As is always the case, Windows users are hating Microsoft’s call to upgrade to Windows 11. In particular, Microsoft is forcing an upgrade to Windows 11 24H2 to all Windows 10 users in a matter of months.
As Microsoft argues, even if it comes with bugs, it’s a necessary update to improve performance and security. But this update was frustrating gamers in particular because it came with bugs and issues for some specific games.
But now, something really weird popped up for a Rockstar classic – Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
The Windows 11 24Hz San Andreas “Bug”
Some gamers who played Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas noticed that they suddenly couldn’t access the Skimmer, a seaplane that you can earn in the game.
This eventually caught the attention of Silent, a modder who makes SilentPatch for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, as well as Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto III.
As he explained in his blog, he eventually found out that there was a bug in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas’ code from 21 years ago. We won’t try to explain the technical details of this bug, but MattKC gives the bug a name: Uninitialized Values.
In plain English, this is a piece of code that states that the program needs to assign a value (AKA a number) for a certain object. But it’s uninitialized because the program then forgets to assign that value.
And this happens because the developers who coded the game forgot to add those instructions in.
Silent very easily fixed the bug for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, but that was only the beginning for him.
Investigating This (Extremely Minor) Grand Theft Auto Mystery
If Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas had a bug this whole time, why did it only come up in Windows 24H2? Again, we won’t bog you down with the technical details.
What it boils down to is that Windows itself was also coded in such a way that it was not checking for these values until this very recent update. But we know you might have another question.
Yes, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas released as part of the ill-fated Grand Theft Auto Trilogy: The Definitive Collection. And it had also been released and re-released on Xbox, PlayStation 2, iOS, Android, FireOS, etc.
So how come the bug doesn’t come up in those versions either? The answer is that Rockstar fixed this bug in the 2005 Xbox version of the game. And that version is the basis of other subsequent ports of the game.
That includes the PC versions of the game that you can play on Steam and Rockstar Game Store. So this bug only came up for players who had a version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas before Rockstar patched it.
Why This Bug Proves You Should Upgrade Windows
We know this is not the conclusion that you expected. But as Microsoft veteran Raymond Chen wrote in his own dev blog, Windows 11 24H2 was updated to catch these bugs. And they should have caught these bugs earlier because they lead to performance issues.
Even small performance issues like a missing seaplane in an open world video game could lead to bigger ones down the line.
In any case, this wasn’t a serious issue for most gamers in the end. But it’s an interesting little yarn in the greater oral history of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, and Windows.
You can watch MattKC’s video (where he actually tries to explain the technical details) below.
