That does sounds like awfully like confirming that indeed no-one was curious, because they were too busy chasing KPIs or whatever other metrics management were using.
Understandable given the heavy crunch it sounds like Rock Star works in. If you’re a developer spending 60+ hours a week working on it, you’re not going to play that in the few personal hours left over.
The players who are still there are used to it so the value is likely near zero. It's the sort of thing that's 100% worth fixing before launch or soon after so you don't lose players in the first place. But the fix loses value every day it goes unfixed because you're already lost those load time-sensitive players. Keep in mind that years after release it still makes Rockstar/Take-Two millions per day (https://www.thegamer.com/gta-5-rockstar-2-5-million-per-day/) so I guess a lot of players just don't care.
For the record: I'm surprised anyone is willing to tolerate that shit.