Rockstar Games, the developer behind GTA Online, has awarded a player who found a way to speed up load times in the game a $10,000 bounty.
Github user t0st recently revealed a fix for GTA Online, which dramatically shrinks the significant load times that players have to endure when starting it up for the first time. T0st’s fix reduces load times by up to 70 percent.
In a post explaining the fix, t0st stated how the problem was due to a single bottleneck that they were surprised Rockstar had missed in the seven years since GTA Online first launched. According to the programmer, their method for reducing loading “shouldn’t take more than one day for a single dev to solve.”
Following this reveal, Rockstar has now confirmed that it will implement the fix into GTA Online following an investigation into its effectiveness. Speaking to PC Gamer, a spokesperson said:
“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. As a result of these investigations, we have made some changes that will be implemented in a forthcoming title update.”
The studio also announced that it would reward t0st with the $10,000 bounty that is usually reserved for those finding critical security bugs or issues with its games.