[HN Gopher] Rockstar thanks GTA Online player who fixed load tim...
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Rockstar thanks GTA Online player who fixed load times, official
update coming
Author : mmhsieh
Score : 210 points
Date : 2021-03-15 21:59 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pcgamer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pcgamer.com)
| [deleted]
| matsemann wrote:
| Discussion about the findings two weeks ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26296339
| brink wrote:
| For all the amazing things Rockstar has made, for doing what no
| other studio could do on the Xbox360, it's crazy that they
| haven't fixed this before now.
| dmos62 wrote:
| > doing what no other studio could do on the Xbox360
|
| What's that?
| brink wrote:
| GTA5, two console generations later and most games still
| don't come close.
| zamadatix wrote:
| GTA 5 on the 360 runs at 720p@30 FPS and even then it drops
| to the low 20s any time something happens even considering
| the graphics are cranked extremely low by today's
| standards.
|
| How well they had it running on the 360 is absolutely
| amazing given the limitations but nostalgia is taking over
| if you think most games on 4th gen Xbox don't even come
| close.
| Thaxll wrote:
| Because it's a game that has been in developpment for
| 8years, the game as of now is very different from 8 years
| ago from when it released. You can't compare a game just
| released with a game that had that much iteration with
| thousand of people.
| mclightning wrote:
| For the most part, it is not the tech, it is the content &
| artistic value they put into the game.
|
| So I don't think it relates in this tech situation. Tech-
| wise GTA5 is not that interesting for few years now.
| [deleted]
| adwi wrote:
| Good on them for acknowledging something a little embarrassing
| and responding with gratitude instead ignoring to try to save
| some face.
| swinglock wrote:
| I'm genuinely surprised. Given how long they've left this
| untouched I thought they didn't care at all.
| dbbk wrote:
| Seems most likely that they had just never dedicated the time
| to investigating the slowdown.
| de6u99er wrote:
| Tbh: Looks more like they haven't been aware of it.
|
| This can result in severe consequences for the developers who
| worked on this particular part of the codebase.
| bogwog wrote:
| They probably just didn't have anyone working on it that had
| the knowledge (or incentive and/or permission) to fix it.
| AFAIK they've just been adding content to the online portion
| for the past 7~8 years, and you don't need engine programmers
| to do that.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| The fact that they didn't make this a priority to fix shows
| exactly how much this company actually cares about it's
| customers and it's reputation. It's unbelievable that
| despite the quite public outcry about the issue NOTHING was
| done until some 3rd party guy figured it out for them.
|
| I'm quite surprised they are even going to patch the game
| because the level of "we dont give a shit" I thought they
| had about this issue certainly would have prevented them
| from doing anything now.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| I'm not sure if "embarrassing" is the right word here.
|
| This bug has existed for years and has lead to hundreds, if not
| thousands of people quitting the game citing this exact reason
| yet Rockstar did nothing.
|
| I think "shameful" is really more appropriate. It's not like
| they simply didn't know this existed. I think they have known
| all along it existed and didn't give 2 shits to fix it.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| you forgot to mention that ads are displayed during the
| loading screen
| lambda_obrien wrote:
| It's a video game, so maybe give them some slack. We're not
| talking a SolarWinds breach here.
| aantix wrote:
| The game supports 8 platforms, has virtually miles of
| terrain, and now Rockstar is suppose to feel ashamed because
| they didn't fix a big performance issue that affected startup
| times?
|
| The game probably has tens of millions of lines of code.
|
| I'm glad they shipped. If they can enhance the startup time,
| great, bonus for them. Additional credit for thanking the
| third party that uncovered the perf issue.
| swagmoney69 wrote:
| It's true that the game is probably absurdly complex, but
| how did they never profile loading times?
| jrimbault wrote:
| meta comment and completely feeling based : sometimes it really
| seems like companies, politicians, bureaucracies, don't have a
| process for acknowledging mistakes and/or lack of knowledge
| (and/or are seemingly not allowed to).
| [deleted]
| bendbro wrote:
| Apologizing just gives fuel for revenge. In this case I think
| because the harm done was so small, it was economical to
| apologize.
|
| Edit: an anecdote from the professor of my college's startup
| program (a hundred-millionaire former CEO/founder)- "never
| say sorry."
| abhorrence wrote:
| There are at least some examples of startups choosing to
| apologize, and try to make things better in the future.
|
| I think the real advice is "don't say sorry unless you
| actually mean it." People see right through that, because
| your actions and follow through won't match your words. But
| people seem to appreciate sincere apologies that come with
| substantive corrective action.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| You can easily just not say anything at all
| el_dev_hell wrote:
| > Apologizing just gives fuel for revenge. In this case I
| think because the harm done was so small, it was economical
| to apologize.
