Certain Sony players opted to buy a digital download of Grand Theft Auto V in lieu of a physical copy due to a guarantee made by the company.
Sony stated that if players choose to download the game off of the PlayStation Store they would be able to start downloading the game today and therefore have the potential of playing the game earlier than those that purchase the game in-store. However, these plans have changed.
According to an online support coordinator, the date has been pushed back to September 16th, a single day before the global release of the game.
Not surprisingly, this has a few players frustrated and perturbed by the simple fact that they paid nearly $25 dollars more for the digital download. The added price, or so they thought, was to cover the exclusivity of being able to play the game earlier than most. Here are a few excerpts from frustrated customers:
Most of us preordered from PSN because we could preload it on the 13th.
First time pre-ordering digitally and the last time. What a shambles Sony. No point in asking for the £50 back from my wallet I guess. That’s the part of the deal you will hold up – no refunds.
Rockstar representatives have stated that they have no say in the matter and that the PlayStation Network players wouldn’t be able to pre-load the game at all. And yet another representative from PlayStation Europe stated that players would be able to pre-load the game on the 15th. There’s a lot of conflicting information here, isn’t there? It would appear that no one, not even Rockstar or Sony, has any idea as to how and when this game will be available for digital download. Perhaps something was lost in translation – great movie by the way.
In any case, players who paid the additional amount are waiting patiently for some concrete news to come through as they were promised they would be able to download the game starting today. No word on whether these players would be compensated for the pushback or if they’ll receive any additional support from the PlayStation store.
And no seems to know why the push back even came into effect. It may be due the mistake made by Sony last month, a mistake that revealed game assets. Whether or not this is the case is yet to be seen.