Gran Turismo 7 was released on March 4, 2022. It was, also for us, an anticipated game for the Playstation 5 since we also had a beginners driving rig with a very dedicated costly setup. The initial thought was, that it was a nice game.
By the day of writing this article we have June 6, 2022.
The horrendous pain of unlocking new cars for me personally was too much of a hassle and I dropped the game. My friend on the other hand got creative based on what other people do but more on that later.
GT7 offers a lot of different cars with a lot of variety in pricing. From a couple of thousand credits up to 20 million credits. Getting some of your favorite cars shouldn’t be too much time consuming but what if you play GT7 the way you probably played it times ago with GT6, 5, 4 and so on? Collecting cars?
The initial statement (direct quote):
Quote start
“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.”
Quote end.
Source: https://www.gran-turismo.com/us/gt7/news/00_3802725.html
This statement is a slap in your face. Why? Although the idea is actually a good one yet you are not getting real value out of your time. If you thought the ‘reality’ of ‘value’ that the cars have will be respected in your earnings in, like, a career or similar you’d be very wrong.
There are lists which calculate your income per hour. Imagine you have to drive hours for getting that ‘real awesome car’ or just ‘a few more cars for the collection’. Here is one of said lists:
- Trial Mountain Cup, Trial Mountain: 750.000 cr/hour
- Fisherman/Windmills, Dirt Champions: 1.100.000 cr/hour
- 24 Heures du Mans, World touring Car 700: 1.600.000 cr/hour
- Sardegna Road, World Touring Car 800: 1.650.000+ cr/hour
- Tokyo Expressway, World Touring Car 600: 1.750.000+ cr/hour
- … etc
Source: https://www.gtplanet.net/gt7-easiest-money-20220308/
Imagine to drive one single track for an hour or more just to get 700.000 to 2.000.000 credits. This includes restarting a race after finishing and so on.
Clever users that have a PC as well figured out afk-farming credits which is a completely fine thing for me since nobody gets hurt by that. If an online race is with a specific car you have to have that car else you can borrow a car as far as I know. If not, this statement still will be kind of true since you can play plenty of other online races including setting up your own races.
In short: Nobody gets hurt if someone else farms afk to buy themselves a nice collection of cars.
But this article gets even more juicy!
Do you remember the price you paid? We do. We paid 60€ for this game. Do you know what’s in the game as well? You guessed it:
Microtransactions!
| 1 Dollars get you roughly | ||
| 100.000 credits | $2,49 | 40.160 credits |
| 250.000 credits | $4,99 | 50.100 credits |
| 750.000 credits | $9,99 | 75.075 credits |
| 2.000.000 credits | $19,99 | 100.050 credits |
Just imagine being a regular 9 to 5 worker and you are a super big fan of GT since it’s beginning. You never missed out a single game and you dedicate yourself 3 hours per day to play the game as it is meant to be played.
By the time you unlocked your first 20 million Dollar car you’re looking at at least 2 months of constant playing Gran Turismo 7 just for 1 car. Time consuming since you just want to have fun and collect cars which, in my Opinion, has been always my favorite thing to do in Gran Turismo games.
Let’s get even more juicy with a series first kind appearance: FOMO!
Fomo means “fear of missing out” and the special car dealership in which you can buy the high priced and rarest cars has those cars only for a limited time and/or for a limited amount!
So you can literally miss out on a car that you want if you wait too long. Sure, they may come back one time but… do you really want to wait 1 week, month, half a year, a year or whatever time period the developers can come up with?
Want to spent just a quick dime to get that 20 million credits car? But… you only get 2 million credits for 19,99 Dollar! Times ten is really easy. 199,90 Dollar for your special 20 million credits car.
The anniversary edition of GT7 costs 99,99. You can buy GT7 Anniversary for a total of 2 times for the amount of “micro” transactions you have to do to get a single 20 million credits car.
You are nearly paying 3 ½ times the price of the base game to get one single high priced (super) rare car. Is this fair or even just? No – it’s not. That is simple corporation greed and it works just fine for every single game on planet earth.
Because there is always one desperate player that really, really wants that awesome thing in a game.
Now to the last part of this article: Exploiting the game to counteract corporation greed.
AFK-Farming
This means that you are not actively playing the game and still getting the benefits. In this case: credits. I won’t go into detail on how this works but the overarching principle is a technique in which you simply tell your car/controls ‘speed up, drive to the side’ and you basically ‘rail along’ the side of a track with a super fast car and basically be always the first at the finish line. Often with ‘perfect driving’ as well.
Racking up millions of credits still takes a lot of time and by a lot I literally mean half a day up to a day depending on the current patch and how well this exploit works. Well, more of a ‘technique’ than an exploit.
You have to let your PS5 on and the game running as well as let your PC run. Is this really worth it?
Personal conclusion:
The devs and/or corporation shows a formidable amount of greed and squeezing money out of you while talking about how ‘they fix the game soon so it will be more fair’ but they never will patch it up to a fair point.
I never saw a game recovering from bad microtransaction behavior instead every game gets more and more predatory.
Still, the game is good enough to ignore all those problems and enjoy your time on the track. Be aware that you should not give the corporation behind GT7 any dime more that they should get. Stay away from microtransactions and if you don’t see your time valued? Move to another game or even an older game to enjoy.
Polyphony Digital and/or Sony Interactive Entertainment? You ‘effed’ up.