In context: PC gamers are a crafty bunch. They've come up with countless hacks, tweaks, and optimizations to squeeze as much enjoyment and performance out of their favorite titles as possible. However, few of those adjustments are as significant as the one found by a GTA Online player a few weeks ago: the user discovered a way to slash his GTAO load times by nearly 70 percent.
That's significant enough news in its own right, but the situation only got more interesting today: Rockstar has not only acknowledged that the user's fix works but also announced that his findings will be implemented in a future game update.
It took the studio some time to fully investigate the issue, but that's understandable. As the creator of multiple successful franchises, the last thing a developer like Rockstar wants to do is throw out a poorly-tested update. That could do far more harm than good, especially when you consider just how many different types of machines are running GTAO.
Before finding this fix, the user (known as T0ST) was experiencing GTAO load times as long as 6 minutes, and he was hardly alone – many players complain of similar issues. For reference, the single-player portion of the game only took his mid-range system about a minute to load.
T0ST found that the slowdown was caused primarily by a single thread CPU bottleneck, which he was able to patch with some clever code edits. The full explanation is very technical (though T0ST does his best to make it an entertaining read), but you can check it out here if you're interested.
We're always happy to see clever modders getting their work recognized, and we're even happier that his efforts will go on to benefit the entirety of the GTAO player base – at least, those on PC. It's unclear whether or not T0ST will be receiving any compensation for his time, but Rockstar says it has been in touch, so perhaps that is in the cards.