In a not terribly surprising but mostly disappointing reveal, we learned that Gran Turismo 7 will require an internet connection at all times, including when playing the single-player campaign. This means that if any kind of server maintenance is happening while you’re doing a campaign, your progress will not be able to save and will be lost. Though this doesn’t happen often, it can be devastating when it does occur. In addition, it’s worth noting that not everyone has access to internet, so those who do not won’t be able to enjoy the game at all.
Understandably, players are not happy upon this discovery. Even those with internet are expressing their complaints. One Reddit user, Olav_Grey, explains “A friend of mine, grew up a farmer, didn't get highspeed until a few months ago, he was about a mile to far up the road to get connected for 5+ years. There's still tons of cities/towns ect. that DON'T have access to reliable internet. And that's not even mentioning the fact that this is a singleplayer focused game (unlike Sport) so it's just crazy that this requires online only.” Another Reddit user, Chefffffy_boiz, adds “Plus, if your internet provider has an outage, you're out of a game for the amount of time the internet is down for. This is very crazy to think a singleplayer portion of the game requires internet."
The president of Polyphony Digital, the developer for Gran Turismo 7, explains that the reason for the constant required online connection is “to prevent cheating overall from people trying to modify the save data,” according to an interview published by Eurogamer. Kazunori Yamauchi goes on to add, “The only part of the game that doesn’t require an online connection is the arcade mode, because that has no effect on the save data.”
Despite the explanation, it seems that people generally agree that this tactic isn’t worth the potential benefits.