Rockstar to modder who fixed gta
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[Update: According to reports from PC Gamer, Rockstar has deployed a new update to the PC edition of GTA Online, which has significantly lowered load times across the board. t0st, you’ve done an excellent job, and the GTA community owes you a debt of gratitude.]
A player/modder who discovered a technique to drastically cut the load times of Rockstar’s bullet-riddled MMO GTA Online on the PC has been thanked and compensated.
In February, a hacker known as “t0st” uncovered a flaw in GTA Online’s source code that could be exploited to reduce load times by up to 70% in some situations. According to Digital Foundry, t0st’s finding instructs GTA Online to skip billions of redundant coding checks, allowing gamers to enter the murky online world faster than ever before and start looting cars and busting domes.
Rockstar responded to the fan fix in a statement provided to PC Gamer earlier this week, roughly a month after t0st revealed the game-changing discovery. “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,” said GTA‘s head honchos. “As a result of these investigations, we have made some changes that will be implemented in a forthcoming title update.”
Rockstar thanked t0st for their efforts, stating that the modder has been awarded $10,000 through the publisher’s “Bug Bounty” program, which compensates players for reporting major technical and program faults in the GTA Online universe. While the program is usually limited to security concerns, Rockstar assured t0st that it would make an exception for this discovery.
GTA Online is Rockstar’s revenue crown jewel. Since its inception in 2013, the highly dangerous MMO has attracted hundreds of thousands of monthly players, supporting Rockstar’s coffers with expansions and microtransactions while also contributing to Grand Theft Auto V’s status as one of the most popular video games of all time.
