Update: Game now patched | Rockstar Games confirms major reductions to loading times coming to GTA Online thanks to a GTA modder

[AlTech]

I’ve checked before posting that there wasn’t a topic on this already and I couldn’t see one so I’m making one. Mods if there is one please merge it. Thanks.

 

Summary

GTA Online’s loading screens are going to be getting a whole lot shorter.  Earlier this year a modder made a discovery that modifying a few files dramatically reduced loading time in a game that is notorious for having bad load times. 
 

Rockstar Games have said they will incorporate the fix into a new update coming soon to GTA Online and have compensated the modder for his work. 
 

The expected result is Up To 70% faster loading time compared to without the fix.

 

Quotes

Quote

A Grand Theft Auto Online fan that goes by the moniker t0st posted an investigation into the game’s infamously slow load times on PC, with a solution that improved things by up to 70 percent. And it seems that Rockstar was playing attention: the company has confirmed to PC Gamer that t0st’s fix is legitimate, and it will be implementing their suggestions in a future update to the game.

 

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 commented to PC Gamer. “As a result of these investigations, we have made some changes that will be implemented in a forthcoming title update.”

 

My thoughts

This is a much needed fix and I’m very glad Rockstar will be adding it to GTA Online. I suspect it’ll be added to either the Summer or Winter 2021 GTA Online update as Rockstar typically updates GTA Online twice per year. I’m also quite glad that Rockstar chose to reward the modder with some money even if they weren’t obliged to do so (due to not being covered by any of Rockstar’s security and bug bounty programmes).

 

Sources

Main source:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/15/22332421/grand-theft-auto-online-slow-load-times-fan-made-patch

Alternative Source:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/gta-online-will-use-fan-made-load-time-solution-in-update/ar-BB1eCuew

 

Update: @Silentprototipehas let me know that the patch is now live in GTA Online Title Update 1.53 that has just been released.

 

And Rockstar’s patch notes confirm as well.

https://support.rockstargames.com/articles/360061161574/GTAV-Title-Update-1-53-Notes-PS4-Xbox-One-PC

[TetraSky]

Nice of them having compensated the modder for their work about this.

Strange that it took a modder to reduce loading speeds... by 70%, though.

[bcredeur97]

I hear ppl complain about load times in this game all the time.. good on that guy for finding that.
 

Kinda impressive he figured that out before rockstar did. Nice

[Wilbur Cobb]

I can't help but feel like the fix is so obvious, and its such a documented issue of how ridiculous the load times are, that Rockstar should have had this fixed by now lol.

 

I don't expect game companies to find every problem, but come on! I feel like Grand Theft Auto V load times should have been their top priority.

[AlTech]

Just now, TetraSky said:

Nice of them having compensated the modder for their work about this.

Strange that it took a modder to reduce loading speeds... by 70%, though.

What it boils down to is this: the issue is that in loading GTA online there’s a data file with info for everything that can be acquired in GTA online and what was happening is this was not optimised and was being read inefficiently. The new code reads the file more efficiently and so it takes less time to go through all the details before the client can connect to a GTA online session.

[Arika]

Great, now i can load in faster to not have enough money to buy any of the new vehicles they keep adding at outrageous prices because you're expected to buy more shark cards!

[AndreiArgeanu]

1 minute ago, bcredeur97 said:

Kinda impressive he figured that out before rockstar did. Nice

Considering how lazy rockstar seems to have been lately I'm not actually that surprised that someone else was able to optimize loading times before they did. I wouldn't be surprised if someone is able to build a better anti cheat against modders before Rockstar does. I mean this game has been out for over nearly 8 years, and they're still milking all the way through 3 console generations.

[emosun]

thank god.......

So sometimes when people are rude to me in GTA5  during a mission , I'll just leave the mission and tell them to "enjoy your loading screen" as a punishment.

thats how bad the loading times are , they are enough that it's literally a punishment to sit through them.

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

snip

The 7th gen console versions (Xbox 360 and PS3) have been obsoleted for a while and stopped getting updates in 2015 or 2016. Yes, people can still buy shark cards for those old versions but I doubt people are.

