Rockstar explains GTA Online cash stimulus delay
UPDATE: Payouts due next week, Beach Bum Pack next month.
UPDATE: Rockstar has announced that its "stimulus package", rewarding Grand Theft Auto Online players will a half million dollars of in-game money to make up for its botched launch, will start arriving next week in a title update for GTA 5.
Elsewhere, Rockstar revealed its plans for GTA 5's first add-on content update, the Beach Bum Pack, which is due in November. The DLC will contains new vehicles, weapons, and customisation items like tattoos and hairstyles to both GTA 5's offline portion and GTA Online. The add-on will also contain such challenges as new jobs, Gang Attacks, Survivals, Last Team Standings, Parachutes, Deathmatches and Races.
Another upcoming addition is the GTA Online Content Creator. Due this autumn, this mission editor will allow players to create, publish, and rate user-generated Deathmatch and Race Jobs.
ORIGINAL STORY: Grand Theft Auto Online players awaiting their first dollop of free in-game money will have to hold off for a little while longer, Rockstar has said.
The developer originally promised it would gift players $500,000 in two $250,000 lumps starting last week, as an apology for the game's online teething problems.
But the money has yet to turn up in GTA Online bank accounts.
"We hope to have an update for you on that very soon," a Rockstar spokesperson commented on a recent official blog post (thanks, Polygon). "As others have mentioned here, we of course want to make sure player progress loss issues are addressed before providing everyone with their GTA$500K. Thanks for your patience and please stay tuned."
The multiplayer portion of Grand Theft Auto 5 launched on 1st October and quickly buckled under the pressure applied to it by millions of players. It was, for many, unplayable.
While its server issues are now sorted, Rockstar has released a number of patches to address the issue of player characters being wiped - and, once gone, they cannot be recovered.
