[josephg]

I can see both sides of this.

On one side, yeah - the work he did will be worth a lot more than $10k to Rockstar. They've had lots of people complain about & stop playing GTA online because of the slow loading times. And this issue would probably never be found or fixed otherwise.

On the other hand, he did it for fun (without any expectation of reward). $10k isn't massive and we can quibble over the reward amount, but its delightful that companies are rewarding people at all for fixes like this. A few years ago he'd be lucky to get sent a GTA t-shirt. Its definitely the right direction we should be moving in - bug bounties are a thing in security, and we should be celebrating any movement toward rolling them out in other circumstances.

[majani]

And also they have to balance out internal politics as well. Putting massive incentives on the discovery of bugs could really mess up the motivations of internal staff.

[jack_riminton]

Indeed there were stories on that previous thread of people being banned for 'hacking' when they've pointed out flaws to game developers

[wombatmobile]

> On the other hand, he did it for fun

This might be an argument for him to console himself (or just keep smiling) in the event that he received nothing. It isn't a valid consideration for Rockstar, which should take heed of the calculus you stated with your first hand only, because for the beneficiary of a windfall, karma awaits.