How I cut GTA Online loading times by 70%

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.)

Having played the game, it's not surprising to me in the least.

I have never yet encountered another such 'wild-west' online experience.

It's the only game that is so un-modereated that i've ever played where the common reaction to meeting a hacker that is interested in griefing you is to call your hacker friend white-knight and ask him to boot the griefer-hacker from the lobby.

Reports do next to nothing -- and 'modders' have some very real power in-game, with most fights between 'modders' ending in one of them being booted to desktop by the other exploiting a CTD bug (which are usually chat text-parser based..)

On top of all this, Rockstar attempts to have an in-game economy , even selling money outright to players in the form of 'Shark Cards' for real-life currency , while 'modders' (hackers) easily dupe gold for anyone that may ask in a public lobby.

This isn't just all coincidence; the game lacks any kind of realistic checks/balances with the server for the sake of latency and interoperability -- but this results in every 13 year old passing around the Cheat Engine structs on game-cheating forums and acting like virtual gods while tossing legitimate players around lobbies like ragdolls -- meanwhile Rockstar continues releasing GTA Online content while ignoring playerbase pleas for supervision.

It's truly unique though -- an online battlefield where one can literally watch battles between the metaphorical white hat and black hat hackers; but it's a definite indicator of a poorly ran business when vigilante customers need to replace customer service.

Also, an aside, most 'mod-menus' -- the small applets put together using publicly available memory structs for game exploit -- most all have a 'quick connect' feature that allows hackers to join lobbies much faster than the GTA V client usually allows for. This feature has existed for years and years, and I believe it performs tricks similar to those listed in the article.