Rockstar is going to limit loading time GTA Online with code from fan

Gamemaker Rockstar is going to release an update for GTA Online that should limit the loading time. This is done on the basis of the code of a fan who managed to do this with his own code. That player will receive $10,000 from the Bug Bounty program.

Rockstar would like to thank t0st, who put the modified code online, PCGamer says. “After a thorough investigation, we can confirm that t0st has indeed identified an aspect of the game code regarding load times that could be improved. As a result of those investigations, we have made some changes that will be in a future update.”

The game maker does not say how much faster GTA Online will load after the update and when the update will be released. According to t0st itself, that update will come soon. He also claims to have received $10,000 from the Bug Bounty program as an exception. Normally, that money is only for security researchers who have found leaks.

T0st claimed to have found two bugs. The first is contained in a 10MB JSON text file containing all the items in the game. It contains 63,000 entries. After reading each of the 63,000 entries, each character in that entire text file is recounted, 63,000 times.

Secondly, for the preparation of the imported item data, data such as the name and price of the item, and a hash of the item are loaded. The hash value of the saved item is compared to the hashes of any other item that has been saved before. This can lead to (63000^2+63000)/2 checks, or 1,984,531,500 pieces. GTA Online does this to make sure there are no duplicate entries in the final list, to prevent hackers. According to the developer, this process is a drain on the CPU and is not even necessary, because the list of hashes is empty before the JSON file is loaded. In addition, all items in this file are unique, so according to t0st there is no need to check whether or not they are in the list.