Rockstar made a mess of changes to Grand Theft Auto V today with a new patch, but some PC players are reporting that the open-world crime game now plays worse than it did before the update.
The patch rolled out overnight and now some players are reporting that they are getting a lower average frame rate and some stuttering that causes the visuals to hitch for a fraction of a second. In a thread on Reddit for the PC version of GTA V, people with various types of graphics cards — both Nvidia and AMD — are complaining about dropped frames and more graphical issues especially when playing online. This is especially strange since, according to Rockstar’s patch notes, the update primarily added new content like vehicles and clothing — although the studio did list a number of smaller “fixes.” It is also something that will likely concern Rockstar since Grand Theft Auto: Online, and its microtransaction sales, are so important.
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While many PC players are experiencing some hitching video problems, the issues are more extreme for some.
“I noticed that if you go in to the armor section of any Ammu-Nation [gun stores] in GTA: Online, the frame rate drops to 2 FPS — or something along those lines,” Reddit user Ydundar wrote.
Others confirmed that they were experiencing the same thing where the gun store will slow the game to an unreasonable 2-to-5 frames per second. Anything that creates friction for players when buying items — which you can use the real-money currency to buy if you want — is something that could have a negative effect on revenues.
The good news for players, however, is that majority of the problems seem to affect the online multiplayer game. The offline campaign has far fewer issues.
But considering how crucial GTA: Online is to Rockstar, it’s likely that the company will step up to address these complaints in the near future. The studio doesn’t want any reason to turn people off of playing online since it relies on having lots of players spending a little bit of money on in-game purchases to generate revenue, and that would make keeping people who play that a lot a priority.