Rockstar Says Sorry for GTA Online Issues with $500K In-Game Cash

If you hadn’t noticed yet, GTA Online saw a pretty rocky launch that plagued the online service with issues, sometimes to the point of unplayability. While it certainly wasn’t as bad as SimCity’s disastrous launch, Rockstar still wants to apologize for the problems, and the developer is giving everyone who had issues with GTA Online $500,000 of in-game cash.

Rockstar is calling it the “stimulus package,” and it will be available to those who’ve played anytime during this month, so technically, if you still haven’t bought the game, you can still get in the on the fun a bit late and still claim your $500,000 stimulus package. The funds will arrive after version 1.04 update arrives, and it will come as two separate $250,000 deposits to players’ accounts. This is “to keep the current worldwide in-game economy balanced.”

Rockstar will announce the exacts dates of the deposits in the near future, but it’s hoping that the first deposit will be available by the end of next week, with the second deposit  arriving by the end of the month.

GTA Online launched earlier this month to much anticipation, but it was plagued right away with all sorts of issues that left the game practically unplayable for many gamers. The most common issue was the “Rockstar Cloud Servers Unavailable Error,” which shows up right away when gamers fired up GTA Online, before they could even start playing.

We surveyed over 900 gamers about GTA Online, and a whopping 98% of them were having some sort of issue with the game, whether it was a bug that hindered the gameplay, or the errors that resulted in an unplayable game altogether. Furthermore, gamers that were able to play a significant amount of time in GTA Online saw their progress lost and some of their money gone, which could be one reason why Rockstar is giving out a good amount of cash as an apology.

Hopefully, that’ll be enough of an apology, and Rockstar will be able to get GTA Online back in business. It’s not too surprising that we’re seeing problems with the launch. It’s certainly not acceptable, but it’s definitely something that is always likely to happen with brand new launches of games and online services.