series creator Kazunori Yamauchi spoke on microtransactions stating that “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,” added Yamauchi, who then shared that Polyphony Digital is looking to “constructively resolve” these issues.