5 ms·

I tried playing GTA online once and actually gave up due to the loading times (on a top end gaming rig) I can't believe I'm alone, I wonder how much this cost

I tried playing GTA online once and actually gave up due to the loading times (on a top end gaming rig) I can't believe I'm alone, I wonder how much this cost rockstar

dieulot 4y ago
Same. Asking around why players tolerate it, the anecdotal conclusion I’ve got is that what makes these frequent and extremely slow loads tolerable is playing with friends on audio chat.
zionic 4y ago
The same thing happened to me. GTAO earns billions/year, crazy that "fix the insane loading times" didn't bubble up to their top-priority.
SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
My exact same experience. As to what it cost, in the old world paradigm I'd say "nothing, we already bought the game", but I guess these days there's probably a decent argument for a cohort of people who are too impatient to wait to get into the game and who pay extravagant sums of real-world money to get in-game items immediately.
- blibble 4y ago
  yes, GTA online's business model is making you buy in-game currency and paid DLC which is kinda hard if the game takes 30 minutes to load
- hermitdev 4y ago
  There's other costs: how many times per day to R* devs & testers have to go through the same loading? How many man-hours wasted? How many compute resources wasted? How many upgrades were justified by "I need better hardware to get my job done in a timely manner"?
bastardoperator 4y ago
Not much, the GTA5 online scene is alive and well. Considering they've sold this game over the course of three generations makes me believe they've made a mega flipton of money off this game.
- blablabla987 4y ago
  I know so many people that have stopped playing due to the loading times. Just because a scene is active and alive, doesn't mean it couldn't be even more active and alive with such a minor fix that could be implemented within a day. I am pretty sure they lost >100.000.000$ by that. Just shows how shitty the management over there is that they never tried fixing that problem.
  - bastardoperator 4y ago
    By the time you get to the loading screen they've already profited. The fact that they continue to sell the same game over and over means individuals have likely purchased the game multiple times meaning they don't care about loading times, they just like the game. It's easy to say their management is shitty from the comfort of your computer, but the reality is Rockstar produces great games, and they're making a ton of money because there games are good. I find most multiplayer games have a start up cost, glad they shortened it, but I don't think it's stopped anyone from playing that really wants to play. https://www.thegamer.com/gta-5-rockstar-2-5-million-per-day/ https://www.thegamer.com/gta-5-rockstar-2-5-million-per-day/ https://www.tweaktown.com/news/80912/grand-theft-auto-made-over-6-4-billion-since-gta-vs-launch/index.html https://www.tweaktown.com/news/80912/grand-theft-auto-made-o...
    - zerocrates 4y ago
      The action is, as always, on the margins. Those people who kind of wanted to play but got frustrated at the load times, you want them. In some senses you care more about them, the people you can gain or lose with changes, than your more committed users who are a little bit locked in. GTA V has sold, and continues to sell, amazingly well. But Online, where this slowdown was exclusive to, is the real moneymaking engine. Any little marginal push to keep people out of Online, from feeling they could just jump in whenever, was significant. The real baffler to me is just thinking about all the time spent by people internal to Rockstar sitting on that same screen.
seanp2k2 4y ago
Think about how many human lifetimes worth of extra minutes were wasted from everyone waiting for this x number of players X years this has been a problem. Even if you can’t implement bubble sort on a whiteboard in your sleep, 5+ minute load times should have been setting off alarm bells in many engineers heads. I’m sure this did actually cost R* real money. Bounce rates for websites increase 32% for 1s vs 3s load times, according to Google: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and-mobile/page-load-time-statistics/ https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and... Obviously we don’t have public data on it but I’m quite sure that some at least some people got frustrated with waiting and just stopped playing.
- jawarner 4y ago
  If you think about it, those lives actually were saved. People either didn't play the video game, or they spent a moment in the loading screen in quiet contemplation.
  - glenneroo 4y ago
    To play devil's advocate we should balance those out with the impatient gamers who acted out aggressively (e.g. the 100th time proceeded to kick a PC, smaller family member, throwing a mouse across the room, etc) or consumed more unhealthy snacks/drinks :( I personally was often frustrated waiting several minutes, thankfully I don't have any violent tendencies, snacks on the other hand... :/
- asdff 4y ago
  We are in the era where its impossible to be bored. In the elevator? Phone out on instagram. Loading screen? Same thing. Instant dopamine the minute you need a drip. The playerbase clearly doesn't care. To be honest, these loading screen times are as bad as they've always been for console games (especially considering it was only a generation ago that they ran off a disc).
  - jml7c5 4y ago
    From complaints I saw online, users emphatically cared. It was a common complaint, and some users would report that the load times would deter them from playing the game.
asdff 4y ago
Probably nothing. Loading times in rockstar games on consoles have always been this bad. GTA4 was just as bad too.
- baby 4y ago
  You're probably wrong. I remember e-commerces trying to quantify how many millions of dollars they would lose when clicking would take too much time on their websites. EDIT: things like https://www.fastcompany.com/1825005/how-one-second-could-cost-amazon-16-billion-sales https://www.fastcompany.com/1825005/how-one-second-could-cos... > Amazon’s calculated that a page load slowdown of just one second could cost it $1.6 billion in sales each year. Google has calculated that by slowing its search results by just four tenths of a second they could lose 8 million searches per day
  - asdff 4y ago
    That's ecommerce. This is a video game and a unique one at that, so there are other factors at play. I don't think many people go "game took forever to load, guess I'll play for less time then." There could even be a bullwhip effect, a long load time might make you want to stay playing for a longer period of time.
    - ungamedplayer 4y ago
      > I don't think many people go "game took forever to load, guess I'll play for less time then." Ive quit some online games that take too long to load. Matchmaking times that are too long make me quit games.
    - highstep 4y ago
      the load times were soooooo bad. Insultingly bad. It doesnt seem like you understand the true extent to how horrible rockstar managed this issue. I definitely quit playing for exactly this reason, even at the expense of spending less time with a good friend who i played with. Rockstar is a garbage disrespectful company for allowing this to go on for so long.
    - 4y ago

I tried playing GTA online once and actually gave up due to the loading times (on a top end gaming rig) I can't believe I'm alone, I wonder how much this cost rockstar

dieulot 4y ago

Same. Asking around why players tolerate it, the anecdotal conclusion I’ve got is that what makes these frequent and extremely slow loads tolerable is playing with friends on audio chat.

zionic 4y ago

The same thing happened to me. GTAO earns billions/year, crazy that "fix the insane loading times" didn't bubble up to their top-priority.

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago

My exact same experience. As to what it cost, in the old world paradigm I'd say "nothing, we already bought the game", but I guess these days there's probably a decent argument for a cohort of people who are too impatient to wait to get into the game and who pay extravagant sums of real-world money to get in-game items immediately.

blibble 4y ago
yes, GTA online's business model is making you buy in-game currency and paid DLC which is kinda hard if the game takes 30 minutes to load
hermitdev 4y ago
There's other costs: how many times per day to R* devs & testers have to go through the same loading? How many man-hours wasted? How many compute resources wasted? How many upgrades were justified by "I need better hardware to get my job done in a timely manner"?

bastardoperator 4y ago

Not much, the GTA5 online scene is alive and well. Considering they've sold this game over the course of three generations makes me believe they've made a mega flipton of money off this game.

blablabla987 4y ago
I know so many people that have stopped playing due to the loading times. Just because a scene is active and alive, doesn't mean it couldn't be even more active and alive with such a minor fix that could be implemented within a day. I am pretty sure they lost >100.000.000$ by that. Just shows how shitty the management over there is that they never tried fixing that problem.
- bastardoperator 4y ago
  By the time you get to the loading screen they've already profited. The fact that they continue to sell the same game over and over means individuals have likely purchased the game multiple times meaning they don't care about loading times, they just like the game. It's easy to say their management is shitty from the comfort of your computer, but the reality is Rockstar produces great games, and they're making a ton of money because there games are good. I find most multiplayer games have a start up cost, glad they shortened it, but I don't think it's stopped anyone from playing that really wants to play. https://www.thegamer.com/gta-5-rockstar-2-5-million-per-day/ https://www.thegamer.com/gta-5-rockstar-2-5-million-per-day/ https://www.tweaktown.com/news/80912/grand-theft-auto-made-over-6-4-billion-since-gta-vs-launch/index.html https://www.tweaktown.com/news/80912/grand-theft-auto-made-o...
  - zerocrates 4y ago
    The action is, as always, on the margins. Those people who kind of wanted to play but got frustrated at the load times, you want them. In some senses you care more about them, the people you can gain or lose with changes, than your more committed users who are a little bit locked in. GTA V has sold, and continues to sell, amazingly well. But Online, where this slowdown was exclusive to, is the real moneymaking engine. Any little marginal push to keep people out of Online, from feeling they could just jump in whenever, was significant. The real baffler to me is just thinking about all the time spent by people internal to Rockstar sitting on that same screen.

seanp2k2 4y ago

Think about how many human lifetimes worth of extra minutes were wasted from everyone waiting for this x number of players X years this has been a problem. Even if you can’t implement bubble sort on a whiteboard in your sleep, 5+ minute load times should have been setting off alarm bells in many engineers heads. I’m sure this did actually cost R* real money. Bounce rates for websites increase 32% for 1s vs 3s load times, according to Google: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and-mobile/page-load-time-statistics/ https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and... Obviously we don’t have public data on it but I’m quite sure that some at least some people got frustrated with waiting and just stopped playing.

jawarner 4y ago
If you think about it, those lives actually were saved. People either didn't play the video game, or they spent a moment in the loading screen in quiet contemplation.
- glenneroo 4y ago
  To play devil's advocate we should balance those out with the impatient gamers who acted out aggressively (e.g. the 100th time proceeded to kick a PC, smaller family member, throwing a mouse across the room, etc) or consumed more unhealthy snacks/drinks :( I personally was often frustrated waiting several minutes, thankfully I don't have any violent tendencies, snacks on the other hand... :/
asdff 4y ago
We are in the era where its impossible to be bored. In the elevator? Phone out on instagram. Loading screen? Same thing. Instant dopamine the minute you need a drip. The playerbase clearly doesn't care. To be honest, these loading screen times are as bad as they've always been for console games (especially considering it was only a generation ago that they ran off a disc).
- jml7c5 4y ago
  From complaints I saw online, users emphatically cared. It was a common complaint, and some users would report that the load times would deter them from playing the game.

asdff 4y ago

Probably nothing. Loading times in rockstar games on consoles have always been this bad. GTA4 was just as bad too.

baby 4y ago
You're probably wrong. I remember e-commerces trying to quantify how many millions of dollars they would lose when clicking would take too much time on their websites. EDIT: things like https://www.fastcompany.com/1825005/how-one-second-could-cost-amazon-16-billion-sales https://www.fastcompany.com/1825005/how-one-second-could-cos... > Amazon’s calculated that a page load slowdown of just one second could cost it $1.6 billion in sales each year. Google has calculated that by slowing its search results by just four tenths of a second they could lose 8 million searches per day
- asdff 4y ago
  That's ecommerce. This is a video game and a unique one at that, so there are other factors at play. I don't think many people go "game took forever to load, guess I'll play for less time then." There could even be a bullwhip effect, a long load time might make you want to stay playing for a longer period of time.
  - ungamedplayer 4y ago
    > I don't think many people go "game took forever to load, guess I'll play for less time then." Ive quit some online games that take too long to load. Matchmaking times that are too long make me quit games.
  - highstep 4y ago
    the load times were soooooo bad. Insultingly bad. It doesnt seem like you understand the true extent to how horrible rockstar managed this issue. I definitely quit playing for exactly this reason, even at the expense of spending less time with a good friend who i played with. Rockstar is a garbage disrespectful company for allowing this to go on for so long.
  - 4y ago