For a long time now, fans have been curious about GTA 5’s story DLC and why they never received one, even though there were rumors of one coming out a while back. However, a former Rockstar Games developer recently revealed that the company scrapped a standalone GTA 5 story DLC because of Grand Theft Auto Online coming up as a “cash cow” post-launch.
Joe Robino, who worked at Rockstar Games’ New York Office from 2010 to 2016 as a senior camera artist and virtual cinematographer, recently had an interview with the SanInPlay YouTube channel. He talked about why Grand Theft Auto 5’s DLC never saw the light of day after the launch of GTA 5 in September 2013. He said that some of the development team overlapped with RDR2 and went to work on that game early on.
So, they had to flip their plans and shelf the game that they had spent so much money on. It wasn’t all wasted, though since a lot of that content did end up being repurposed for GTA Online DLCs. Robino revealed:
A lot of the team went to do Red Dead Redemption 2 right away and I took on this other project that was a standalone DLC for GTA that never came out and it was kick ass. That was my thing. I was one of the main editors, camera artists, and on-stage stuff. We split our teams into two. I stayed on GTA Online and then this DLC, which Steven Ogg [the actor who played Trevor Philips] was a very important part of. And then some of the team overlapped and went to RDR2 early on, and then we just kind of did this [flipped motion], because when that game got shelved, we spent so much money… a lot of that stuff though did end up making it I believe into later iterations of GTA Online, I think. So it’s not like they wasted it.
“It was really really good,” Robino said, “But when GTA Online came out it was so much of a cash cow and people were loving it so much that it was hard to make an argument that a standalone DLC would outcompete that. I think looking back now you could probably do both. But that was a business decision they made. I was a little upset about that. That actually was a lot of the reason for me being a little sour at that time. Because I was like yo, WTF guys? This s**t’s awesome. Let’s keep going. Let’s finish this s**t.”
You can watch the interview below:
GTA fans have been mulling over pieces of information they received over the last few years about GTA 5's story DLC. Steven Ogg himself has talked about it and what it would've meant for the game. He said, “Trevor was going to be undercover, he was working with the feds. We did shoot some of that stuff with ‘James Bond Trevor’, where he’s still kind of a f**k-up, but he’s doing his best. Then it just disappeared and they never did it, they never followed up on it.”
On top of this, some Grand Theft Auto dataminers have also found a reference to Trevor possessing a jetpack, suggesting that the story DLC was repurposed into GTA Online, as Robino said. It was back in 2018 when Rockstar Games revealed GTA Online's Doomsday Heist missions, along with the Thruster (a jetpack that's still only featured in the multiplayer). It's quite unfortunate that fans never got to play a GTA 5 story DLC, but one can only hope that there will be a GTA 6 story DLC that'll make up for that.
Will GTA 6 feature a story DLC?
Unlike its predecessor, GTA 6 is rumored to have DLCs for its single-player mode. As was revealed by a popular and reliable GTA insider named Tez2, Rockstar Games is planning to release multiple story mode DLCs for GTA 6. This is after they realized how fans responded to the possibility of a single-player DLC for GTA 5 and how they were upset over its cancellation.
Now that the developers know what they can expect from fans and the game itself, they’re working in the right direction for GTA 6. According to Tez2, we can expect a single-player DLC within a year or two of the game’s launch. This is certainly great news and one that fans are excited to hear. Unfortunately, till the game itself comes out, we can only wait and see what other surprises it will hold for us. Till then, take this news with a grain of salt.
