Reminds me of the "community patch" to GTA Online from a few years ago. The game was plagued by 10+ minute loading times. The situation remained for years and only got worse with time. Some hacker figured out that the game spent 80% of loading time reading the in-game store listing file. The file was tens of megabytes IIRC, and it literally used the Schlemiel the Painter's Algorithm - for each entry, start reading from the beginning byte after byte. The hacker made a tiny patch that made it remember where it found the last entry. This cut the total loading time by 80%, from over 10 minutes to less than 3.
Edit: removed incorrect information.
This is not quite an accurate telling of rockstar's reaction, there were actually receptive to it and paid out $10k for the discovery. Though it's an understandable mistake given rockstar's hostile history with the gta modding scene.
See the original post and discussion for the whole story:
https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-cut-GTA-Online-loading-times... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26296339
That's not how I remember these events when they were playing out. I distincly remember social media posts warning about the dangers of modifying game files, plus refusal to acknowledge the issue. Note there were 2 full weeks between the blog post and the update mentioning the bounty. I'm pretty sure the massive community outrage in between has played a role in it. But I don't have any sources and I was wrong about at least one thing (lack of attribution), so I'm okay assuming I'm wrong about everything else too.
Wowee two full weeks? You mean like a single sprint to discover, verify, and post PR about a perf patch that was good among the sea of rumors and reports a billion dollar game usually gets?
I mean like enough time to check the pulse with the community and walk back the initial confrontational response. I don't have a problem with when they fixed it. I don't have a problem with when they paid out. I wouldn't have a problem if they didn't pay out at all (why would they?). I have a problem with their initial reaction, which was full of the usual fearmongering against modders. (And a smaller problem with that it took an external contributor to finally make them implement a trivial fix for a massive usability issue that's been there for at least 6 years. It shows how much they don't care about their customers or the product they're selling unless the media get involved.)