‘Grand Theft Auto V Online’ off to borderline disastrous start

GAMERS hoping to indulge in some Grand Theft Auto V Online over the weekend might be facing the grim reality of having to be civilised citizens of the real world, as the game’s multiplayer component got off to a rather shaky start this week.

Grand Theft Auto V, which is currently only available to console players, earned more than $800-million (R8-billion) on the day of its release, but it seems the game’s overwhelming popularity may be contributing to bottlenecks in the on- line mode which developers Rockstar Games unveiled on Tuesday.

To say it was a shaky start doesn’t entirely do justice to the scale of the calamity – it was borderline disastrous. Players around the world reported an array of issues ranging from single-player saved games becoming corrupted to complete inability to get online at all.

Few players it seems were able to get as far as finishing the first tutorial mission.

In all fairness, however, Rockstar warned players before release that certain “teething problems” were to be expected as the game transitioned from internal testing to being played by tons of people around the world, and that they would be spending the first few weeks after release heavily focused on fine tuning the player experience.

Then as soon as the complaints rolled in, they responded via Twitter stating that they were working to resolve all of the problems players were experiencing, some of which have since been fixed.

For now it seems Rockstar has managed to avoid the disaster Electronic Arts faced at the notorious launch of SimCity Online, developed by Electronic Arts subsidiary Maxis.

The much anticipated game was gutted by server problems which eventually led to players being refunded as well as a resignation from the CEO of Electronic Arts shortly thereafter.

While SimCity Online was eagerly anticipated by many players, Rockstar is under far more pressure than Maxis had been to get everything perfect as the Grand Theft Auto series has been one of the most popular gaming franchises of all time.

All of the problems being faced by console players have done little to sate the envy of PC players.

However, some of whom have gone as far as to circulate a petition with well over 500 000 signatures on it, requesting a PC release of the game.

The petition creator Mike Julliard has been inundated with responses from other PC gamers and set the petition system up to automatically e-mail Rockstar with support signatures as they came in.

Rockstar subsequently blocked the petition e-mails, most likely because their contact inbox was being flooded with the requests.

The automated petition e-mail has since been changed to the correct address and Julliard stresses that all the correct people are now being contacted and they are more than aware of the petition.

Whether it will actually prompt Rockstar into announcing a PC release date in the near future, however, remains to be seen.