Rockstar thanks GTA Online player who fixed poor load times, official update released

[Zapper]

UPDATE: The patch is now released on  all platforms.

 

The madlad did it.

 

Quote

"After a thorough investigation, we can confirm that player 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 said in a statement. "As a result of these investigations, we have made some changes that will be implemented in a forthcoming title update."

[SummerFreeze]

Nice.

[ddarko12]

Damn, that's crazy.

[MaddenedGhost]

But but but.. I thought they were lazy and won't listen or acknowledge this...

 I have been told by people here that Rockstar bad and everything else good...

 

Thanks to this person for discovering this.

 

[rlm_gta]

[suicidal_banana]

Good stuff, now somebody get a bunch of social media attention going for the recent crash-to-desktop issue so we can get that fixed quickly too 😛 

[NULL AND VOID]

3 minutes ago, rml_gta said:

 

Mmmmm Na

[Gaffa]

Sorry fellas, but when the game's been out this long and it takes a "modder" - which we all know you "hate" - to do the work for you and then you come about and say "we'll implement this change in a future update", I just don't know what to say. 

Are they really this far behind? That's absolutely shocking for a company like this, of this size with the history they have. 

 

I guess Rockstar Games might have lost me as a customer for future purchases because I just can't keep supporting stupid decisions (like the Scamtruck and Annihilator Stealth etc) and their low standards need a bloody good kicking into touch. What's next? "Thanks to some elite next-grade hacker for giving us the insight to develop a viable anti-cheat - only discovered after a catalog of 127000 banned players were unbanned?" Pathetic. 

EDIT - this is the only games company I follow these days, aka, "stay up-to-date with" on games and news and stuff. I've followed the NFS series since like 1999 or something, but never really paid any interest in EA (and these relevant smaller studios) as a whole; I enjoy Forza and Flight Sim games but never really bothered to get into touch with Microsoft's developments, etc; as a whole pretty much all of Rockstar's major titles across 20 years even have meant something to me which I can't say for anyone else, but there's just been too much 'dumb' stuff going on over the last few years. The lack of any sort of development of an anti-cheat that works is disappointing and results in some players using closed-off lobbies. There's also been a drop in their quality control too. 

Edited March 16, 2021 by Gaffa

[toguraum]

Yeah I think it's shameful that it needed some player to discover this. It's their job.

 

Well, at least they will implement that,. They could very well just ignore this like they do for all other PC issues.

[ScrappyBauer]

I legit expected them to ignore this issue and never adress it... good on them for not being their usual lazy f*cks. The 3 interns working on online got schooled by the modders upper management hates so much.

Edited March 15, 2021 by ScrappyBauer

[Yellow Dog with Cone]

Rockstar Games hire this man

[FulVal85]

Rockstar need, need, need, need, need to learn!!!!!

[Zak Ras]

2 hours ago, Yellow Dog with Cone said:

Rockstar Games hire this man

I mean, if there's ever something to put on your Resume;

 

"How I cut GTA Online's loading times by 70%... and Rockstar Games actually implemented it".

 

 

EDIT "...and was financially rewarded with 5 figures."

Edited March 15, 2021 by Cash 4 Clickbait

[Pedinhuh]

I legit expected them to not acknowledge this issue and T2 would just send their lawyers to the man's doorstep with a C&D letter.

[Spider-Vice]

Instead of actually realising that Rockstar does listen and that gamedev isn't reading forums and doing whatever the f*ck devs want when people complain (because there's other priorities and projects to work on, and something like this is quite honestly low severity), people in here prefer to be toxic even when the issue was fixed. f*cking whee.

 

I'm sure media attention helped and raised some questions over in HQ, which led priorities to change, but there's a lot more to develop and fix than code that's been in the game since 2013. Other programmers have even made articles on how easy this specific issue is to miss, and how it's easily misused due to bad C++ documentation, etc. There's thousands upon thousands of bugs and issues to work on that take precedence because they're either more recent or higher priority, this is something that was in the game since forever (just worse on PC due to additional decryption steps), there was no reason to waste time profiling it all over again etc etc when there's all this other DLC, RDR2 and other projects to work on. Seriously though, even something like this can require a whole meeting, so it's not as easy as someone complaining one day and the issue being fixed next day, is my point.

 

Appreciate that it's fixed, don't come here calling people names. And of course this goes for any other dev, not just Rockstar. Even if they knew about the issue, which tbh they might have, it doesn't mean they *can* fix it right now. Gamedevs don't have full control over what's to fix today.

[Zapper]

tostercx got $10k from R*.

Quote

#Update 2021-03-15

 

• Got confirmation from R* that this is getting a fix soon
• Just got awarded $10k through their H1 in-game bounty as an exception :)) (usually only for security issues)
• Trying to figure out what’s a W8 and how to fill it (lol)
• I did try asking for more technical details but they couldn’t say anything
• Will do another benchmark on my same old setup as soon as the update is out, I’m sure their engineers won’t disappoint

 

[MayoChiki]

3 hours ago, Cash 4 Clickbait said:

I mean, if there's ever something to put on your Resume;

 

"How I cut GTA Online's loading times by 70%... and Rockstar Games actually implemented it".

 

It was a reference to the "NINTENDO HIRE THIS MAN" sh*tposting, but yeah, the guy not getting CnD and instead receiving a fat 10k is actually quite cool. Oh, I mean...

 

F*CK R*CKSTAR G*MES AND F*CK GTA ONLINE

 

GTA 6 when?

[Shadowfennekin]

I hope consoles are getting fixed too

R* needs to hire this man though, it's embarrassing a random guy did what their employees couldn't for nearly 10 f*cking years, ridiculous! 

