The impending doom of character transfers from the previous generation consoles to the current ones and PC are dominating the GTA Online press ever since the announcement, however one very important little detail has managed to slip by most people — probably because it wasn't mentioned in the announcement at all.
One eagle-eyed fan made note of a particular disclaimer on the Rockstar Warehouse listing of GTA 5 that rang differently from what was described in the official post on the Newswire, Rockstar's own in-house online board for news and announcements. The official post, on which coverage of the story was based, contained the following passage:
If you have not yet brought your characters and progression over from PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 to PlayStation 4, Xbox One or PC, time is running out as this will no longer be possible as of March 6th, 2017
Now, if you read that, you'll take it that transfers from PlayStation 3 and Xbox One to the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC are being suspended, however there's nothing there about any change to the policy between the Xbox One/PlayStation 4 and the PC — because really, why would there be?
Now, unless this is a colossal miscommunication and the dude writing up the Warehouse listings didn't get the memo, the changes to the character transfer policy are shaping up to be a lot more severe. If the disclaimer under the game's listing is to be believed, character transfers of all kind are going away, including transfers from current gen consoles to PC.
Now, we defended the move to suspend GTA Online transfers from last-gen consoles before, and we stand by that assessment. Continuing to allow hackers and cheaters from the unregulated PS3 and Xbox 360 to flood the newer systems is hurting the game, and most players who planned on upgrading have had over two years to do so. Already, this is the longest a console generation of a previous cycle has been supported, and yet people are not satisfied.
Continuing to support a dying market makes absolutely zero sense from a business standpoint, which is also the reason why DLC support was pulled for the older platforms — but hardware limitations factored into that as well.
This, however, is baffling. Rockstar doesn't have any reasons that we know of to cease support for current-gen to PC transfers, as the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are cheater-free, and the PC is more vulnerable than those two. It is understandable if players haven't yet upgraded to the PC version, as it is the newest edition of the game to be released, and the price of a high-end gaming PC is much higher than a current-gen console, so making that upgrade is significantly more costly.
Technical limitations shouldn't be an issue either in this case, leaving pretty much no true reason behind this decision. Neither current consoles nor PC are dying markets, so it isn't like there is no demand for this feature. It's possible that more light will be shed on the situation in the coming days.
