Because he can: Modder reduces "GTA 5" from 120 to 2 gigabytes

Debora Pape

16/2/2026

Translation: machine translated

The modder OptiJuegos compresses "GTA 5" from a massive 120 gigabytes to a tiny 2.29 GB in order to achieve playable frame rates even on the simplest office laptops. The fact that Michael's villa loses its furniture and the phone crashes is the price you pay for a smooth experience.

In times of expensive hardware, many PC gamers are left with only low graphics settings to tickle tolerable FPS out of the system when gaming. But what if the lowest settings aren't enough and the game still stutters?

A 17-year-old Argentinian modder with poor gaming hardware makes a virtue out of this necessity. His hobby: reducing games to the minimum playable level. His latest victim is «GTA 5». The almost 13-year-old classic is still very popular today, especially among online gamers, thanks to its large game world, the many playable freedoms and the still-good graphics.

By default, «GTA 5» requires 120 gigabytes of space on the hard drive. The modder, who goes by the nickname OptiJuegos and runs several YouTube channels, was able to squeeze the game down to less than 2.5 gigabytes - and it is still more or less playable. On X he shows some game scenes in an almost four-minute video.

Whether the game is still fun to play, however, is another question: in the version shown there, the game character Michael is little more than a moving polygon and «muddy» is an optimistic description for the environmental textures. Despite the drastic reduction, only seven FPS are possible.

What can the reduced «GTA 5» do?

In the following video, OptiJuegos shows another variant that only requires 2.29 gigabytes of space and allows better character models. This makes 30 to 40 FPS possible. In the video, the modder takes us through his version of the game and explains how he achieved the enormous reduction. He also discusses some surprising findings, such as the fact that shooting from cars only takes up three megabytes of space and the swimming physics were also allowed to remain due to their low resource requirements.

OptiJuegos used an existing 12-gigabyte version of the game as a basis, which uses reduced textures and contains neither the prologue mission nor radio or video sequences. The game can only be explored in free mode and only offers part of the entire game map.

In order to compress the game even further, OptiJuegos has removed activities such as the car repair shop, hairdresser, gym, cinema and all phone features. Furniture in Michael's villa and individual car parts also had to make way in favour of compression.

According to OptiJuegos, however, all vehicles and weapons are available and NPCs and animals also move around in the game world. Animals, however, are completely silent: the audio files would otherwise take up 30 megabytes. And if you think you can commit crimes with impunity in this reduced version, you'll be disappointed: the police are in full force, OptiJuegos assures you.

He deleted all the code not needed for basic exploration from the game files, such as the automated gate at Michael's property line. He replaced the detailed treetops with static, blurred textures that hardly take up any space. The entire mechanics for switching between the three game characters are no longer present.

Not recommended

Removing code and content comes with problems, however. For example, links lead to nothing. According to OptiJuegos, this is why there are numerous bugs in the two-gigabyte version and he himself advises against playing such a reduced version: If you exceed the limit of the game world, you can expect a crash. If you try to open the phone, it will crash. So it's best not to touch or try anything, recommends OptiJuegos during his tour of the reduced Los Santos. He experiences several crashes himself.

In an FAQ document, OptiJuegos explains how he got into his hobby. Because he only ever had weak hardware at his disposal, he inevitably had to get to grips with optimisation in order to be able to play games anyway. He has been doing this, as he writes, «since he was born». Unfortunately, the document does not specify a release date. According to OptiJuegos, at the time of publication - after 2023 - he was using a computer with these specifications:

• Processor: Intel Core i5 6500 @ 3.20 GHz with four cores and four threads
• Integrated graphics card: Intel HD Graphics 530
• Memory: 16 GB DDR4
• Power supply: Overtech GT-6500, «shortly before the explosion»

The monitors available to him are a CRT monitor and an LCD screen with 1366 × 768 pixels. Thanks to the success of his YouTube channels, he can probably afford better hardware by now.

Although his downsizing project falls into the category of «I do it because I can» and has little practical use, it shows how much is possible even with suboptimal hardware.

Debora Pape

Editor

Debora.Pape@galaxus.de

Feels just as comfortable in front of a gaming PC as she does in a hammock in the garden. Likes the Roman Empire, container ships and science fiction books. Focuses mostly on unearthing news stories about IT and smart products.

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