Just lost both of my GTA Online characters

[EChondo]

Update;
So for almost a week I've been talking with Rockstar Support about my two lost characters. Sadly they were not able to recover the characters nor reset my account back to a certain date when I stopped playing. However, they worked with me a bit and first set my character's level back to rank 65(thanks to Steam achievements it seems) and compensated me $2 million, however I pushed back a bit and they offered that they could compensate a some more GTA$(probably due to some screenshots I provided, not sure), they then compensated $10 million more, which to me was still a bit low, but it was enough to where I could buy an apartment, some cars, and a plane.
 
You can see screenshots of my conversation with Rockstar support here: http://imgur.com/a/nvzgv
 
Or you can view them in this spoiler here;

 
I think I was able to push for more GTA$ since I had a few images of old garages with cars inside and I got my main character's level back because Steam has a "Rank 100" achievement or something which saved my Rank 65 progress. So if you guys are worried about losing your characters like I did, I highly advise you that you take screenshots of EVERYTHING you have. Cars, apartments, garages, clothes, planes, boats, weapons, character level, progress, etc. etc.
 
It really sucks that Rockstar is so short sighted that they didn't implement a character backup system anywhere and this has really put me off buying any GTA games or really any open world multiplayer games from Rockstar in the future. This is equivalent to losing your WoW character that you spent hundreds of hours playing on and Blizzard went "Well here's some gold for your loss, can't help you any further!". Got a really bad taste in my mouth, but I highly appreciate Rockstar's support being really quick and informative answering questions I had and assisting me in this matter.



Original Post;
I'm on PC, haven't played in months, launched/signed into GTA Online today just to see whats new and both of my characters(one male, one female) are both gone lol. I've contacted support already so we'll see what happens, but I'm pretty pissed off, hundreds of hours just gone!
 
Figured I'd post this here to keep a log of what happens, don't really feel as if this is PC section worthy, but curious to see what other say or have had a similar experience.
 
RIP my millions and custom cars!

[Guest]

Sucks dude

[exercutor5]

rockstar no liek you

[EChondo]

Sucks dude

Yup, I was able to go into the character selection screen and I saw that I had a "EChondo" character, but I don't recognize the character at all. So I'm not sure if somewhere a transfer happened and messed up or I got reset somehow. I haven't gotten any emails from Rockstar about my account, hopefully this is just a server error or something. If not then I guess my ~240 hours will be wasted and I'll just never play again.

[Misanthrope]

I lost my will to even attempt GTA Online altogether. I honestly just rather watch the Tek Syndicate crew fuck around on it than go through the grief myself.

[desertcomputer]

Rockstar Support is really shit... copy and paste responses.. 

[Jerakl]

RIP.

 

I feel bad fam, rockstar support is really bad.

[EChondo]

RIP.

 

I feel bad fam, rockstar support is really bad.

Yup, reading about it all right now. What's weird is that the character it shows my on the Character selection screen isn't my character, but I can see my character on my Social Club page. One of my characters was level 65, can't remember what the other one was. But it's saying I'm rank 9 now and I only have $2 million in the bank, I had way more than that.

[EChondo]

Got my issue resolved, sort of. A+ for Rockstar Support, F- for Rockstar being absolute shortsighted idiots.

 

So for almost a week I've been talking with Rockstar Support about my two lost characters. Sadly they were not able to recover the characters nor reset my account back to a certain date when I stopped playing. However, they worked with me a bit and first set my character's level back to rank 65(thanks to Steam achievements it seems) and compensated me $2 million, however I pushed back a bit and they offered that they could compensate a some more GTA$(probably due to some screenshots I provided, not sure), they then compensated $10 million more, which to me was still a bit low, but it was enough to where I could buy an apartment, some cars, and a plane.
 
You can see screenshots of my conversation with Rockstar support here: http://imgur.com/a/nvzgv
 
Or you can view them in this spoiler here;

 
I think I was able to push for more GTA$ since I had a few images of old garages with cars inside and I got my main character's level back because Steam has a "Rank 100" achievement or something which saved my Rank 65 progress. So if you guys are worried about losing your characters like I did, I highly advise you that you take screenshots of EVERYTHING you have. Cars, apartments, garages, clothes, planes, boats, weapons, character level, progress, etc. etc.
 
It really sucks that Rockstar is so short sighted that they didn't implement a character backup system anywhere and this has really put me off buying any GTA games or really any open world multiplayer games from Rockstar in the future. This is equivalent to losing your WoW character that you spent hundreds of hours playing on and Blizzard went "Well here's some gold for your loss, can't help you any further!". Got a really bad taste in my mouth, but I highly appreciate Rockstar's support being really quick and informative answering questions I had and assisting me in this matter.

[watts300]

@EChondo or any one else:

I have purchased the game but have not played it yet because my parts are being delivered on Thursday (I shall call it ThursYay). I expect to start playing it with my son this weekend. Now that I know that the possibility of data loss exists, is it possible for me to back up my character locally by any means?

[EChondo]

@EChondo or any one else:

I have purchased the game but have not played it yet because my parts are being delivered on Thursday (I shall call it ThursYay). I expect to start playing it with my son this weekend. Now that I know that the possibility of data loss exists, is it possible for me to back up my character locally by any means?

None that I know of. I had a backup of my whole GTA V folder under "My Documents", tried overwriting my new files with those and it didn't make a difference.

 

I have almost 240 hours logged onto GTA V, that was from release date(April) to June. From what I can find online there used to be problems like this on consoles when it originally released, but I haven't seen anything recent. I really think I just got a very bad case of bad luck, but it just goes to show that some companies don't care about certain things(backups).

 

Just take screenshots, so if it does happen then you'll have proof of progress and Rockstar Support can help somewhat more(from what I have experienced). I think that is what really made the difference between only getting $2 million and then getting another $10 million extra. It's not perfect, but it seems the only way to protect yourself.

 

GTA V has a built in screenshot feature that uploads directly to Social Club(their little community hub), but I never used it. Also if you bought the game from Steam, if you launch GTA V through Steam you can easily just hit "F12" on the top of your keyboard while in-game and it'll take a screenshot and when you exit GTA V a little Steam window will pop-up asking if you'd like to upload the screenshots to your Steam account, if not there is a local copy saved somewhere in your Steam folders. You can also use ShareX. ShareX is an open-source screen capture program, I have mine setup so whenever I take a screenshot it saves a local copy, uploads that copy to Imgur(or any other popular image site) and then puts the link to the uploaded image in my clipboard so I can instantly post the link anywhere I want. Really great program, but you should be just fine with Steam's screenshot utlility or GTA V's in-game one.

 

Best of luck.

[watts300]

@EChondo All good info. I didn't know about those screenshot features. I'll be sure to use those. Thanks.