Anyone who’s played Grand Theft Auto Online knows that, brilliant game as it is (particularly compared to the competition), it takes a dog’s age to load up. A PC player who goes by t0st went out of their way to solve the issue themselves with a mod, and also posted details as to why load times were so arduous and how they sped them by up to 70%. Rockstar took note of t0st’s fix, and now plans to implement the correction officially.
Load up on guns, bring your friends
T0st set out to make the fix after noticing that loading GTA 5‘s online mode took several times longer than the single-player mode. The player took a look at the code as the game launched and ascertained what was causing the wait. In layman’s terms, GTA Online‘s boot-up routine involved checking every single one of the literal billions of in-game items players can by, in a terribly inefficient way as well.
T0st’s fix cleans up that process, making it so that load times went from 6 minutes to just around 2 on their machine. Now, exact times will obviously vary depending on hardware, but this mend will result in loading GTA Online faster universally.
According to The Verge, Rockstar told PC Gamer that t0st, “… did, in fact, reveal an aspect of the game code related to load times for the PC version of GTA Online that could be improved.” The company says it has made changes to the game’s code that will be applied in an upcoming update, and has awarded t0st $10,000 though its HackerOne bounty program for their help.