 

The Gen 8 (Xbox One, One S, and PS4, PS4 Slim) and Gen 8.5 (Xbox One X and PS4 Pro) consoles are going to be cut off soon because increasingly they are holding back the potential of GTA Online’s updates. The Winter 2020 Cayo Perico update was compromised in vision because of the previous gen consoles. The result was that players don’t have full access to Cayo Perico outside of Mission mode because the Base Gen8 hardware lags very badly and struggles to only render the Cayo Perico island in mission mode.

[kelvinhall05]

29 minutes ago, Arika S said:

Great, now i can load in faster to not have enough money to buy any of the new vehicles they keep adding at outrageous prices because you're expected to buy more shark cards!

Imagine playing online in 2021 without modded money and stats, RP, etc

[danomicar]

Great to see them finally fixing the loading times. I still think it's appalling that Rockstar considered a 7+ minute loading time as "normal" in 2021. I want to like GTAO, but it's constant crashes and horrific loading times are really tough pills to swallow.

 

It's a shame, if the game was less buggy perhaps I would be more inclined to spend a few bucks on it here and there. 

[Arika]

7 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

Imagine playing online in 2021 without modded money and stats, RP, etc

i think you can just stop there

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, bcredeur97 said:

Kinda impressive he figured that out before rockstar did. Nice

Well I suspect they weren't actually trying to do anything about it so not that surprised lol.

[Loote]

Nintendo would probably sue him and do their best to make the patch impossible, props to Rockstar for giving him some compensation at least.

[Silentprototipe]

Its in now, As of the 16th the patch has been implemented and the loadtimes have significantly decreased. My own machine now only takes a minute and 22 seconds to load from a cold boot. So a change from 4-5 min to 1:22

[Tristerin]

Neat.  I refuse to play this game with my gaming group because my time available to play games, vs GTA Online loading screens meant I couldnt play the game.  Maybe to little to late?  That and disconnects while trying to load missions as a group caused far to many headaches to make this game worthwhile.

[Master Disaster]

Holy fuck, I was wrong (and TBH I'm happy to be wrong). I was 100% sure Take Two would sue his ass into oblivion for decompiling the games executable.

[Tieox]

Now if they could only take their launcher, yeet it into solar orbit, and let the game launch directly from Steam.

[BuckGup]

11 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

What it boils down to is this: the issue is that in loading GTA online there’s a data file with info for everything that can be acquired in GTA online and what was happening is this was not optimised and was being read inefficiently. The new code reads the file more efficiently and so it takes less time to go through all the details before the client can connect to a GTA online session.

So everyone working at Rockstar never took a Computer Science class in their life? 

[lewdicrous]

6 minutes ago, Tieox said:

Now if they could only take their launcher, yeet it into solar orbit

Space junk is already a problem, please don't suggest something that'll make it worse.

 

Real question is, did the devs even look into this issue, or were they hoping that if they ignored it, everyone will forget about it and move on?

[FRD]

Finally, I only had to wait 8 years for it! Loading times is one of the reasons I stopped playing GTA. SSDs don't make a difference since they are server based.
Funny to see a modder found it though, usually it would be by some speedrunner that got into the game code to finish a game faster.

[spartaman64]

11 hours ago, kelvinhall05 said:

Imagine playing online in 2021 without modded money and stats, RP, etc

i got banned from gta online for accidentally picking up 75 dollars from someone that was spawning in money

[RejZoR]

When some random Anon on the interwebs makes loading times 70% shorter. Something that makers of the game and game engine itself couldn't somehow. I HAVE QUESTIONS...

[WereCat]

12 hours ago, bcredeur97 said:

I hear ppl complain about load times in this game all the time.. good on that guy for finding that.
 

I stopped playing it because of that... and the awful UI. 

But I will give it another try once the update goes live. 

[PorkishPig]

27 minutes ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

GTA VI is their top priority. It's is not a breaking bug, so they just ignore.

Top priority? That's pretty funny! GTA V still hits top 10 for active players on the Steam charts.

 

GTA V has an unbelievable amount of game-breaking bugs that they'll never patch. They do, however, actively patch exploits.