|
| Yeah, it's always a tradeoff.
|
| I worked at a non-tech fortune 500 for a few years and was
| able to see the inside of repair/warranty/disputes. These
| were very high ticket items and the brand was/is very
| highly regarded for after sales support.
|
| In the employee handbook for repair support staff (the
| people communicating with clients about the status of their
| repair/claim) there was a passage similar to the below:
|
| "Apologies MUST NOT acknowledge anything other than the
| customer's explicit feelings without written acknowledgment
| of fault from $MANAGER".
|
| I asked a member of that team to decipher WTF that meant,
| and they showed me an example email. They were only allowed
| to apologise in the below way:
|
| "Hi bob, we're sorry you feel our product is faulty".
|
| I always found these weasel apologies infuriating in my
| personal life.
| IshKebab wrote:
| "Turns out, they were right." err yeah of course. Nobody doubted
| them.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Except some commenters in the original thread -\\_(tsu)_/-
| atum47 wrote:
| Epic!!! Imagine doing something for fun and it ends up in
| production.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| This is going to be a great point on his resume.
|
| How many people get to say something like, "Reduced GTA 5 load
| times by 70%"?!
| C19is20 wrote:
| One.
| DevX101 wrote:
| That's pretty amazing by itself. But it was doing it without
| access to the source code that blew me away.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| That really is the cherry on top.
|
| Ya know on second thought, it's so unbelievable that he did
| this whole thing that I wouldn't be surprised if someone
| reading his resume thought he was bullshitting.
| yNeolh wrote:
| I really was thinking that it was intended... I remember watching
| GTA V on Xbox 360 and being impressed by how good it looked, how
| it performed in such a "limited" device, so something like this
| would resonate in a team so good. But it was almost 6 years ago,
| so probably a good part of that team has moved on to other
| companies, and the ones left, maybe are in other projects,
| hopefully, GTA VI.
|
| Glad to see Rockstar addressing this; I will try the update once
| it is released, and maybe I can play some online games without
| getting frustrated.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Maybe scanf didn't redo strlen on the Playstation stdlib.
|
| I mean the PC version was released one year later. Maybe by
| another team.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I want to see more of this from giant companies. This gives me
| hope that there are real people amongst the mindless drones in
| these hulking corporations.
| sim_card_map wrote:
| Given how simple this bug is, I was 100% certain they did it on
| purpose to show more ads.
| indeedmug wrote:
| I don't think it was simple. It came down to the odd specifics
| of scanf making the algorithm O(n^2) which wasn't obvious at
| all from the programmer standpoint. A lot of people pan
| Rockstar for being incompetent but in reality, it's a C footgun
| that any programmer would make.
|
| Edit: I reread the article and I overlooked how there was a
| second issue of a poorly implemented "hash table" that was a
| linked list that checked the entire list for dups in every
| update. Since we don't have access to the source code, it's
| hard to say if this is poorly implemented piece of code on
| Rockstar's part or someone else. It could be some deeply buried
| piece of code that no one ever looked at for years until now.
| bredren wrote:
| Then it is not a bug.
| dastx wrote:
| Imagine how much they'll have lost in revenue because people
| rage quit due to slow load times. Myself included.
| pityJuke wrote:
| t0st's original post has an update that says he got $10k from
| R*'s bug bounty program.
|
| [1]: https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-cut-GTA-Online-loading-
| times...
| nickspag wrote:
| The original fix's author updated the post about this:
| https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-cut-GTA-Online-loading-times...
|
| Rockstar awarded them 10k for it.
| A12-B wrote:
| I'd like to see this person actually get paid for what is
| essentially a million dollar fix
| Frost1x wrote:
| Yup. I'm not deeply familiar with the situation and
| circumstances but it sounds like this person should be very
| well compensated for what they did.
|
| The amount of free skilled labor businesses benefit from and
| abuse while not donating back to society is laughable. It's
| great they helped the GTA 5 community and a fun read but keep
| your pride and fame, I'd take cash anyday over a pat on the
| back.
| DavidVoid wrote:
| _" Just got awarded $10k through their H1 in-game bounty as an
| exception :)) (usually only for security issues)"_
|
| From their blog post about it: https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-
| cut-GTA-Online-loading-times...
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| Or at the very least get lifetime access to Rockstar games and
| DLC.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Tell me that is not cool.. being able to say you had that much of
| an impact on million of players across the globe. Not to mention,
| bragging rights and cool achievement you can put on your resume (
| that anyone should be able to understand ).
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(page generated 2021-03-15 23:00 UTC)