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How I cut GTA Online loading times by 70%

(nee.lv)
3883 points kuroguro | 10 comments | 28 Feb 21 19:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.989s | source | bottom
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breakingcups ◴[28 Feb 21 20:25 UTC] No.26296724[source]▶
It is absolutely unbelievable (and unforgivable) that a cash cow such as GTA V has a problem like this present for over 6 years and it turns out to be something so absolutely simple.

I do not agree with the sibling comment saying that this problem only looks simple and that we are missing context.

This online gamemode alone made $1 billion in 2017 alone.

Tweaking two functions to go from a load time of 6 minutes to less than two minutes is something any developer worth their salt should be able to do in a codebase like this equipped with a good profiler.

Instead, someone with no source code managed to do this to an obfuscated executable loaded with anti-cheat measures.

The fact that this problem is caused by Rockstar's excessive microtransaction policy (the 10MB of JSON causing this bottleneck are all available microtransaction items) is the cherry on top.

(And yes, I might also still be salty because their parent company unjustly DMCA'd re3 (https://github.com/GTAmodding/re3), the reverse engineered version of GTA III and Vice City. A twenty-year-old game. Which wasn't even playable without purchasing the original game.)

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formerly_proven ◴[28 Feb 21 21:25 UTC] No.26297206[source]▶
Also: Rockstar being too cheap to implement anti-cheat on the by far most successful online shooter on the planet.

Also

> I don’t think there’s any easier way out.

lmfao

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1. buzzerbetrayed ◴[28 Feb 21 22:33 UTC] No.26297740[source]▶
This may be obvious, but is GTAV the most successful online shooter on the planet? (Never played it)
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2. sickofparadox ◴[28 Feb 21 22:41 UTC] No.26297798[source]▶
Its the second best selling game of all time[1], and because Minecraft doesn't have guns, I suppose that would qualify it as the most successful online shooter (even if I think another genre would be more applicable).

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_gam...

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3. gambiting ◴[28 Feb 21 23:47 UTC] No.26298237[source]▶
Well but that's a bit like saying that since there are technically races in GTA it's also the most successful racing game. It will also be the most successful flying game and the most successful sailing simulator....etc etc.

I don't know, even though there is shooting in GTA I don't think I'd call it a shooter.

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4. charcircuit ◴[01 Mar 21 00:28 UTC] No.26298461[source]▶
That list is incomplete. CSGO is the most played game on Steam and is now free to play. I would not be surprised in the slightest if more people have CSGO.
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5. RugnirViking ◴[01 Mar 21 12:30 UTC] No.26302126{3}[source]▶
interesting. Steamspy no longer works, but its last report in 2016 said it had 25 million sales (at the time it was roughly on par with minecraft sales). Since then, the concurrent player count has more than doubled, but its very difficult to get information about sales.
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6. sickofparadox ◴[01 Mar 21 14:10 UTC] No.26302881{3}[source]▶
I agree that there is probably some other genre that would describe it better, but I think it wouldn't be unfair by any means to describe GTA as a third-person shooter.
7. kingosticks ◴[01 Mar 21 16:05 UTC] No.26304119[source]▶
I don't think it's obvious. In terms of player count (which is how I would personally rank success), it is not the most successful by a long way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-played_video_game...

However, games like PUBG and Fortnite are free-to-play (PUBG is only free on mobile?) so in terms of actual sales, you could say GTA is more successful. Still not sure I'd class it as an "online shooter", though.

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8. kingosticks ◴[01 Mar 21 16:08 UTC] No.26304148{4}[source]▶
Wikipedia has it with 46 million owners on Steam, with the following footnote:

> Not official; the numbers were estimated following a Steam API data leak in July 2018, which gave player ownership estimates for games on the platform that have achievements.

9. formerly_proven ◴[01 Mar 21 17:39 UTC] No.26305512[source]▶
GTA is many things for many different people. For some people, it's a racing game, for others it is about socializing and modding cars, for some it's a dogfighting game, some spend thousands of hours grinding the same set of PvE missions (for some reason), and for many it's a third and first person shooter / warzone simulator.
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10. kingosticks ◴[01 Mar 21 19:20 UTC] No.26306969{3}[source]▶
I totally agree, the same way many games are. But in the context of saying "x is by far most successful y on the planet" I think we have to stop somewhere. Otherwise an open game like GTA V becomes the most successful game (in terms of copies sold) in pretty much every category you can't reasonably stick Minecraft in. I don't think there's much value in that.