How to reduce GTA 5 load times massively on PC with simple trick
Rockstar GamesAnyone who’s played GTA Online knows the loading times are no joke.
One clever GTA 5 modder has found a way to drastically reduce the load times for GTA Online on PC, but you also run the risk of being banned.
Anyone who has played GTA V in the near-decade that it’s been released knows about the struggles with load times.
Rockstar Games’ now-iconic title is just so big, and has so much content inside, that it’s an absolute nightmare to load on certain devices – mainly Xbox One, PS4, and low-end PC setups.
The wait gets even worse when you want to play GTA Online. Yes, players have found tricks to get around the wait times, but they’re not always reliable and have disappeared when updates have been released. Though, one dev has found why it takes so long, and it might not be for the reason you expect.
Rockstar GamesHow to reduce GTA Online load times
Given how many players load into a GTA Online session, and just how big Los Santos is, you can be forgiven for thinking that it’s purely the size of the game that the issue.
According to findings from tostercx, it’s all down to some badly optimized code. As the modder’s extremely detailed research shows, there’s a 10MB JSON file that accounts for 1,984,531,500 checks when you’re loading the game – seeing what downloadable content you’ve got, among other things.
The modder has got a way around this, but be warned, you do run the risk of being banned. You basically need to use tostercx’s Github download, and you’ll bring your wait time down to around 90 seconds, rather than the few minutes that some players wait for.
An interesting article worth reading about how a clever dev improved GTAO loading times.
A small note is that the issue is PC related since the file mentioned is more of an anti-cheat measure.https://t.co/Wy1ApuSWnq
— Tez2 (@TezFunz2) March 1, 2021
As tostercx notes, it shouldn’t take Rockstar any time at all to address the issue and make life easier for players.
“If this somehow reaches Rockstar: the problems shouldn’t take more than a day for a single dev to solve. Please do something about it,” they said.
It remains to be seen if Rockstar will, in fact, follow it up and get things ironed out for PC. As for consoles, these sort of fixes should come in the “expanded and enhanced” next-gen port for Xbox Series X/S and PS5.
