GTA 5’s story DLC was cancelled because of GTA Online, says developer

As one of the best-selling video games of all timea game that sells better individually than entire video game series like Assassin’s Creedit was always disappointing that Grand Theft Auto V never got any story DLC. The franchise has had incredible DLCs in the past, like GTA 4is outstanding The Ballad of Gay Tonyand yet GTA5 never got it. The planned existence of such a DLC has long been the subject of rumors and leaks, and now a former Rockstar developer claims that the highly sought-after add-on was in development at one point, but was ultimately canceled, thanks to GTAOnline

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When appearing on the SanInPlay YouTube ChannelJoe Rubino talked about his work on the GTA5 DLC. Rubino worked as a senior cinematographer and virtual cameraman at Rockstar from 2010 to 2016, according to his LinkedIn. While work on the DLC seemed to be going well, he said, the success of GTAOnline which ultimately led to his downfall.”[The DLC] was really, really good,” says Rubino, “But when GTAOnline when it came out, it was such a big cash cow and people loved it so much that it was hard to argue that a standalone DLC could compete with it.” That’s why, he claims, Rockstar decided to cancel the DLC.

My city has asked Rockstar for comment.

Rubino gives only a brief insight into what the DLC was actually about, mentioning that Trevor’s actor Steven Ogg was a “very important” part of it and that the DLC was “awesome.” That’s powered by Ogg

himself, who only confirmed in April that he was doing voice and motion capture work on DLC for GTA5 This would have followed Trevor’s undercover mission. Ogg referred to this version of the character as “James Bond Trevor”.

In the same stream where Ogg confirmed that Trevor DLC was once in the works, Michael’s actor Ned Luke revealed that Rockstar had originally planned for all three protagonists to get their own DLCs sometime after the base game’s release, but this was later scrapped. Rubino adds that some of what he had worked on for the DLC later found its way into GTAOnline

in any form. Maybe that is why last year a firmly GTAOnline leak revealed discarded content titled “Prologue DLC” and “LibertyV DLC.”

While Rubino’s claims support previous theories that GTAOnline caused the downfall of GTA5 DLC seems to have been only one piece of the puzzle. In an interview with Game InformerDesign director Imran Sarwar said that the next-gen ports of GTA5 took a while to get it right, GTAOnline wasted resources and Red Dead Redemption 2 Development was just around the corner. “The combination of these three factors means [GTA 5]we didn’t think single-player expansions were possible or necessary,” Sarwar said. However, he went on to say that Rockstar may release story DLCs for future projects, so we can all hope for GTA6 Story DLC.

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