Chequered Flag for Gran Turismo Sport as Online Services Shut Down in January 2024

That’s why I don’t buy games with an always online requirement. If no single player mode then no buy

Pathetic from Sony

@KillerBoy "The offline portions of the game can still be played, including purchased Add-Ons."

Booooooo. Don't put these online games out if you aren't willing to keep them online, Sony. Once again, boooooo.

I know people love nothing more than to get their pitchforks out but I do wonder how many people have actually been playing the game in the last couple of months.

Seems really early to be shutting down the servers. Sony are really and about this (see: Everybody’s Golf). Feels like yet another anti-consumer move by the company.

@AdamNovice The Gravity Rush argument always gets me. More people complained about the online content going away than actually bought the game!

this series is meant to be played online.
"career mode" consists of sprint races, for the most part, where you start in the back, and have 5 laps to get to the front.
no qualifying, no sense of a race weekend, nothing. those arent races. those are chase/checkpoint games.

if you want to tell them to flesh out the career mode, for hundreds of classes of cars, go ahead. they wont. but before they do that, the game is meant to be played online. period.

there are other racing games with true career modes.
try F1.

"B-b-b-but i dont know what that is"

tough. learn. i dont know what else to tell you. go play arcade games.

I bet all the people moaning about this haven't even touched it in years and had no plans in touching it again.

@AdamNovice it is still pretty anti-consumer, even if not many people play it. People have paid money for these types of games and for them to become essentially useless is just rubbish.

@AdamNovice it wouldn't be a big deal if the game was playable offline lmao

"Sony are so anti consumer!!"

Goes back to the company that does limited time game releases like the Mario collection or the original Fire Emblem, which Nintendo only seems to let out of the vault for short periods of time

As someone who still uses PSVR1 this shutdown isn't good news.
Driveclub VR was also treated to a similar fate, only 3 1/2 years after release so it didn't fare quite as well as GT Sport. The platinum for Driveclub Vr is now no longer obtainable.

Doesn't bode well for this live service future but then I don't trust Sony keeping servers up, as I have said in the past.

@PixelDragon Huh? I mean that's exactly how it is from Adam till NOW - you can't save when not connected to the internet, it only saves online. Pretty sure they're talking about online multiplayer not online saving.

lovely! i nice drinks coaster for the GT fans, well done to sony 👍

@PixelDragon I own more than 200 physical games that I haven't touched in absolute ages. More than half of those, I bought but never got around playing. Theoretically, I can play or replay them if I ever decide to. Realistically speaking, I never will. I'll simply choose something newer with better graphics, gameplay, etc.

The way I see it, if people played and enjoyed GT sport for years, perhaps it's time to move on. It's unlikely most of them would ever feel the need to play it again, when they have better options.

And stop making assumptions that just because someone has a different opinion, it's because they're a fanboy. I'd say that about any company.

@PixelDragon Welcome to online and life in general where nothing lasts forever.

Well... This bodes well for GT7. 2 years after GT8, (or Sport 2, whichever they decide) a game many players paid top price for, will become little more than a crap demo.

Shout out to anyone here who got the platinum for this. Those xp numbers needed to go from lvl 46 to lvl 50 were crazy!

@BusyOlf Lvl 50 is the only one left for me. Really haven't fancied the idea of grinding the game out for hours and hours just for that... It was fun whilst it lasted I guess....

Makes sense, GT Sport was basically the beta version of GT7.

@PixelDragon But it says it can be played offline, and how do you play a game without a save mechanic...Well they could easily update to save offline so...

Yup, I waited til I could get GT Sport for $10 knowing this. The game will effectively be a demo once the servers go down.

I didn’t buy GT7 for this exact reason and I don’t plan on it unless it dips to that $10 price point. I dont usually complain about the “all digital future”, but this online-only single player stuff effectively kills games.

Only reason I’m getting Forza MororSport right away is because it’s on GamePass and I’m already subscribed to that.

Bad move from Sony imo.

@PixelDragon That’s fair. I don’t understand the reason for this “online-only” nonsense for single-player content. My guess is it’s just a dirty business decision to make gamer’s buy the “newer console and game”. It’s a gross business practice.