[SummerFreeze]

34 minutes ago, Shadowfennekin said:

R* needs to hire this man though, it's embarrassing a random guy did what their employees couldn't for nearly 10 f*cking years, ridiculous! 

Complex software systems are filled with dumb programming like this. I'm really not surprised. When something is old but works, people usually won't touch it. And if something is bugged, you can cause even bigger problems by fixing it, for example when others rely on the bug. That's not the case here, so it makes sense that Rockstar would incorporate the fix relatively quickly. As for him being an outsider, IT security basically only exists because outsiders can find weaknesses to exploit.

Edited March 16, 2021 by SummerFreeze

[Excalibur Voltaire]

For once, I appreciate R* for not banning or sending C&D to him. Although it's still sad that it took a modder to fix an issue that doesn't exist in any other games

[Arrows to Athens]

The fact that they're relying on the playerbase to fix their joke of a game. How sad. Do they just not care?

[Quinn_flower]

R* a billion $$$ company with with people working who graduated from MIT and they couldn't figure this out on their own? But a modder who has no fame fixed it ???? Idk what to say here....😂

[Pedinhuh]

Just a reminder: GTAO on PC launched April 14th 2015, from back then to today it's been almost SIX years since the game has been live.

 

And throughout ALL of these years the playerbase was constantly complaining about the immense loading times to boot up the game, and also the media mentioned it here and there.

 

And after all this time, all the devs -supposedly- fixing bugs and issues with the game, all the money made in MTX and this issue STILL was not patched...It probably wasn't even looked at, at all.

 

And then you see R*, like clockwork, patching out money glitches, wiping out outfits that can only be done with glitches, removing harmless extra features like the turbo on the Imorgon, etc...All while completely ignoring the easy fixes like the stock Faction suspension issue, the tailight on the Casco, and so many others.

 

And then it took ONE SINGLE modder with a single day to look at one of the game's most annoying problems, figure out why the problem exists and find a easy way to fix it.

 

I'm sorry, but R* doesn't deserve a single pat on the back for merely doing their obligation, said obligation that they willingly turned a blind eye for years.

 

This is f*cking embarrassing for a multi-million dolar, Triple A gaming company.

Edited March 16, 2021 by Pedinhuh

[RCFerraz]

They should just start handing out 10k checks to every modder out there fixing sh*t or making mods worth implementing (ex: Vanillaworks), it would literally be a win-win situation. Modder gets recognition/dolla dolla bill yo', players become happy because quality sh*t is being implemented and R* could gain some publicity either good or bad, and we all know the P.T. Barnum proverb.

[Quinn_flower]

2 hours ago, RCFerraz said:

They should just start handing out 10k checks to every modder out there fixing sh*t or making mods worth implementing (ex: Vanillaworks), it would literally be a win-win situation. Modder gets recognition/dolla dolla bill yo', players become happy because quality sh*t is being implemented and R* could gain some publicity either good or bad, and we all know the P.T. Barnum proverb.

"There's a sucker born every minute"

[Excalibur Voltaire]

this situation doesn't make R* looks good. infact it only makes them looks incredibly stupid and incompetent, even more so considering the modder fixed this in just a day

[Sam2150AD]

Personally, I really think this does ask the question - why did it have to take someone else to realize this for them to make a change?

R* aren't stupid, they're clever at making money - that's the whole point of theirs and anybody's business. The problem R* has here is that GTA Online is 8 years old, the mechanics of the game have been relatively unchanged since then and this story is proof of that. 

If R* are to continue supporting this game as their cash cow then they really need to revamp the mechanics, how it works etc. 

It's alright adding new content, but if you're unwilling to improve the game and I'm not talking bugs/glitches here, but in general then the game will eventually show its age. This is because newer games released will load quicker and so on.

 

Another example of what I mean by a revamp, take the Imponte Dukes and Dukes Beater. In order to get the new upgrades for this car you have to buy the beater version and fix it up and then add modifications. When really, if they actually did a bit of work, they could have done this to the original version of the Dukes, but it's far easier/quicker and financially better to release a new version. 

You see this for a lot of earlier vehicles/content - lack of liveries available on older cars, 'Buying' special crates as opposed to just stealing them, lack of modifications to older aircraft as opposed to new etc. 

[BelegUS]

12 hours ago, Spider-Vice said:

There's thousands upon thousands of bugs and issues to work on that take precedence because they're either more recent or higher priority, this is something that was in the game since forever (just worse on PC due to additional decryption steps), there was no reason to waste time profiling it all over again etc etc when there's all this other DLC, RDR2 and other projects to work on. Seriously though, even something like this can require a whole meeting, so it's not as easy as someone complaining one day and the issue being fixed next day, is my point.

As a programmer being one of the lead developers in rather large and widely used app I can assure you that what you are saying is bullsh*t. If a development team for years never even questioned loading times of their game being literally a meme - if a management never thought about using some idle/for-experiments time to actually profile that (and as opposed to that curious guy they had all the tools and codebase they needed) - then it is a thing that should be bashed. Loosing a playerbase, having a thing openly discouraging people from playing or trying out the game - straight loosing up a profit - because over the years no one was curious enough to run a profiler - is a thing that should be laughed at. Me, as a programmer, am laughing at it. As a GTA:O dev I would even do it in my aftertime, just for teh lulz, most likely getting a bonus if such thing was found, especially as it looks to be fixable in no-time.

[Gridl0k]

Parser improvement on one platform: $10k

Ramp truck on all platforms: ???

[rendub]

Why would they only give statement to PCgamer exclusively? There is no source in the article. Call me skeptical, but it's simply tough to believe when you've dealt with a company like *this*. Maybe I forgot to take off my tinfoil hat.

 

Edit: I take it back.

Edited March 16, 2021 by rendub