GTA 5 Online: New Gameplay Problems Emerge With Characters Not Working or Disappearing

The launch of Grand Theft Auto 5's multiplayer online mode has been rocky, to say the least, and despite Rockstar's best effort, the mode has suffered some serious bugs and glitches that have left it a broken mess. Now, on a new page on Rockstar's support website, the company has addressed the serious problem of players' characters, ranks, items, apartments, and cash disappearing without explanation.

"We have received reports from some players who experienced losing characters, progress, items, and/or in-game cash during the first few days after release. We are working diligently to identify and correct the causes for these losses, as well as to establish how best to restore any lost progress and value. If you would like to receive an automatic email notification as soon as there is more information about this, please log into the Support Site and click Subscribe at the top of this page. You do not need to do anything else at this time."

The developer also released some tips for those playing the online version to help minimise the threat of a player's data getting wiped out, such as going into the offline single player version of the game before quitting the game completely:

"When exiting GTA Online, please pause the game and choose to return to Single Player. This will trigger a save and ensure that progress since the last auto-save is recorded. If you purchase items and immediately power the console off or exit through console system menus, those items may not be saved."

In addition, Rockstar warned players who cannot access the cloud service servers to not push the retry button, as many of the problems that lead to character data loss stem from this:

"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. 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."

Rockstar recently released a patch to try and smooth out Grand Theft Auto Online, but so far the mode has been a big black eye for the game and could ultimately hurt the game's reputation and long-term popularity if it is not fixed.