Rockstar has updated advice for anyone who's logged on to find their character missing in GTA Online:

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The company has instructed players who find an empty character slot to return to story mode and then re-enter GTA Online through the pause menu, but only when the Rockstar Cloud Servers are working. If you encounter a message saying the servers are unavailable, keep trying until they're working."If you have previously created a character but see an empty character selection screen when entering GTA Online, please back out to GTAV "If you receive the message 'The Rockstar Cloud Servers Are Unavailable', please return to GTAV Story Mode and follow the steps above. Please do not press 'Retry' on the message and do not proceed online with saving disabled, as this may lead to overwriting your existing character."Original story follows.

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“ We have not forgotten about the requests for restoration. We are in the process of determining the options for addressing the issues for those players who have been affected.

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Rockstar has responded to multiple reports from GTA Online players who have lost their characters, rank, items, apartments or cash.A new post on the Rockstar Support site reveals the developer is looking into what's causing the issue so it can be remedied, and is also investigating whether or not progress can be restored."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," it reads. "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."Alongside this, however, Rockstar issued several bits of advice about how to minimize the chances of losing progress. Firstly, the developer has urged everyone to exit GTA Online by pausing and choosing to return to single player, as this forces the game to save. If you purchase items and power off or exit through the console system menus, there's no guarantee you'll still be in possession of these things next time you log on.Similarly, the developer has told users not to select "Retry" should you receive the message "Rockstar Cloud Servers are unavailable" as doing so may cause a loss of character data. If you encounter this message when trying to access GTA Online, you're advised to exit to Story Mode and try re-entering Online through the pause menu. This is a high-priority fix for Rockstar, with the company working on issuing a fix as soon as possible.Finally, there's been some clarification on what you should do when the Rockstar Cloud Services are unavailable. The studio has explained that if you opt to enter multiplayer on a temporary character without the ability to save, none of the data from that play session will be stored, even if the services come back up while you're playing. To make sure progress is saved, you should only proceed into GTA Online when the Rockstar Cloud Servers are working.As soon as Rockstar offers any other update on the issue, we'll update the story. In the meantime, check out our review-in-progress of GTA Online (which may now slow down, seeing as our reviewer lost her character last night) as well as all the other issues the developer is working to resolve

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Junior Editor. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter