Lord knows Grand Theft Auto Online is off to a rough start. The game's living online world has only been live for a week, and
many have been quick to report it as entirely broken, with server connections and a host of various bugs, errors, and so on. According to new player claims, things don't seem to be getting any easier for either Rockstar or the virtual inhabitents of Los Santos.
The biggest nuisance to date has been the fact that the game is mostly inaccessible thanks to server issues. But a new issue is waiting to plague players once they manage to get online, and it goes a lot further than dealing with the occasional troll or shrill-pitched gamer shrieking into the mic.
In GTA Online, cash and respect points are the name of the game. Earning and having enough of both is what enables players to unlock various items like cars, weapons, purchasable properties, etc., and just help open up the game overall that much more. But without either currency, the game is little more than a waste of time. Unfortunately, many players are reporting loading up their character, only to find themselves without any of the aforementioned things they worked so hard to buy and/or unlock.
Everything from personalized cars to ranks and properties to cash are said to have simply vanished from players like Miley Cyrus' self-respect. There's been enough players reporting the problem that Rockstar managed to pen a response to the issue via the company's support page. However, it might not be the message players were looking for, as a solution is yet to be found:
"We have received reports from some players who experienced losing characters, progress, items, and/or in-game cash during the first few days after release. We are working diligently to identify and correct the causes for these losses, as well as to establish how best to restore any lost progress and value. If you would like to receive an automatic email notification as soon as there is more information about this, please log into the Support Site and click Subscribe at the top of this page. You do not need to do anything else at this time."
The company is suggesting that the issue could be related to people playing with temporary characters, or as the result of data corruption from an improper save, noting, "When exiting GTA Online, please pause the game and choose to return to Single Player. This will trigger a save and ensure that progress since the last auto-save is recorded. If you purchase items and immediately power the console off or exit through console system menus, those items may not be saved."
There's also a funny bug that gives players the same result when they use the "Retry" button after receiving the message "Rockstar Cloud Servers are unavailable." Apparently, "this may result in loss of character data. If you are trying to access GTA Online and Rockstar Cloud Servers are unavailable, please exit to GTAV Story Mode and try entering GTA Online again through the Pause menu in Story Mode."
The team is currently working on releasing another title update that will "fix this issue as soon as possible."