Rockstar paid $10 thousand to a programmer who found a way to speed up downloads in GTA Online by 70% (UPDATED: a patch with this method has been released)
Grand Theft Auto Online has incredibly long downloads. Not so long ago, a user under the nickname t0st wrote that he knows how to reduce them by 70%. His decision was approved by Rockstar, which has already included the programmer’s achievements in the official patch.
According to PC Gamer, the company has already paid t0st $10 thousand as part of the Bug Bounty program. Which is quite unusual, because this program is most often awarded only to those who have found security-related problems.
We have carefully studied everything and can confirm that the t0st player has indeed found a section in the game code that is related to the loading time of the PC version of GTA Online and that can be improved. As a result, we will make minor changes to the next update of the game.
When the patch will be released and whether something will change in the console versions is not reported.
Recall that GTA Online was released back in 2013. At the moment, game downloads on PC last an average of six minutes. After the update, they can decrease to 1 minute 50 seconds.
Updated
Information has appeared on Reddit that the patch is already available for both PC and consoles. According to users of the resource, the computer version of the game really began to load faster — it now takes two to three minutes to download instead of six. The story campaign has also become faster to launch — it opens in less than 30 seconds. Rockstar itself has not yet officially announced the release of the patch.
