11 ms·

Rockstar pays $10k to modder who fixed GTA Online loading times

256 points by geuis 6y ago

Shadonototro 6y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26289716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26289716 And people accused me of "gatekeeping" Sure
OMGWTF 6y ago
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26469753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26469753
Timucin 6y ago
I wonder how big or small that $10K compared to the game's monthly income. Guess I'd be OK to share the 70% of that with the modder if it'd be up to me (no wonder why I don't get rich huh?). * 70% was the amount of loading time the modder helped to cut.
- qzw 6y ago
  This is the gaming industry we're talking about here. I wouldn't have been surprised at "a box of swag" level of compensation. Although given what's en vogue right now, maybe some NFTs would've been more likely (not to mention potentially more valuable, at lease for awhile).
  - thatguy0900 6y ago
    I wouldnt have been surprised by $10k worth of shark cards
  - sombremesa 6y ago
    > I wouldn't have been surprised at "a box of swag" level of compensation. Back when I was learning to find vulnerabilities and report them, I'd be lucky to get a box of swag. For VG companies, the usual compensation was some amount of free in-game currency or premium subscription for N months. That being said, I didn't ask for compensation anyway, so it was no skin off my nose. The worst reaction was when I told my university that one of their websites had a broken link that gave you a zip of sensitive student information, and they threatened to call the FBI (in hindsight, I was probably talking to someone non-technical).
  - MisterBastahrd 6y ago
    Yes, but this is GTA V we're talking about. Games like this aren't simply games, they're virtualized social platforms. There are many people who have spent thousands of dollars on that game to upgrade their in-game cars, apartments, businesses, clothing, and weapons. It's also one of the reasons that it is increasingly difficult to come up with an MMO (and GTA V is basically just an MMO with cars and guns instead of horses and sword) with any sort of staying power: your competition is not only much better funded than you likely will ever be, but they have years of content that new players can play through. The long-term players are heavily invested in both time and money and the new players aren't going to run out of content any time soon. Rockstar makes about $600M annually off of Red Dead Redemption and GTA V. They basically gave him 9 minutes of their net revenue.
- shakehar 6y ago
  I would say give them 50k and free access to Rockstar games for life.
- jandrese 6y ago
  $50k and he has a plaque dedicated to him in one of the city parks in the game. $10k is not nothing. Some companies would have responded to that fix with a lawsuit for hacking. It reads a bit low to me only because it fixes what was the #1 complained about issue from day one for the game, but it's better than a box of swag.
  - Ariez 6y ago
    You realise GTA V is the most profitable piece of media, ever?
high_byte 6y ago
well deserved, of course it's worth much more but considering I had expected the payout to be CAPITAL $0 + there's the added value for his portfolio.
paulpauper 6y ago
given how much money GTA online make and how much of a problem slow loading times are, I think he deserves way more.
- flatiron 6y ago
  People speculate that the slow loading was a feature not a bug since the app shows ads during the loading. That being said, the fix is comically small that simply the people they have running that part may be the junior developers who don’t know how hashmaps work.
- rvz 6y ago
  If this was Apple, the response would be much different. Like the M1 DTK return fiasco, the devs complained about the low gift card price and in the end, Apple paid more. Imagine going through all that effort into finding a critical vulnerability and developing a zero-click PoC exploit to jailbreak the current iDevice line-up and somehow end up selling it to Apple for $10k. That is pretty much near to what you are seeing here with the effort into discovering this performance issue and providing a fix for it to Rockstar. Oh well.
- spurdoman77 6y ago
  You get what you negotiate for, not what you deserve.
high_byte 6y ago
Inspired by this, I've done the same for Unity 3D compilation and discovered it scanned nearly the entire filesystem for every change, including white-space... although it was roughly fixed in the newest version (which nobody uses yet...)
- ZoomerCretin 6y ago
  I'd love to see a write-up on this.
- moribundo 6y ago
  What version has your fix?
phamilton 6y ago
From the original post: > The plan? Write a .dll, inject it in GTA, hook some functions, ???, profit.
- brokencode 6y ago
  Turns out “???” was to write a popular blog post about the fix that stirs up a minor controversy and gets noticed by Rockstar.
- eganist 6y ago
  Added a nuance in brackets that hopefully provides more detail while maintaining a concise summary > The plan? Write a .dll [that fixes dupe checking and adds caching to GTA's json parsing], inject it in GTA, hook some functions, ???, profit.
mrguyorama 6y ago
I'm genuinely surprised they didn't take him to court for "reasons". Games companies are notorious for taking legal action against fans and their beneficial actions
- Vespasian 6y ago
  Isn't this usual in connection with trademark and copyright infringement (i.e. fanfic, reuse of assets/brands)? This situation seems different in that it is purely beneficial to Rockstar. The 10k reward are a smart PR move.
- falcolas 6y ago