@PixelDragon
"Would I be able access all the world circuits?
Yes, all world circuits will be accessible. Gameplay progression required as normal to unlock selected tracks."

How's this going to work if the game can't save absolutely NOTHING by your logic. Why would it even still exist on the PS Store? They would've dropped the entire game altogether.

@PixelDragon yes. I know how you feel. When someone disagrees with me, I know they simply must be missing the point. No other explanation possible.

While it's sad to see they remove the online function
The least they can do before the shutdown are make the online trophy attainable popped for who those yet achive

@PixelDragon Lol but that's the general information that has existed since the dawn of time, nothing to do with the shutdown news. Ok so they say online trophies won't be attainable right...so how are offline trophies going to be attained if there's no save function, are we going to leave our systems on for days and weeks...How does a game or anything that requires progress pass regulations if it doesn't have something as basic as a save function... It shouldn't even exist on the Store, c'mon bruh! 😁

@LiamOliver I feel you brother, I retired my sweet Boca Juniors coloured Renault Clio V6 on a grassy verge and called time on Sport. Never got the chance to get punted off the track by Momoz

@Shepherd_Tallon Sony shuts down stuff way sooner than anyone else, and this game should be getting offline saves before it gets shut down. Ubisoft has recently started to shut down PS3 games, PS3. Sony should be meeting that standard.
This deserves an uproar. If anyone wants to play the game on occasion, it’s a problem.

OK so if I understand right you won't be able to unlock cars after this date? I remember than unlocking any cars that weren't DLC required you to be online. Is this still the case? Will I be able to unlock the in game cars after this date?

*checkered

Idk, I hate live service and online requirements as much as the next guy but this really seems like a non issue. This was always intended as an online game anyway. Now there's little need for it with GT7. Life goes on.

Not much different than how I have Hi8 tapes but nothing to play them on, unless I want to spend an arm and a leg on an old working handheld. Nothing lasts forever, even if you own it.

They could at least patch the campaign so it could be played offline… but that would be too pro-consumer.

@ATaco In all fairness Sony have been doing the time retail game thing too. I've been trying to buy Knack on PS4 for months but nowhere sells it anymore.

@Sequel
The difference here is that you can still pick up knack digitally. When it comes to trying to pick up fire emblem, you can't even get it on the eshop anymore.

@Bentleyma maybe Sony ought to remove it from the store altogether or reduce the price to $1 or equivalent then.

@naruball I still play it myself really often and there's never much of an issue getting any games going so I'd imagine there still plenty of people playing. For me, GT Sport just hit the right note, especially after the loading times of GT5 I think it was?

Hilarious to see so many people defending this in the comments, they've all become so submissive! No matter how you look at it, when you purchase a game with your hard-earned money, you should still be able to play it whenever you want to, whether it's in 5 years time or 10 years time.

@Shepherd_Tallon Ah, I see. I suppose I see a difference in Matrix Online and Gran Turismo. GT has a long history that shows online is great but not needed, the game could be fine with some offline saving. The Matrix Online is an MMO based entirely on being online in much more core ways.
I think certain games have a much more open and practical offering of being online and gone one day, but those are very specific. I understand say, Zenith VR (a VR MMO I quite like) disappearing one day, but would begrudge Hitman 3 if it didn’t get offline saves one day.
In principle it’s not always wrong, but this doesn’t meet that in practice.

This sucks but isn't surprising, nor is people decrying Sony for being anti-consumer as a result. Yet, no one complains when MS continually removes previous versions of Forza.

@AdamNovice I agree why close the Japanese studio's was also a thing. Why because nobody bought the games..... 😢

This is why always on games are stupid

Such a shame and so happy I decided on doing the online trophies last year, still rate the sport over 7

So the game had a 6 year lifespan. I’d be annoyed if the next game in the series hadn’t been released or they didn’t give us a warning. As it is, GT7 is out, so…why would I play this one? Still, generally speaking I don’t buy games with an always online requirement for this reason. I don’t like timescales being put on when I can realistically start a game, especially if it’s still the latest release in the series.

