GTA 5 Online Players Still Losing Progress

Rockstar Games released a title update for Grand Theft Auto V this weekend to fix the problems plaguing its multiplayer component, GTA Online. Unfortunately, players are still encountering issues with GTAO's progression system.

GTA Online was released last Tuesday. Many players found that they were unable to connect to the servers or get past the introductory missions, though. The patch that unlocked GTAO caused some issues with the single-player campaign as well. The patch released on Friday addressed those glitches so that players can actually access GTAO.

However, many GTAO players are now noticing that their character's rank, cash or possessions are missing. In some cases, even the character is missing. Rockstar reassured gamers today that they're looking into the issue.

"We are continuing to investigate the causes of the lost progress and what can be done to minimize the impact until a permanent fix is in place," Rockstar said on their support site. "Also, we have not forgotten about the requests for restoration. We are in the process of determining the options for addressing the issues for those players who have been affected."

In the meantime, the company shared a few suggestions to prevent further loss of progress. For starters, they recommend that you don't immediately power off your console after buying items or any other significant actions. Instead, you should pause the game and choose to return to single-player when you want to exit GTA Online. This will cause the system to save any progress that you've made since the last auto-save.

Rockstar also clarified what it means when you receive a message that "Rockstar Cloud Servers" are unavailable. This will allow you to play GTAO with a temporary character but this character won't be saved. Furthermore, none of your permanent characters will be available to play. If the cloud servers come up while you're playing, you'll need to return to single-player and then re-log into GTAO to access your non-temporary characters again and save normally.

"Please do NOT use the 'Retry' button after receiving the message 'Rockstar Cloud Servers are unavailable' as this may result in loss of character data," Rockstar added. "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. We will be issuing a title update that will fix this issue as soon as possible."

GTA Online allows players to tackle story-driven missions together or compete in deathmatches and races. Rockstar plans to release additional content for GTAO over time. Later this year, players will get access to a toolset to allow them to build their own activities.