A gamer who set out to fix the poor loading times on Grand Theft Auto 5 has now been awarded $10,000. The loading times "have been the butt of many a joke over the last seven years," writes Mollie Taylor at PCGamer. But Github user tostercx, who also uses the name t0st, claimed to have uncovered a way to reduce loading times on the PC version by up to 70% earlier this month. The user—who said the wait time for the startup screen was reduced from six minutes to less than two—supplied a detailed analysis, explaining the problem was caused by "a single thread [central processing unit] bottleneck while starting up GTA Online," per PCGamer. He also put forward a way to fix it.
Grand Theft Auto maker Rockstar Games confirms the fix is included in a new update, made available Tuesday. "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." Rockstar later confirmed that $10,000 was awarded to the user through its Bug Bounty program, which usually awards users who uncover security or privacy issues, per PCGamer. Gamers are already reporting a "drastic improvement" in load times, per Express. (More video games stories.)
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