A method thought up by a GTA fan to significantly decrease loading times has been implemented by Rockstar, and it actually works.
Loading times and screens can be the bane of many gamers' lives. Despite shifting more than 140 million copies worldwide since it was first released, GTA 5 is one of the worst offenders. The average waiting time for GTA Online to start up is six minutes. A player who goes by t0st decided to do a little digging as to why GTA takes so long to load, and why nothing has been done about it for almost eight years.
By using a duplication check patch and a JSON parser patch, t0st was able to significantly reduce GTA 5's loading time on PC. GTA Online, in particular, which understandably takes longer to start up than the offline game. T0st's fix was so simple and so appealing, Rockstar decided to implement it and has paid the player $10,000 for their troubles.
Rockstar has not hung around with the rollout of the fanmade patch, which just goes to show how simple a fix it really is. The 1.53 patch, which includes t0st's idea, is live on PC right now. Those of you playing on console will have to continue admiring what are frankly some of the better loading screens in the video game world for a little longer.
According to early reports, the patch is working as promised. PC Gamer is even reporting that some players who were made to wait seven or eight minutes in the past have been managing to go from start-up to online in just 35 seconds. If true, that will likely be the very best you can hope for, but even times being cut in half will be a significant reduction for almost everybody.
As touched upon above, Rockstar making people stare at its loading screens for the past eight years hasn't affected its popularity. Not only is it the second best-selling game of all time, but it was also the PlayStation Store's most downloaded game in North America last month. It has also been a mainstay in most video game charts for the better part of a decade.