  Probably because they rely (perhaps indirectly) upon the modding scene to keep people interested, and modders do the exact same things.
solarkraft 6y ago
Okay, great. Actually not a PR desaster reaction for people improving a stupid situation for once. If they now spent that money to let one of their presumably competent developers profile the thing for a few days or hours you could probably cut the loading time again by that much or much more. This brings me to a general software gripe. Why do companies seem to love to ship products of unacceptable quality? There are many things I don't like about Apple, but is there anyone else who actually cares what they ship?
- scoot 6y ago
  > is there anyone else who actually cares what they ship I can't speak to code quality, but have you used Pages or Sheets? They're both usability disasters. Apple doesn't seem to care to improve them.
- mdpopescu 6y ago
  Like with every "why does X do Y?" question, the answer is "because (and up to the limit that) they can get away with it". Most people seem to accept the "meh, it's good enough" mantra. Perfectionism is considered a flaw - in programming we dismiss it as "gold-plating".
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- londons_explore 6y ago
  I can guess that this kind of bug might have been easier to fix by binary patching than in the source. The bug was probably in a library, or perhaps in a library in a library. Probably written by a third party. Probably you don't have access to the source. Probably they don't care about your performance feature requests, and if they do, the response will be "we'll get that in the next version, next year".
- brokencode 6y ago
  This and other posts have a very negative tone about the state of software development, as if the developers are stupid or lazy for not fixing annoying bugs. As a developer myself, I can say that this kind of thing is usually the result of the developers being under immense pressure to finish an important project, leaving them no time or energy to even think about minor or moderately annoying bugs unless customers start pulling out their pitchforks.
ralusek 6y ago
The modder actually had an encounter with the Rockstar developer who initially implemented the loading process. https://youtu.be/X5ZpiTGI7D4?t=59 https://youtu.be/X5ZpiTGI7D4?t=59
aksss 6y ago
Pleasant surprise, though ~$7500 net seems a little low to me for the LoE and value delivered.
drstrangevibes 6y ago
peanuts
A-Train 6y ago
To all the people saying 10k is low. What he did and the way it got acknowledged can net him millions of dollars in the future income. He could start a company saying that "from the guy who reduces GTA V loading times 70%". I think that what he did is amazing and I'm sure it is not the last time we hear from this guy.
- spurdoman77 6y ago
  This. People underestimate the value reputation like this can have in the industry. And anyway, the guy is smart, he just has to work on his monetization strategy. The business model where you do things for free in hopes that some kind corporation will pay you just doesnt work.
  - nawgz 6y ago
    I enjoy the juxtaposition between your comment and the sibling comment wrt “the value of reputation” Personally I am not so convinced this persons reputation will earn them millions, but I can imagine it to be a reasonably valuable resume point
- that_guy_iain 6y ago
  > What he did and the way it got acknowledged can net him millions of dollars in the future income. I think people over estimate how valuable reputation is. It can open doors but that is all. Being the guy who reduced loading times in GTA may get some VC interest but that doesn't automatically equate to making any money. It may get you a job and get you paid a few thousand more than usual. But honestly, I've never seen one of these famous devs make lots of money. They'll get offered CTO roles but that's been the max.
  - michaelcampbell 6y ago
    Indeed, look at the bevy of Twitter posts from authors of a given tech/stack/framework being turned down by companies to work with said tech because of "lack of experience".
ryanmarsh 6y ago
All the programmers at GTA who possibly made larger optimizations over the course of development are probably wondering where their $10k bonus is.
georgiecasey 6y ago
Wasn't there a thread on this just yesterday?
racl101 6y ago
They should just hire that guy. If he wants to be hired by Rockstar anyways IN ADDITION to the $10k.
- xtracto 6y ago
  Mhmm not really... The skills required for game development are not the same required for reverse engineering. The guy might have a miserable life if he is put to write C++ code under the Unreal framework under death-march after death-march schedules.
varispeed 6y ago
I think they should have rather looked into retention rate before the change and after the change and then pay % of the difference in sales over x years rather just one off go away payment.
davide_v 6y ago
The original post where t0st explains how he did it it's fascinating. He improved the performance of a program without even having the source code. I can't image what he could do with the source code. I would instantly hire him as a QA and Performance Engineer or something like that. If R* won't get him, some other company will, and he will earn the money he deserves for sure.
- edm0nd 6y ago
  I just finished reading it. A really great read. I'm glad R* awarded him that 10k HackerOne bounty, he deserves it.
ionwake 6y ago
GTA revenue: 140,000,000 million 70% loading time fix = 10,000 This gives me hope that any incumbent could be easily usurped by a software company that values good work
jfrunyon 6y ago
Gonna take a wild guess and say the $10k is for copyright, not PR, y'all.

