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3883 points kuroguro | 4 comments | | HN request time: 1.069s | source
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breakingcups ◴[] 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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moonchild ◴[] No.26297184[source]
> salty because their parent company unjustly DMCA'd re3

Unjustly, but legally. The people you should be salty at are the lawmakers.

replies(2): >>26297192 #>>26297873 #
breakingcups ◴[] No.26297192[source]
That still remains to be seen. A DMCA is not a court order. Anyone can file one and take a repository offline for two weeks.
replies(1): >>26297639 #
moonchild ◴[] No.26297639[source]
Yes but the code was clearly derived directly from a decompiled binary; not ‘clean room’ reverse engineering. Hence, illegal, regardless of whether a dmca takedown notice is filed.
replies(2): >>26297880 #>>26297900 #
1. xyzzy_plugh ◴[] No.26297880[source]
That doesn't make it illegal, there are plenty of jurisdictions where non-clean-room reverse engineering is perfectly legal.
replies(1): >>26298470 #
2. charcircuit ◴[] No.26298470[source]
But distributing it without a license from the copyright holder is.
replies(1): >>26299950 #
3. jagger27 ◴[] No.26299950[source]
Distributing what, exactly? It required you already owned a copy of the game to install/build it.
replies(1): >>26302457 #
4. charcircuit ◴[] No.26302457{3}[source]
Distributing whatever was in the repo. Requiring a copy of the game doesn't magically make it legal. A modded game is a derivative work.