@adit365 That's a horrible idea. There are many games' trophies that become unattainable, this isn't a new thing. And them becoming unavailable makes them coveted, due to the rarity. They will become patches of honor for those who got them. The last thing PD should do is just give them away to people who didn't earn them. So tired of the "everyone gets a trophy" mindset. 6+ years is more than enough time to attain them all, if a person hasn't by now they were never going to earn them and don't deserve to have trophies just handed to them.

I better get a move on. While Sport mode and the dealership (brand cantral) will be inaccessible (I tested what offline was like when the console firmware update happens it prevents online services so I tested what GT Sport is like offline and it's not too bad).

Arcade (available from start, won't save the progress but can access), career (update to get, no further progress will be saved and unlocks for each tier needed of player level I think it was besides just what garage cars have on you), driving missions (available from start need to unlock missions with at least bronze on all events to access ast row of events), circuit experience (accessible from the start, won't save the progress) are all accessible with a far enough progression of levels or event unlocks.

GT Sport handled the online requirement well for what it is. Just sucks as it's 100GB and like Spyro Reignited got to have a PS4 to actually keep all that data on the console (forever) besides anyone you archives PS4 games and has all updates for game preservation.

It's not Driveclub limited of a fair amount of content but most DLC/other stuff all gone I think it was. It's a fair game but bare bones.

Sport is better than GT7 with less invites gating garbage design in it/roulette that's badly designed/bad career mode of cafe and more so it's the better game than Forza Motorsport 6 (at least you can play it offline all showcase side missions and main tour career mode or arcade offline I think I'd have to cut my Xbox internet connection and see but FM8 will be as bad or worse than GT7 for online content access I bet but they won't tell us how bad it is their sneaky at least Polyphony tells people what is accessible offline and we can attest to what's true or not ourselves) or GT7 having bad ideas in them and more grind, more bad game design and are just a joke. Don't care of it has more content, is new and shiny it's still bad.

Sure you can't save (until someone alters the game to allow no server connection save requirement code which can't be hard to change, it's not cloud based the saves are still on your console besides being on their servers it's just some annoying server binding code that's there to annoy players and take control for their own save file editing/DRM/cheating reasons) but you can access every singleplayer mode with enough progress (arcade, career, driving missions, circuit experience, license tests) offline but no progress will hbe saved.

You need to get enough cars too to use them then only the arcade mode cars. The problem is the last events are super long and not worth doing for the length they are.

So I respect Sport more than GT7 even if I don't like Sport it still has issues online requirement and design wise.

Problem is you need the updates to get the career and also you need to progress well enough to have access to all content as some has to be unlocked in license tests/driving missions. The circuit experience is fine and career I think you may need levels to unlock all. So it's. About awkward of get to level 20 or something and unlock career but the rest just complete the events as best you can. It's dumb. But better than GT7.

GT7 has less content for offline with music rally/arcade so it's worse and Forza Motorsport I assume will be the same.

@Tharsman I agree but all they need to do is remove the server save code. Sport/brand central always were online. Driving missions can be accessed if progressed/unlocked enough.

Career/VR were an update (but career won't progress but you can access any events if have the player level for them) and arcade/circuit experience are all accessible anyway even if no progress.

Also so much for limited editions/game of the year editions with none of the content on disks at the end of it's 6 year life, yay!!!!!!!

No idea what is 1.0 only (will have to see what disk copy of updates I have on me probably the PSVR update maybe) accessible I assume arcade was but no idea if circuit experience/driving missions were made available that way or not I'd have to check.

So that's something. Just the saving side or player level/event progress unlocked need to be patched.

GT7 is where even less is available of just arcade/music rally pretty sure and people have made videos on this/articles likely already.

I don't know how Forza Motorsport 8 will be of 'offline' or if at all so that will be fun to see how they treat players too. At least we have GT1-6, the in-between titles and Forza 1-7 for offline?

But Sport is pretty reasonable. We just need someone to make a hack/patch to remove the server requirement code and we can't play it 'offline' as it should be.

Archiving 100GB games is tough as it is I bet for preservation too.