256 points by geuis 6y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26289716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26289716 And people accused me of "gatekeeping" Sure

OMGWTF 6y ago

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26469753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26469753

Timucin 6y ago

I wonder how big or small that $10K compared to the game's monthly income. Guess I'd be OK to share the 70% of that with the modder if it'd be up to me (no wonder why I don't get rich huh?). * 70% was the amount of loading time the modder helped to cut.

qzw 6y ago
This is the gaming industry we're talking about here. I wouldn't have been surprised at "a box of swag" level of compensation. Although given what's en vogue right now, maybe some NFTs would've been more likely (not to mention potentially more valuable, at lease for awhile).
- thatguy0900 6y ago
  I wouldnt have been surprised by $10k worth of shark cards
- sombremesa 6y ago
  > I wouldn't have been surprised at "a box of swag" level of compensation. Back when I was learning to find vulnerabilities and report them, I'd be lucky to get a box of swag. For VG companies, the usual compensation was some amount of free in-game currency or premium subscription for N months. That being said, I didn't ask for compensation anyway, so it was no skin off my nose. The worst reaction was when I told my university that one of their websites had a broken link that gave you a zip of sensitive student information, and they threatened to call the FBI (in hindsight, I was probably talking to someone non-technical).
- MisterBastahrd 6y ago
  Yes, but this is GTA V we're talking about. Games like this aren't simply games, they're virtualized social platforms. There are many people who have spent thousands of dollars on that game to upgrade their in-game cars, apartments, businesses, clothing, and weapons. It's also one of the reasons that it is increasingly difficult to come up with an MMO (and GTA V is basically just an MMO with cars and guns instead of horses and sword) with any sort of staying power: your competition is not only much better funded than you likely will ever be, but they have years of content that new players can play through. The long-term players are heavily invested in both time and money and the new players aren't going to run out of content any time soon. Rockstar makes about $600M annually off of Red Dead Redemption and GTA V. They basically gave him 9 minutes of their net revenue.
shakehar 6y ago
I would say give them 50k and free access to Rockstar games for life.
jandrese 6y ago
$50k and he has a plaque dedicated to him in one of the city parks in the game. $10k is not nothing. Some companies would have responded to that fix with a lawsuit for hacking. It reads a bit low to me only because it fixes what was the #1 complained about issue from day one for the game, but it's better than a box of swag.
- Ariez 6y ago
  You realise GTA V is the most profitable piece of media, ever?

high_byte 6y ago

well deserved, of course it's worth much more but considering I had expected the payout to be CAPITAL $0 + there's the added value for his portfolio.

paulpauper 6y ago

given how much money GTA online make and how much of a problem slow loading times are, I think he deserves way more.

flatiron 6y ago
People speculate that the slow loading was a feature not a bug since the app shows ads during the loading. That being said, the fix is comically small that simply the people they have running that part may be the junior developers who don’t know how hashmaps work.
rvz 6y ago
If this was Apple, the response would be much different. Like the M1 DTK return fiasco, the devs complained about the low gift card price and in the end, Apple paid more. Imagine going through all that effort into finding a critical vulnerability and developing a zero-click PoC exploit to jailbreak the current iDevice line-up and somehow end up selling it to Apple for $10k. That is pretty much near to what you are seeing here with the effort into discovering this performance issue and providing a fix for it to Rockstar. Oh well.
spurdoman77 6y ago
You get what you negotiate for, not what you deserve.

high_byte 6y ago

Inspired by this, I've done the same for Unity 3D compilation and discovered it scanned nearly the entire filesystem for every change, including white-space... although it was roughly fixed in the newest version (which nobody uses yet...)

ZoomerCretin 6y ago
I'd love to see a write-up on this.
moribundo 6y ago
What version has your fix?

phamilton 6y ago

From the original post: > The plan? Write a .dll, inject it in GTA, hook some functions, ???, profit.

brokencode 6y ago
Turns out “???” was to write a popular blog post about the fix that stirs up a minor controversy and gets noticed by Rockstar.
eganist 6y ago
Added a nuance in brackets that hopefully provides more detail while maintaining a concise summary > The plan? Write a .dll [that fixes dupe checking and adds caching to GTA's json parsing], inject it in GTA, hook some functions, ???, profit.

mrguyorama 6y ago

I'm genuinely surprised they didn't take him to court for "reasons". Games companies are notorious for taking legal action against fans and their beneficial actions

Vespasian 6y ago
Isn't this usual in connection with trademark and copyright infringement (i.e. fanfic, reuse of assets/brands)? This situation seems different in that it is purely beneficial to Rockstar. The 10k reward are a smart PR move.
falcolas 6y ago
Probably because they rely (perhaps indirectly) upon the modding scene to keep people interested, and modders do the exact same things.

