Since Grand Theft Auto Online launched, the multiplayer mode for GTA V has been plagued with issues. One of the most troubling is that characters appear to be deleted. While a patch released by Rockstar Games Friday for the PS3 and Xbox 360 fixed some of the online issues, the character deletion problem remains. However, it's actually very easy to get around if you don't overreact.
If you log into GTA Online and discover that the multiplayer character you deleted has disappeared, do not start another a new one. This issue appears to be related to the fact that the character is stored on Rockstar Games' cloud servers. So, it's possible that you aren't seeing your multiplayer character because the servers are having problems loading it and not because it was completely deleted.
The best thing to do in this instance is to go to the GTA Online Rockstar Social Club page and see if the character you created still shows up there. If it does, you just need to wait it out for Rockstar to straighten out the online servers.
If the character is not displayed on the GTA Online Social Club, you have most likely lost it and all of the money, progress and items associated with it. Your only options at that point are to either to stick with the single-player and hope that Rockstar Games can figure out the GTA Online issues or risk creating a new one.
Edit: Just to be clear. If your character does not appear in the GTA Online Social Club, the only two options are to wait and hope that Rockstar manages to fix the problem and recover your character or start a new one. If you do start a new character, you will definitely lose the older one.
Update: Dawit in the comments below reports that he has been able to keep his characters from being deleted by loading GTA Online from the loading menu when you first start the game. The option to press X on the PS3 or A on the Xbox 360 to immediately start GTA Online only appears briefly.
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