solarkraft 6y ago

Okay, great. Actually not a PR desaster reaction for people improving a stupid situation for once. If they now spent that money to let one of their presumably competent developers profile the thing for a few days or hours you could probably cut the loading time again by that much or much more. This brings me to a general software gripe. Why do companies seem to love to ship products of unacceptable quality? There are many things I don't like about Apple, but is there anyone else who actually cares what they ship?

scoot 6y ago
> is there anyone else who actually cares what they ship I can't speak to code quality, but have you used Pages or Sheets? They're both usability disasters. Apple doesn't seem to care to improve them.
mdpopescu 6y ago
Like with every "why does X do Y?" question, the answer is "because (and up to the limit that) they can get away with it". Most people seem to accept the "meh, it's good enough" mantra. Perfectionism is considered a flaw - in programming we dismiss it as "gold-plating".
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
londons_explore 6y ago
I can guess that this kind of bug might have been easier to fix by binary patching than in the source. The bug was probably in a library, or perhaps in a library in a library. Probably written by a third party. Probably you don't have access to the source. Probably they don't care about your performance feature requests, and if they do, the response will be "we'll get that in the next version, next year".
brokencode 6y ago
This and other posts have a very negative tone about the state of software development, as if the developers are stupid or lazy for not fixing annoying bugs. As a developer myself, I can say that this kind of thing is usually the result of the developers being under immense pressure to finish an important project, leaving them no time or energy to even think about minor or moderately annoying bugs unless customers start pulling out their pitchforks.

ralusek 6y ago

The modder actually had an encounter with the Rockstar developer who initially implemented the loading process. https://youtu.be/X5ZpiTGI7D4?t=59 https://youtu.be/X5ZpiTGI7D4?t=59

aksss 6y ago

Pleasant surprise, though ~$7500 net seems a little low to me for the LoE and value delivered.

drstrangevibes 6y ago

peanuts

A-Train 6y ago

To all the people saying 10k is low. What he did and the way it got acknowledged can net him millions of dollars in the future income. He could start a company saying that "from the guy who reduces GTA V loading times 70%". I think that what he did is amazing and I'm sure it is not the last time we hear from this guy.

spurdoman77 6y ago
This. People underestimate the value reputation like this can have in the industry. And anyway, the guy is smart, he just has to work on his monetization strategy. The business model where you do things for free in hopes that some kind corporation will pay you just doesnt work.
- nawgz 6y ago
  I enjoy the juxtaposition between your comment and the sibling comment wrt “the value of reputation” Personally I am not so convinced this persons reputation will earn them millions, but I can imagine it to be a reasonably valuable resume point
that_guy_iain 6y ago
> What he did and the way it got acknowledged can net him millions of dollars in the future income. I think people over estimate how valuable reputation is. It can open doors but that is all. Being the guy who reduced loading times in GTA may get some VC interest but that doesn't automatically equate to making any money. It may get you a job and get you paid a few thousand more than usual. But honestly, I've never seen one of these famous devs make lots of money. They'll get offered CTO roles but that's been the max.
- michaelcampbell 6y ago
  Indeed, look at the bevy of Twitter posts from authors of a given tech/stack/framework being turned down by companies to work with said tech because of "lack of experience".

ryanmarsh 6y ago

All the programmers at GTA who possibly made larger optimizations over the course of development are probably wondering where their $10k bonus is.

georgiecasey 6y ago

Wasn't there a thread on this just yesterday?

racl101 6y ago

They should just hire that guy. If he wants to be hired by Rockstar anyways IN ADDITION to the $10k.

xtracto 6y ago
Mhmm not really... The skills required for game development are not the same required for reverse engineering. The guy might have a miserable life if he is put to write C++ code under the Unreal framework under death-march after death-march schedules.

varispeed 6y ago

I think they should have rather looked into retention rate before the change and after the change and then pay % of the difference in sales over x years rather just one off go away payment.

davide_v 6y ago

The original post where t0st explains how he did it it's fascinating. He improved the performance of a program without even having the source code. I can't image what he could do with the source code. I would instantly hire him as a QA and Performance Engineer or something like that. If R* won't get him, some other company will, and he will earn the money he deserves for sure.

edm0nd 6y ago
I just finished reading it. A really great read. I'm glad R* awarded him that 10k HackerOne bounty, he deserves it.

ionwake 6y ago

GTA revenue: 140,000,000 million 70% loading time fix = 10,000 This gives me hope that any incumbent could be easily usurped by a software company that values good work

jfrunyon 6y ago

Gonna take a wild guess and say the $10k is for copyright, not PR, y'all.